In 1995 Lithuania had an around population of 3,717,000, which was 44,000 fewer people than in 1992. Of the total, females were in the majority, as in most Central European countries and in Russia. The population group that has increased most quickly in Lithuania, as in many other comparatively developed countries, consists of senior citizens and pensioners. For example, pensioners grew in number from 546,000 to 906,000 between 1970 and 1991. This group grew from 17.3 % of the population in 1980 to 19.5 % in 1992. The zero-to-fifteen-year-old age-group, by comparison, diminished slightly from 25.2 % in 1980 to 23.9 in 1992, not as a result of increased mortality but as a result of a continuing decline in the birth rate. The group of working-age people also decreased, from 57.5 % to 56.6 %. The birth rate decreased from 17.6 per 1,000 population in 1970 to 12.5 per 1,000 population in 1993 and 12.0 per 1,000 population in 1994. Mortality increased from 10.5 per 1,000 population in 1980 to 10.9 in 1991 and 12.8 in 1994. Life expectancy in 1993 was 63.3 years for males and 75.0 years for females, or an average of 69.1 years. This, too, was on the decline from the peak years of 1986-87, when the average was 72.5 years.The decrease coincides with the worsening economic situation and the decline in the quality of health services during the postfreedom economic transition.

Ethnically, about 80 % of the population is Lithuanian, but there are also Russians and Poles and lesser numbers of Belorussians, Ukrainians, Jews, Latvians, Tatars, Gypsies, and others. Natural increase, rather than immigration, has accounted for most of the recent population growth. This situation distinguishes Lithuania from its Baltic neighbours. The comparatively high level of ethnic homogeneity in Lithuania and the persistence of Roman Catholicism in the face of decades of Soviet promulgation of atheism as the official state ideology further distinguish Lithuania from Latvia and Estonia, where historically German-Scandinavian religious and cultural values have precontrolled.