Exodus! Serbia struggles with population decline
UN has stepped in to help what is being considered a national emergency
Blagojev Kamen Serbia, Feb.7: Uros Trainovic remembers when his small mining village in eastern Serbia was a vibrant home to 200 families, had a school of its own, a doctor and a shop.
How times have changed. Now, 60-odd years later, it’s a ghost village with just eight residents.
The transformation of Blagojev Kamen is not unique in a country that experienced years of war and sanctions in the 1990s following the break-up of Yugoslavia. In a twist of historical irony, one of the causes behind those years of war was the idea of creating a Greater Serbia out of the ashes of the former Yugoslavia.
Near-empty villages with abandoned, crumbling houses can be seen all over Serbia — a clear symptom of a shrinking population that is raising acute questions over the economic well-being of the country. The decline is happening so fast it’s considered a national emergency and the United Nations has stepped in to help.
“This village used to be full of people, I used to go to school here,” the 71year-old Trainovic recalls.
“It is such a pity and so sad that everybody left ... now there are only few of us and there are no young people any more.”
However it’s measured, the numbers look stark.
According to the World Bank, Serbia’s population of just below 7 million is projected to fall to 5.8 million by 2050. That would represent a 25% fall since 1990.
The Serbian government says the Balkan country is effectively losing a town each year, and that as many as 18 municipalities have fewer than 10,000 people: “We are 103 people less each day.”
Population changes are a fact of life across Europe, but the problem is acutely different in Central and Eastern Europe where the low fertility rates that are commonplace in developed countries combine with high migration rates and low immigration more akin to developing nations.
The economic knock-on effects on a country striving to join the European Union are evident and amount to billions of dollars in the short term. In the longer run, there are also costs related to the fact that a smaller population of working age will have to contribute more to support the ranks of those of pensionable age.
The U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Population Fund have assembled a group of seven international experts of different backgrounds and specialities to help out. The members visited Serbia last month for a fact-finding mission.
Wolfgang Lutz, an Austrian expert in demographics at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, or IIASA, said the main problem is related to the makeup of those leaving Serbia rather than the overall population decline.