10. Demographic Profile of Serbia at the Turn of the Millennia

Serbia, together with most of its neighbours – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, belongs to the world countries experiencing highest population decline. Its total population has been declining since the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia when the rate of natural change turned negative. The rising net emigration speeded up this trend at the turn of the millennia. In addition, Serbia is lagging behind most EU member states in terms of educational attainment of their working age population. The region of the capital city is the only one with a positive population growth in the country exclusively due to a positive balance of internal migration induced by attractiveness of the metropolitan area. Albeit Serbs are dominant majority, demographic profile of the country reveals rich ethnic heterogeneity, particularly in the Vojvodina region, resulted from the multifaceted interaction of historic, geographic and political factors. Yet, there are only four spatially homogeneous ethnic communities, three of which are grouped in the border areas, forming subregional majorities close to their homelands.