Pantovic: The region faces negative demographic trends, Serbia invests the most in population policy

Demographer Miodrag Pantovic stated that all countries in the Western Balkans are facing negative demographic trends, but that Serbia stands out in terms of the measures it is implementing to halt and reverse this trend. At the same time, Kosovo is dealing with intense migration, according to the expert.

“All countries in this region are facing negative demographic processes, some encountered them earlier, some later. Serbia was among the first to enter negative natural population growth back in 1991, along with Croatia, and other countries in the region followed suit, entering depopulation processes one after the other,” Pantovic told Kosovo Online.

He explained that the only exception is Montenegro, which still records positive population growth, but it is so low that it is expected to enter a negative demographic trend this year, as is Albania.

“Essentially, there won’t be a single country in the region with a positive demographic trend,” Pantovic emphasized.

He noted that each of the Western Balkan countries is trying to tackle the issue through various measures.

“If we look at the amount of financial resources being used, it can be said that Serbia is contributing the most. There is a wide array of measures aimed at supporting parents with children, from parental allowances for the first to the fourth child, to assistance with the costs of medically assisted reproduction, and subsidies for purchasing a first home... Serbia is the country that allocates the largest share of its GDP in the world for population policy measures,” Pantovic stated.

Regarding the situation in Kosovo, the demographer stressed that there has been “a clear and significant emigration” over the past decades.

“This is most evident in the results of the latest census conducted by the authorities in Pristina,” Pantovic said.

He added that German statistical data also reflect this, showing that the number of people coming from Kosovo has doubled in the last ten years.

“There is massive migration from Kosovo, but on the other hand, they still have a positive natural growth rate. This is because, even during the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo had the highest natural growth rate, not only in the Balkans but in all of Europe. Until the 1960s, the average woman in Kosovo gave birth to five or six children, while in Serbia outside of Kosovo, it was fewer than two. That was one of the key reasons for the large demographic boom in Kosovo,” Pantovic explained.

He cited a statistic from 1990 – across the whole territory of Serbia, including Kosovo, Serbs made up about 70% of the population, but accounted for less than half of all births.

“At the time, Albanians made up around 16–17% of the population, but they accounted for almost a third of all live births in Serbia. That shows just how much higher the birth rate among Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija was compared to the rest of the country,” Pantovic noted.

He believes many Western Balkan countries delayed implementing population policy measures, which is now affecting their demographic outlook.

“One could say that those measures were introduced later than in Serbia, and that may be one of the reasons why the negative trends are more pronounced there than here,” Pantovic observed.
Commenting on the proposal by North Macedonian Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski that the country might tackle the issue by introducing a tax on single people, Pantovic said the idea dates back to Ancient Rome.

“The famous Augustan laws were introduced when Rome, over 2,000 years ago, started facing low birth rates. A tax was imposed on single people and also on families without children. However, the system the Macedonian prime minister is referring to is actually the German model, inherited from Prussia, which used it before unification. But that model didn’t yield results,” Pantovic said.

He does not believe that such taxes would be a good solution for population policy, suggesting instead that emphasis should be placed on “reconciling work and family life, where both partners equally share domestic responsibilities.”

“There is no universal solution. My personal view is that the issue of birth rates is more cultural than financial. After all, the lowest birth rates are in the world’s richest countries. It seems that the better the quality of life, the lower the birth rate is,” Pantovic concluded.