If the trend of negative natural growth continues in the coming decades, with constant packing of bags and departure from here, by 2070, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks could be a minority in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Demographers are warning about this, commenting on the increasingly frequent boasting of authorities in BiH that we are richer for so many children every week, and in fact they do not want to present to the public a problem that is stronger than all that BiH is facing: fewer and fewer births and more and more deaths.
The continuation of such a trend, they emphasize, will unequivocally lead to the fact that in less than half a century we will not have enough labor force, and that the jobs will then be filled by migrants from all over the world, often with complete families.
“We are running away from reality in such a way that we lose an average of 5,000 citizens annually, and it is considered that this is not so terrible. However, this is only based on the negative natural increase. When it is combined with the loss we record in terms of the negative migration balance, we arrive at a devastating figure and the fact that the citizens of BiH in 2070, if we look at the lowest projection made by the United Nations Population Fund (UN), will be a minority in their own country”, says Aleksandar Čavić, demographer.
He states that the current trends concerning the demographic picture of BiH could lead to the fact that in 2070 there will be 1,200,000 Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats and others living in BiH, and the same number, or even more, of those who immigrated to BiH and do not belong to any of the aforementioned.
“The problem exists in the sustainability of the pension system, the sustainability of the entire public sector, the education and health system, for the reason that the number of inhabitants and its structure affect the volume and structure of the workforce, and the workforce is the one from which the employed population is engaged. So, if you have a total volume of the workforce, i.e. if you have between the ages of 18 and 65 about 300,000 citizens, you cannot have 500,000 employees. When you reduce the volume of the labor contingent, you reduce the maximum volume workforce, and without contributions and taxes, you cannot fill the two most important funds, namely the pension-disability fund and the health insurance fund, and you call the sustainability of the entire system into question,” warns Čavić.
According to him, the sustainability of the existing system in BiH requires between 900,000-1,200,000 employees, which could be an irreparable problem in the future.
“The projections that the UN Population Fund made in three variants… The middle version says that there will be 1.5 million inhabitants in BiH in 2070. The lowest version, which I am inclined to, is that the number will be 1.2 million. Of that number, at least 42 percent will be over 65, which is more than 500,000. Furthermore, you will have around 18 years of age 170,000-180,000, which means that the total workforce will be around 520,000,” adds Čavić.
But it is far from the end, because the real picture only then comes to light.
“From that volume of labor force, so about 520,000, you have to exclude those who are studying, and that is 70,000-80,000, then you will have about 70,000 people who cannot work due to disability or illness, 30,000-40,000 who are under the care of family members, as well as 15,000-20,000 people who are so-called voluntary unemployment. So, the total workforce will be 350,000-370,000 inhabitants, and according to what we have now, we need between 900,000 and 1.2 million of those who need to work to make the system sustainable. Then we will have complete families coming from outside. Let them both be employed, and let them bring at least two children each, which is optimistic if we take into account which countries are the source of migrants. in our area, we will have 600,000 couples here plus their children and at least 1,200,000 foreigners… And there will be that many of us”, says Čavić for “Nezavisne”.
That things in BiH, with an emphasis on the Republika Srpska, are viewed in the short term, and that only sometimes one can hear the warning that demography must be a priority, is evidenced by the messages of some in Srpska who publicly boast that 120 babies were born in seven days.
Čavić states that if that number of births were, for example, during each week in 2025, this means that the number of births in Srpska at the end of this year could be only 6,240, which is many times less than years ago, when an average of 9,300 babies were born.
That 2025 could be a record year in a negative sense was seen at the beginning of July, when the Statistical Office of the Republic of Srpska announced that 3,618 babies were born from January to the end of June. What the statistics are at the end of the year will be known after the data from the Institute.
Sociologist Mirjana Čeko believes that public institutions only selectively frame reality with weekly or monthly data, which is sociologically understood as an effort to create space for an affirmative narrative within a complex and often unfavorable social picture. “Emphasizing the weekly number of births is not necessarily disinformation in the technical sense, but it is an attempt to construct social optimism through isolated information. This emphasis on micro-news serves as a mechanism to mitigate the perception of the demographic transition. In societies facing a structural decrease in the number of inhabitants, there is a natural need for information that suggests the opposite trend, even when it is at the level of a statistical exception or an average that does not change the general picture. It is an attempt to influence the collective consciousness and perception of the future, because a society that sees itself as it gradually loses its internal driving force”, explains Čeko for “Independent“.
Taking into account Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole, experts in the field of demography assume that only between two censuses, the one in 1991 and the last one in 2013, Bosnia and Herzegovina lost about 20 percent of its population.
Read more:
- The year of judicial scandals: How the top judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina collapsed the rule of law in 2025.
- How many inhabitants does Bosnia and Herzegovina actually have?
