THE IMPACT OF EMIGRATION ON POPULATION DECLINE IN CROATIA
THE IMPACT OF EMIGRATION ON POPULATION DECLINE IN CROATIA

Summary/Abstract: In the last thirty years, the countries of south-eastern and eastern Europe have experiencedsignificant population decline, and Croatia is no exception to that. This paper revisits the problem ofdepopulation in Croatia in the last two intercensal periods (2001–2011 and 2011–2021). The aim was toanalyze the impact of emigration on depopulation in Croatia and investigate whether it had a greaterimpact on depopulation than natural decrease. Additionally, the aim was to investigate whether thenumber of emigrants was underreported in the official statistics. The results show that Croatia lost morepopulation due to negative net migration than the official statistical data indicate. Recent migrations inCroatia did not only affect the population decline, but also age composition of the population,particularly in the last intercensal period due to emigration of families with children and population intheir working and reproductive ages, as they composed a large proportion of emigrants. The paperprovides an elaborate insight into the recent migration patterns in Croatia while highlighting theunderestimation of the proportions of emigration from Croatia by the official statistics.

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