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Yugoslavia Population
Yugoslavia's resident population was estimated at 23.4
million people in 1987, up from 15.7 million in 1948 and 22.4
million in 1981. In addition, over a million Yugoslavs lived and
worked for long periods of time in other European countries. The
country's population density grew from 62 persons per square
kilometer in 1948 to 92 per square kilometer in 1988.
Between 1961 and 1981, Yugoslavia's annual population growth
(.95 percent) was about the same as that of the world's developed
countries. The population growth rate in Yugoslavia's
economically less-developed regions, however, was significantly
higher than that in the developed regions. For example, in 1986
the respective annual growth rates of Kosovo and Macedonia were
2.51 percent and 1.53 percent. By comparison, the respective
rates in industrialized Vojvodina and Slovenia were only 0.46
percent and 0.87 percent. The annual growth rate of the country's
working-age population was 1.25 percent, indicating that an
increasing proportion of that group was found in the less
developed regions.
The average age of Yugoslavia's population in 1986 was 33.9
years. Men averaged 32.6 years of age; women, 35.1. The average
age of the Yugoslav population increased over the last half
century because the birth rate declined and life expectancy
increased over that period
(see table 2 and table 3, Appendix).
Between the 1921 and 1981 censuses, the Yugoslav population as a
whole moved from the demographic category of population maturity
toward the oldest category, demographic old age. The demographic
aging of the population varied in different parts of the country,
however, and in 1981 Yugoslavia's republics and provinces fit
into different categories of demographic aging. The populations
of Vojvodina,
Serbia proper (see Glossary), and Croatia were in
demographic old age; those in Montenegro and Slovenia were on the
threshold of demographic old age; those in Bosnia and Hercegovina
and Macedonia had reached demographic maturity; the population of
Kosovo, however, was still in demographic youth.
Life expectancy began to increase in 1918, lengthening from
about 35 years to 68.4 years for men and 73.8 years for women.
After World War II, the mortality rate in Yugoslavia declined
precipitously. In 1984 the country had a mortality rate of about
9.3 per thousand, down from 12.8 per thousand in 1948. In Kosovo
the mortality rate dropped from 13 per thousand in 1947 to 5.8 in
1984, while in Slovenia it dropped from 13.5 to 10.9 per
thousand.
Yugoslavia's infant mortality rate, a key indicator of a
population's social, economic, health care, and cultural levels,
dropped from 118.6 infant deaths per thousand births in 1950 to
26.2 per thousand in 1987. The share of infant deaths in
Yugoslavia's overall death totals dropped from about 25 percent
in the early 1950s to only 4.3 percent in 1987. In 1987 Vojvodina
(12.3 infant deaths per thousand births), Slovenia (13.0), and
Croatia (13.7) reported Yugoslavia's lowest infant mortality
rates, while Kosovo (55.2) and Macedonia (45.3) reported the
highest. In spite of higher living standards and health care,
however, in 1985 Yugoslavia's infant mortality rate ranked only
above Albania among European countries.
In Slovenia, Croatia, Vojvodina, and Serbia proper, birth
rates declined together with the mortality rate. But in Bosnia
and Hercegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, a rapid drop in the
birth rate came only after 1960, while Kosovo's birth rate
dropped only slightly through 1990. By 1980 the population
explosion among Kosovo's ethnic Albanians had become Yugoslavia's
most pressing demographic problem. Between 1950 and 1983, the
population of Kosovo grew by about 220 percent, while the
Yugoslav total increased by only 39 percent. Kosovo's high annual
birth rate (about 29 births per thousand in 1988, the highest in
Europe), and the increased life expectancy of the population
spurred this demographic growth. Although Kosovo's birth rate
declined somewhat during the 1980s, the absolute number of births
increased while the mortality rate declined. By 1980 Kosovo had
become the most densely populated part of Yugoslavia (146 persons
per square kilometer), although it remained the country's
least-developed region.
In the mid-1960s, the government began actively supporting
family planning practices to control population growth. In 1969
the Federal Assembly (Skupstina) passed a liberalized abortion
law. At the same time, the government passed a resolution on
family planning that urged expansion of free programs in family
planning and modern contraceptive techniques. The resolution also
emphasized the role of the social services and other national
institutions in sex education and planned parenthood. After 1969
the obvious failure of family planning in Kosovo produced calls
for greater dissemination of birth control information and
devices and establishment of family planning counseling services.
The winning party in Croatia's 1990 republican elections,
however, ran on a platform that called for banning abortion. The
party's victory raised the possibility of antiabortion
legislation in that republic.
Data as of December 1990
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