The Ageing of the Rural Population (Causes and effects)

The process of the ageing of Yugoslavia’s population (which can be seen in the increasing proportion of adults and old people and the decreasing proportion of children and young people) began only some twenty years ago. Thus in European relations Yugoslavia’s population may still be regarded as a young one. At present one out of fifty inhabitants in Yugoslavia is over 50 years old. However, in rural districts one out of four inhabitants belongs to this age group because the rural population is generally older than the urban one. Thus it may be concluded that there are now comparatively fewer adults and more children and old people in the villages than in towns. One of the essential characteristics of the demographic development of the Jugoslav population is its unevenness. There are discrepancies even within the individual demographic trends and relations (the lowest general death rate and the highest infant mortality in Europe). There are also discrepancies in demographic and social trends (inadequate capacity of the system of elementary, secondary and vocational schools, of farm buildings and housing facilities, lack of the basic conditions for the socialization of the individual, for his independent existence, and for starting a family). A special form of the uneven demographic development are regional discrepancies. As regards the age structure of the rural population one can distinguish two types of population. The progressive type of age structure is marked by decreasing numbers of persons of a certain generation and its increasing age. This type of rural population can be found in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and, to some extent, in Montenegro. The rural population in other parts of the country is of the stationary type of age structure with smaller differences as regards the number of members of one generation. The following are the basic factors of the changes in age structure: births, ageing and death, and migration. The current age structure of the population has the following demographic consequences: a high death rate (because of the large proportion of old people and the unequal position of the peasants in the country’s health insurance and social welfare systems), a low birth rate (baceuse of the low proportion of the reproductive contingents and the unequal social position of the peasants), and a decreasing number of marriages (because of the diminishing number of young people and their growing tendency to give up farming and leave the villages). What the next ten years will bring, when every inhabitant is ten years older, does not depend so much on demographic as on social trends. The age structure, which is at present stationary, may soon become one of the regressive type when the number of population, even without migration, may begin to decrease