Croats in Serbia and Serbs in Croatia: demographic similarities and differences - selected aspects

The subject of research in this paper are the populations in the population censuses of declared Croats in the Republic of Serbia and Serbs in the Republic of Croatia in the time period 2001/2002. – 2021/2022 years. The purpose of the research is to determine the reached level of similarities and differences in selected dynamic and structural demographic indicators between these two minority communities, as well as in their relation to the total and majority population of the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia, with the aim of assessing their demographic sustainability in the future. The research is based on the official results of general population censuses held in Croatia in 2001, 2011 and 2021, and in Serbia in 2002, 2011 and 2022. The descriptive and comparative method will be applied in the research, and the results will be presented in aggregated analytical tables and graphs. The mentioned subject will be observed in the general dynamic demographic framework, which for both countries and for both minority populations is extremely depopulated, which means extremely unfavourable. Thus, without going into the issue of obvious changes in census methodologies, in the period 2001-2021 the number of the total population of Croatia was reduced by 12.7%, and the number of the total population of Serbia in the period 2002-2022 was reduced by 11.3 %. At the same time, the number of declared Croats in Serbia decreased by 44.6%, while the number of declared Serbs in Croatia decreased by 38.6%. Consequently, the relative share of Croats in Serbia decreased from 0.9% to 0.6% (by 0.3 percentage points), and of Serbs in Croatia from 4.5% to 3.2% (by 1.3 percentage points). In addition to the negative demographic dynamics of both populations (both minority and total), the observed period is also characterized by unfavourable processes in the formation of partial demographic structures, especially biological (age and gender), which, thanks to the accelerated aging of the population, is increasingly becoming a limiting factor in their long-term demographic sustainability.