Demographic Limits to Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions in Serbia - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 174

continuous “high- to lowlands” migration within country borders that started soon
after World War II. Demographic implications of the phenomenon are substantial
for the future sustainable development of mountain regions. Dominant demographic
process during the next decades will be population aging throughout the whole of
Europe. The process that has already started affected especially Serbia due to its
half a century long period of below replacement fertility and traditional emigration
history. However, demographic polarization between urban and rural that existed for
such a long period becomes less and less pronounced as population aging has had
the fastest pace in urban areas for the last two decades. It is the effect of permanent,
irreversible migrations of the population of the highest reproductive potential from
villages toward towns after World War II. Nowadays, the largest part of those gen-
erations entered into the group of old-age population, leaving behind considerably
smaller generations of descendants than themselves.
Given the essential striving of the process in regard to homogenization of the
level of demographic aging across the territory of the whole country (Nikitovic,
2006 ), typical demographic indicators of aging process, such as aging index and
median age of population, cannot express essential differences between plain
regions (mainly urban) 1 and mountain regions (mainly rural). From the point of the
paper topic, substantial information on the capabilities of the future demographic
and economic development of mountain region lies in the sex ratio of the popu-
lation aged 20-39 years. In other words, putting most of the nationally planned
pronatalist policies into effect will not be possible if there are no prospects for a
significant number of people to find themselves a partner of the opposite sex, as
due to the consequences of continuous migrations from mountain regions to low
lands. For decades, more young females than males have emigrated from villages to
towns. In the beginning of the process, the highest intensity migrations were from
mountains to nearby towns while afterwards, when demographic capacities of hin-
terland subsided, the biggest flows were from small- and middle-sized towns to the
largest centers in the country. The proportion of men is roughly equal to the propor-
tion of women in the group aged 20-39 years (1,006) 2 at the level of the country
due to a combination of factors: sex ratio at birth, age pattern of mortality, and
negligible impact of international migration. However, continuous “high- to low-
lands” migration during the last five decades produced disturbed sex composition
of the group at settlement level of the country. Generally, regions having more men
than women aged 20-39 years are poor, agrarian, mountain, and mainly border,
while areas populated by more women than men of the same age group are pre-
dominantly urban and low land. The cause of the selectivity of migration by sex
is founded in traditional family organization where males were taught to be “tied
to land” while females were encouraged to leave their paternal houses. During the
strong and fast industrialization of the former SFR Yugoslavia, mountain regions
1 About 85% of urban population in Serbia lives in plain regions.
2 According to the 2002 Census of population; 0.998—according to the 2007 Living Standards
Measurement Study.