Demographic Limits to Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions in Serbia - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 175

were generally neglected which transformed them into backward areas characterized
by low agriculture production and lower economic position in relation to the rest of
the country. Simultaneously, fast-growing towns (on account of immigration) during
the period took advantage of industrialization and modernization presenting today
the only oases of development in the country.
The idea of the chapter is to point out to the correlation between the disturbed
sex ratio of the most vital population and economic development across the regions
in Serbia. In other words, the surplus of young men in mountain regions and the
surplus of young women in low lands could be the fine-tuned indicator of eco-
nomic level of the area showing simultaneously in which ways national strategies
concerning demographic processes in the future sustainable development should be
implemented. In that sense, sustainable development of mountain regions is of spe-
cific interest for the country since the combination of their bad economic situation
and lack of females in reproductive ages will reinforce both demographic deserti-
fication of the area and the trend of population concentration in the several biggest
centers of the country.
14.2 The Analysis
The analysis is based on the 2002 Census of Population and the 2007 Living
Standards Measurement Study in Serbia funded by the World Bank. The 2002
Census provided a possibility for the analysis at the settlement level which was
used as a starting point. Settlements were not classified into low or high lands
according to their absolute elevation but rather to their position in relation to the
frontier between the Plains and the Mountains. The frontier was drawn according to
the administrative districts of the Republic. This kind of distinction provided clas-
sification that gives more weight to the geographical surroundings of a settlement
than to its own absolute elevation. The main advantage of the approach is that it
is closer to reality. For example, it does not put automatically a settlement into the
high lands category if it is located on an isolated hill inside plain since it is the part
of surrounding net of settlements.
The 2007 Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) resulted from the
questionnaires prepared by the instructions of the World Bank experts as help in
formulating the Government Poverty Reduction Strategy. The sample encompassed
17,375 persons who reside in Serbia. Territorial representativeness of the sample
was adjusted to the NUTS 2 level of the country. It means that this study distin-
guishes among six large regions each of which consisted of two or more districts.
For the analysis in this chapter, main demographic characteristics of the questioned
population were used along with two summary indicators of living standard—the
limit of poverty and quantiles of the consumption (SORS, 2003b ).
Two of the six regions—the East and the Southeast plus half of the West region—
represent the Mountain area as it is defined in this chapter. According to the 2002
Census, the area is populated by 1,565,080 inhabitants, which represents 20.9% of
the country population. Slightly more people live in rural than in urban settlements: