Demographic Limits to Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions in Serbia - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 178

Eastern Serbia 4 (Grecic, 1998 ). Rural areas of all regions suffer from lack of females
of reproductive ages but more difficult situation is in the Mountains compared to the
Plains, while the Southeast region (which is economically least developed in the
country) stands out as the worst. Unfortunately, the latter survey (the 2007 LSMS)
indicates that even traditional industrial centers of the West and Central Serbia lack
young females. If we take a closer look (municipality level) to the spatial differen-
tiation of sex ratio of those aged 20-39, the distinction between the Plains and the
Mountains in regard to this indicator is clearly pronounced (Fig. 14.1 ).
Almost all of the “islands” of young female surplus belong to the Plains. Only
four of them are located in mountain regions, which could be easily explained.
Two of these “islands” represent industrial centers based on mining while the
other two are predominantly populated by Muslims whose male population con-
siderably participates in the country's emigration stock in Western Europe, called
“citizens working abroad.” Thus, it is quite obvious that regional centers of the
Mountains lacked female population of reproductive ages already according to the
2002 Census. In other words, there is a tendency toward young females congregating
in regional centers of the country but unfortunately almost none of them is located
in the Mountains. As it can be noted in Fig. 14.1 , frontier between the Plains and the
Mountains, almost sharply split up the country into two parts: Northern with islands
of young female surplus and Southern—almost compact zone that lacks females of
reproductive ages. This frontier could be a huge obstacle in achieving aims planned
by the government pronatalist strategy but also the long-term limit to sustainable
development of mountain regions in Serbia.
Apart from war conflicts, economic factors are dominant stimuli to migrations.
Given the nature of industrialization process in Serbia during the last half of the
20th century, it was expected that mountain regions would be the less developed
part of the country today. That situation shaped the general direction of internal
migration in Serbia—from the high lands to the low lands. As a result, the Plains
got more working-age population having higher living standard compared to the
Mountains. But this process has no tendency to allow the areas to exchange their
positions. It is more likely that distinction between them will be more pronounced
in the future. The question is—why? The analysis of indicators of disturbed sex
composition at lower spatial levels pointed to profound economic and social factors
(analyzed through poverty indicators) as a driving force of internal migration in a
typical positive feedback loop “population-poverty.” The mechanism of this feed-
back loop behaves as follows: people will migrate from poor regions to the wealthier
ones leaving behind worse population structure than it was, but improving demo-
graphic composition of wealthier areas. In other words, the less young people stay
in the Mountains, the poorer mountain regions will be. And the opposite, the more
young people come to the urban centers, the better living standard in the Plains.
4 East Serbia has lower surplus of young males compared to other mountain regions of Serbia
(West and Southeast) for rural population according to both surveys and even for urban population
according to the 2007 LSMS.