World Population Year THE POPULATION OF YUGOSLAV! CI.CR.Ê.D. Series 1974 WORLD POPULATION YEAR THE POPULATION OF YUGOSLAVIA DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH CENTER Institute of Social Sciences Belgrade, 1974 FOREWORD At its Twenty-fifth Jubilee Session, the General Assembly of the United Nations decided that 1974 would be de,voted to population problems, under the general appellation "World Population Year, 1974'. At the end of August 1974. the World Population Conference was held in Bucharest and numerous other gatherings given over to population problems are being held in various countries in connection with World Population Year. Furthermore, the Secretariat of the United Nations has drawn up a program of activities for this year. Similarly, in many countries special committees were set up to prepare for participation in the World Population Conference and to stimulate activity that will help draw fitting attention to population, as a crucial but neglected problem. In Yugoslavia, the Federal Executive Council set up a Federal Committee for World Population Year to supervise preparations for Yugoslavia's participation in the Bucharest conference and to promote activities in the domain of population study in this country. In 1972, the International Committee for Coordination of Demographic Research (CICRED) was established to coordinate demographic research. Its membership is almost a complete catalogue of world demographic institutes and other institutions dealing with matters related to population. The Committee has organized a number of meetings of its members and seminars on the most diverse population problems, defined priority areas of research and coordinated the compilation of national monographs on population. It is expected that more than sixty such monographs will be published in the course of 1974. With financial assistance from the Population Department of the United Nations, and the UN Trust Fund for Population Activity, CICRED has supported the publication of these monographs, which has certainly helped to make their number so large. Preparation of this English-language monograph on the population of Yugoslavia was coordinated by the Center for Demographic Research of the Institute for Social Sciences in Belgrade. The authors of its individual sections were: Dolfe Vogelnik: 'Population Growth' and 'Components of Growth'; Milica Sentie: 'Composition of+he Yugoslav Population'; Mladen Friganovic: 'Population Distribution, Internal Migration, Agricultural and Non-Agricultural, Rural and Urban Population'; Lazar Sokolov: 'Labor Force (Economically Active Population)'; Gordana Todorovic: 'Projections of the Population'; Milos Macura: 'Socio—Economic Conditions and Policy Related to Develo- pment and Population'. The appendix to the monograph contains certain detailed tables on population trends (fertility and mortality) and demographic structures. Presented there also is certain basic information on the sources of the statistical data and a bibliography of the works employed by the several authors of the monograph. It must also be mentioned that Jovan Ilic contributed a brief survey of the socio-political system, economic characteristics, and the like, of Yugoslavia, which has been incorporated into this foreword, below. It has been the intention of the authors and the editor of the monograph to keep its exposition simple and thereby accessible to a broad spectrum of readers, and not just specialized demographers. In view of the great regional variation in Yugoslavia in population trends and demographic structures, an effort has been made to make regional analyses all—pervasive. The editing of the mongraph was entrusted to Dusan Breznik. Translation into English was done by Nada Kronja—Stanic. To illuminate demographic processes, and especially the interdependencies of population development(_more fully, we present here the broad contours of social and economic development in Yugoslavia and regional differences in economic and other characteristics. Before the Second World War, Yugoslavia bore all the features of an . undeveloped agrarian country. More than 75% of the working population was engaged in agriculture — characterized by low productivity and low yields. Industry and other non-agricultural activities were poorly-developed and the rate of growth of the national income, around 2%, was hardly greater than the rate of population growth. As a consequence of the very, different historical backgrounds of the individual regions there was great regional differentiation in economic and social development, which was particularly reflected in the components of natural population trends and in the economic, educational and other structures of the populations. In the aftermath of the Second World War, development was even further retarded. Firstly and foremostly," Yugoslavia suffered enormous human losses (1,700,000 wat victims, (constituting 11% of its population) while in terms ot material losses its; war—devastation was amongst the heaviest in the world. After the close of the war, despite the very bad situation inherited, the nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia began to build their socialist" community. First the war—ravaged country had to be rebuilt and then a path chosen that would allow economic backwardness to be overcome as quickly as possible and promote the fastest possible advance in other fields: in health, education, standard of living, etc. The path of socialist industrialization was elected as the only way to resolve the accumulated problems. Yugoslavia is a federal state with social ownership of the means of production and social self—management as the fundamentals of its socio-economic system. As behoves the interests of all the nations and nationalities living in the country, it has a unified socio-political and economic system. Yugoslavia is composed of six socialist republics: Bosnia—Hercegovina (51,129 km2, 3,746,000 population), Montenegro (13,812 km2 530,000 population), Croatia (56,538 km2, 4,426,000 population), Macedonia (25,713 km2. 1,647,000 population), Slovenia (20,251 km2, 1,727,000 population) and Serbia (88,361 km2, 8,447,000 population). Within the framework of the Republic of Serbia there are the Socialist Autonomous Provinces of Vojvodina (21,506 km2, 1,953,000 population) and Kosovo (10,887 km2, 1,244,000 population). The Provinces participate directly in all federal forums and organs, that is, in the operation and advancement of the Yugoslav federative system. The economic development of the country since the Second World War has been dynamic in every respect. In pace of economic growth and depth of changes in the socio-economic structure, Yugoslavia is outstanding in the world. From 1947 to 1972 the social product multiplied 4.8 times (according to 1966 prices). The annual rate of growth of the social product in this period was 6.6% (or 5.3% per capita). The structure of the social product has undergone considerable changes. In 1947, agriculture accounted for 43% and industry 18% of the social product. In 1972 the situation was reversed, and industry accounted for 38% and agriculture for 19%. The socialist sector accounts for 80% of the social product today. Yugoslavia's transformation from an agrarian to an industrial-agrarian country is patent from the data cited. Indeed, the rapid development of industry has been the basic feature of the economic development of the country in the postwar period. Agriculture is the second most important economic sector. Before the last war it was. likewise, poorly developed even though it acounted for around 80% of the population. Agriculture developed slower than industry after the war because less was invested in it. Moreover, for a long time, it was the main source of car'tal formation for the development of industry and other activities. Only in 1957 did the situation begin to get better as more began to be invested in agriculture. In relation to pre-war levels, agricultural output has risen 1.9 times. The greatest part of output comes from the private sector since it holds 85% of the arable land. The remaining 15% belongs to the social sector. However, the social sector provides 24% of the social product earned in agriculture and 45% of the agricultural commodity trade. Productivity, then, is far greater on the socialist than on private farms, which are characterized by great fragmentation, poor organization and low productivity. As a fundamental system of spatial interlinking and integration, transport and communications have been paid considerable attention since liberation, and there has been rapid growth in this sector, especially in certain of its branches. The annual rate of growth in volume of services has been: 26% in air transport, 23% in motor transport, 13% in maritime, 10% in river and 4% in rail transport. At present, Yugoslavia has 10,417 km of railway tracks (almost 2,000 km electrified), 96,160 km of roads (nearly 30,000 km with modern surfaces), 1,522 million DWT mercantile shipping fleet, a million passenger cars (113,000 in 1963), around 350,000 other motor vehicles, 911,000 telephones, etc. Throughout the entire postwar period, commerce, together with hotels and catering and the tourist industry, has recorded a constantly high and stable growth in social product. The average annual growth rate over the period 1948—1972 was 8.7%, which has permitted continual expansion and modernization of capacities, the introduction of contemporary methods of operation and the like. The growth in commerce has contributed considerably to the advance of the rest of the economy and improvement in the standard of living. At present there are around 72,000 retail shops which means that there is one shop per 290 population (in 1952 there was one per 506 population). There has been especially fast growth in hotels and catering and tourism over the past 15 years. In that time the number of beds has increased 5.7 times, the number of employed 2.7 times. In 1972 there were 606,000 beds available, 440,000 of them in the social sector. From 1963 to 1972 the number of tourists swelled from 6 to 13 million. At the same time the number of foreign tourists has doubled.