Every third household in our country is a one-person household – this is what the just published results of the population census say.
According to the latest statistics, out of 2,589,344 households in Serbia, 773,945 of them are one-person households, while 711,946 households have two members. There are 459,926 three-member households, 375,565 four-member households 156,050 households with five members and 111,912 households have six or more members.
The data also show that between the two population censuses, the number of single households increased by 218,478. In the previous census, the largest number of households were two-member. In translation, this means that the number of people living alone has increased by more than 200,000 in just 11 years and the results of this year’s population census show that single-member households dominate in urban areas – out of 773,945 one-person households, as many as 528,823 are in cities.
Data from the State Statistics Office show that the largest share of single households in the total number of households was recorded in the Belgrade region, where every third household has only one person (33.4 percent) and the Vojvodina region (30.8 percent). In the region of Šumadija and Western Serbia, as well as in the region of Southern and Eastern Serbia, two-person households are slightly more numerous than single-person households, and these two regions also have a larger share of households with six or more members (close to 6 percent) compared to the Belgrade region, in which the share of households with six or more members is only 2.6 percent and the region of Vojvodina, where only 3.4 percent of households have more than five members.
“The process of demographic ageing in Serbia has been going on for several decades and parallel to it is the process of families having progressively fewer members. On the one hand, it is a result of modern-day living – in the majority of European countries, families are small and parents rarely decide to have a third child. On the other hand, since the First World War, women in Serbia have not given birth to enough children for the simple reproduction of the nation. The number of children in our family is continuously decreasing and the number of men and women who have no children is increasing. In addition to all of this, young people are frequently migrating from smaller to larger towns and cities, that is, they are leaving to work abroad and thus leave their parents behind. This is another reason why the number of single households is continuously growing”, says Dr Ivan Marinković, a senior scientific associate of the Institute of Social Sciences.
(Politika, 13.07.2023)
https://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/561741/srbija-stari-clan
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