The birth rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been decreasing for decades and, when the high number of emigration is also taken into consideration, the country may end up “unable to fulfil basic social functions” since the younger population can not keep up with the increasing number of pensioners,” demography and economy experts told N1 on Friday.
Demographer Aleksandar Cavic said that the situation in the last 10 to 15 years is extremely bad and that without the reaction of decision-makers there will be no changes in terms of natural population renewal or emigration.
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He explained that the population can grow or decrease in two ways – the natural movement of the population or migration. In Bosnia, it happened in both ways, he said, adding that it will lead to even worse results in the future if there is no “organized social response.”
“The precondition for that is that we face the fact that the trends are extremely bad, and the next precondition is to start creating a population policy that will integrate three parts – the policy on the birth rate, the policy on migration and the policy regarding the elderly,” he said.
It would be unrealistic to expect Bosnia to resolve the problem within the next few years but the country should begin working on it, he stressed, adding that “if there is no social reaction to it and if it is not carried out, we will find ourselves in a situation where we will simply be unable to fulfil our basic social functions.”
Macroeconomic analyst Faruk Hadzic pointed out that Bosnia should not wait any longer and tackle the long-term effects of such trends on the economy.
He pointed out that 146 million Bosnian Marks more went into pensions in the country than last year, adding that this shows that there are a lot more pensioners and that the working-age population can not keep up.
“If there is no younger population, the question is who will earn those pensions and sustain them, what about healthcare,” he said.
“Even without Covid, we had serious economic problems, which experts have been warning about for many years,” he added.
