In November 2022, the global population reached 8 billion. At the same time, two thirds of people live in places where fertility rates have fallen below the so-called “replacement level” of 2.1 births per woman, shows the latest world population report of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

Declining mortality and fertility rates are happening everywhere, in some places sooner than in others, reads the report “8 Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities: The Case for Rights and Choices.”

This is why, in some places, there is concern about “too many” people, and, in others, about “too few” people.

The concern about “too few” people is particularly widespread in Eastern Europe, where low fertility rates go hand in hand with elevated rates of emigration.

As a result, the population has declined, in some cases by more than 25 percent since the early 1990s, reads the report.

The Balkan diaspora is huge. According to the 2021 data of the Migration Data Portal, 53 percent of the people born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 45 percent of those born in Albania, and 12 percent of people born in Serbia are living outside their countries.

The UNFPA report says that Balkan governments’ incentives to woo the diaspora back are no surprise.

It adds that Serbia has a sophisticated combination of tax relief and start-up help, while Croatia offers 26,000 euros in subsidies to Croatians who come home and start a business.

National governments are not the only ones helping people return. In Serbia, Returning Point is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to create a better climate for repats.