TIRANA, July 10 – Albania and Bulgaria experienced the strongest decline in the population percentage in a year. Compared to January 1, 2019, According to Eurostat’s latest report, Albania’s population declined by 5.8 percent while Bulgaria’s percentage declined by 7 percent, followed by Serbia (-5.3 percent) and Romania (-5 percent).
The report shows that the natural increase in population was 2.3 percent less in January 2020 compared to January 1, 2019, or 6.6 thousand births more than deaths, which marks the lowest birth rate since the 1990s.
As for Serbia, the negative population trend is related to the negative natural increase, while net migration is almost zero. According to Eurostat, Serbia had a 5.3 percent decrease in natural increase throughout the period in question.
Based on previous reports, the reason behind population decline is related to the decline of natural population increase rate, as well as migration.
At EU level, the crude death rate was 10.4 per 1 000 residents. Consequently, Ireland (with a natural change of its population of +5.8 percent) remained in 2019 the Member State where births most outnumbered deaths, followed by Cyprus (+4.1 percent), Luxembourg (+3.1 percent), Sweden (+2.5 percent) and France (+2.1 percent). Among the EU Member States which registered a negative natural change in 2019, deaths outnumbered births the most in Bulgaria (-6.7 percent), followed by Latvia (-4.7 percent), Lithuania, Greece and Croatia (each -3.9 percent), Hungary and Romania (each -3.8 percent) and Italy (-3.6 percent). At EU level, eleven Member states registered a positive natural change and sixteen Member States registered a negative natural change in 2019.
