The Croatian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday released a new set of data on the 2021 population census which show that the shares of Croats and atheists have increased in the total population, while the numbers of Serbs and believers, including Catholics and Orthodox, have decreased.

Catholics account for 78.97% of believers, down from 86.28% a decade ago, and there are 3.32% of Orthodox believers, down from 4.44%. The number of Muslims dropped to 1.32% from 1.47%.

Non-believers and atheists account for 4.71% of the population, up from 3.81% in the 2011 census, and 1.72% persons did not wish to answer the question about their faith, down from 2.17%.

Broken down by ethnicity, Croats account for 91.63% of the population, Serbs for 3.20%, Bosniaks for 0.62%, Roma for 0.46%, Italians and Albanians for 0.36% each, and other ethnic minorities for less than 0.30%.

In the 2011 census, Croats accounted for 90.42% of the population, Serbs for 4.36%, Bosniaks for 0.73%, Italians for 0.42%, Albanians for 0.41%, Roma for 0.40% and other ethnicities for less than 0.40%.

As for the mother tongue, in last year’s census 95.25% of the population said Croatian and 1.16% said Serbian. The share of persons who stated another language was below 1%. In the 2011 census, 95.60% of the population said their mother tongue was Croatian, 1.23% said it was Serbian, and less than 1% stated another language.

Furthermore, 99.24% of the population hold Croatian citizenship while 28,784 (0.74%) are foreigners.

Croatia has a population of 3,871,833, of which 51.83% are women. Compared with 2011, the population dropped by 413,056.

The population dropped in every county, the most in Vukovar-Srijem (-20.28%), followed by Sisak-Moslavina (-19.04%), Požega-Slavonia (-17.88%), Brod-Posavina (-17.85%) and Virovitica-Podravina (-17.05%).

The 2021 census shows that 14.27% of the population is under 14 years old and 22.45% over 65.