Croatia's population shrank to total 3,888,529 in 2021, or about 9.25 percent down from 2011, the preliminary results of the 2021 census released on Friday showed.

In 2011, the country’s population was put at 4,284,889, with women accounting for 51.8 percent of the population and men for 48.2 percent.

The latest data suggests that Croatia shrank by nearly 400,000 people over the last ten years. State statistics bureau said that this figure mainly reflects low natural increase – the negative ratio of births vs deaths – a problem plaguing the country for decades, which has one of the oldest populations in Europe.

Another contributing factor in Croatia’s depopulation is widely believed to be mass emigration, which significantly intensified after Croatia had joined the European Union in July 2013, which opened up most of the EU’s labor market to Croatians.

By area, the smallest population drops were recorded in City of Zagreb (which went from 790k in 2011 to 770k in 2021, or 2.5 percent), Dubrovnik County (which went from 122k to 116k or 5.7 percent), and Zadar County (from 170k in 2011 to 160k in 2021 or 5.5 percent). Zagreb County (which surrounds the capital city without including it) also posted a relatively small drop of only 5.2 percent.

The largest drops were in Vukovar-Srijem (from 179k to 144k or 19.5 percent), Sisak-Moslavina (from 172k to 140k or 18.5 percent), and Brodsko-Posavska (from 158k to 131k or 17.5 percent).