According to the data published in the Health Statistics Yearbook, Serbia is on the verge of demographic aging, with its birth rate at the lowest level in the past ten years.

At the same time, the average age of the population rose from 40.2 to 43.4 in the past 10 years which makes Serbia one of the ten countries with the oldest populations in Europe, reads the report published by the Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut Public Health Institute, the daily Politika reported.

The number of women of child-bearing age (15 to 49) has dropped by 2.4 percent thus reducing the potential for more births in the country.

Due to such demographic trends, the working population, people from 15 to 65 years of age, dropped from 67.3 percent in 2002 to 65 percent in 2020.

According to Serbia’s Statistical Office, every fifth person in Serbia is over 65 while the number of children in the general population dropped from 16 percent to 14.3 percent in the period 2002-2020.

The population aging trend has also been registered in other European countries taking the average age in the European Union to 44.4 years, two years more than in 2012.