Kad demografska zima zakuca na vrata / When the Demographic Winter knocks the door

Abstract

For years, the birth rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been one of the lowest in the world. This fact suggests a need to approach the phenomenon analyti-cally. The main goal of this paper is to present the changes in birth and fertility rates over the longer term in relation to the factors determining them. Two standard methods are normally used in analysing fertility rates, the transver-sal and the longditudinal. Applying them both, we have quantified the inter-generational differences in reproductive norms. The pattern of demographic transition seems to have been progressive in character, with the fall in fertility continuing past the point during the 1970s at which the threshold of simple population reproduction was reached (just more than two children per adult female). Entry into the late sub-phase of demographic transition was followed by a trend of more gradually declining natality. This lasted into the early 1990s. The 1992–1995 war saw the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina forcibly induced into a post-transitional stage of development, for which the social and economic preconditions were not yet in place. Entry into this phase of demo-graphic development, whose major characteristics are denatality, an aging po-pulation, and a rising death rate, resulting in natural depopulation, has marked the onset of demographic winter.