Demographic features of the population of Serbia include vital statistics; marriages and divorces; age structure and life expectancy; urbanisation; ethnic, religious, and linguistic statistics; migrations; education level of population.
The demographic evolution of modern Serbia has been profoundly shaped by waves of migration, devastating wars, economic pressures, and shifting fertility patterns, rather than mere numerical fluctuations.
Emerging as an autonomous principality with a population of around 678,000 by 1834, Serbia benefited from massive inflows of ethnic Serbs from neighbouring regions under Ottoman and Habsburg rule, seeking refuge and opportunity. Displaced by uprisings and seeking ethnic consolidation, tens of thousands of Serbs from areas like Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, and to a lesser degree from North Macedonia, migrated to Serbia fueling population growth. This immigration not only homogenized the demographic landscape of the country but was also instrumental in the consolidation of a Serbian national identity and supported Serbia's push toward independence in 1878, transforming it to an expanding kingdom.
Another main driver of Serbia's population increase in the late 19th century was a very high birth rate, which fueled natural increase as the primary engine of growth. Serbia experienced demographic transition characterized by high fertility rates hovering at 5.4 children per woman, among the highest in Europe and rivaling rural Eastern European countries such as Russia but far exceeding rates in Western and Southern Europe (e.g., France's fertility rate of 3). This reflected a pre-industrial agrarian economy where large families ensured labor for farming and inheritance in a patrilineal culture, unmitigated by urbanization or contraception. Coupled with declining but still high mortality rates (especially infant and child mortality), the net effect was substantial natural population growth — the natural surplus yielded growth of over 100,000 annually. Territorial gains amplified this: the 1878 expansions added around 300,000 people outright, but endogenous growth absorbed and expanded them, laying the demographic foundation for Serbia's emergence as a Balkan power. Censuses from this period show steady increases: from about 1 million people in the mid-19th century towards 2.5 million by the end of the century.
The 20th century however brought devastating demographic losses.
Serbia's demographic losses during the World War I were among the most catastrophic of any country involved in the war, both in relative and absolute terms, and from those losses Serbia never fully recovered. In fact, country had the biggest casualty rate in World War I suffering 1.26 million casualties — 28% of its population, which also represented staggering 58% of its male population.[4] World War I losses resulted in a generational imbalance that would have long-lasting effects on the nation’s population structure. With half of the male reproductive age group killed, Serbia faced a long-lasting male demographic deficit, affecting marriage patterns, fertility, and labor. Even though fertility rates remained high in general, the lack of men led to fewer births, delaying population recovery. Serbia's population did not return to its pre-war numbers until well into the early 1930s, and even then, the demographic structure had been permanently altered.
Serbia suffered significant demographic losses during World War II as well, though these were different in character and scope compared to the catastrophic losses of World War I. While the World War I decimated country’s military-age male population through combat and disease, World War II brought ethnic persecution, civil conflict, mass executions and reprisals, particularly targeting civilians. Tens of thousands of Serbs were killed in Nazi reprisals (in Kragujevac over 2,700 civilians were executed in one day, in Kraljevo, around 2,000 were killed in a similar reprisal), often under the infamous policy of killing 100 civilians for every German soldier killed. Many more died in a civil conflict between two resistance movements communist Partisans and royalist Chetniks. Jews in Serbia were almost entirely exterminated by the Nazis by 1942.
The post-World War II the displacement of ethnic Germans and colonization of Serbs in Vojvodina represent one of the most significant demographic transformations in the history of modern Serbia. This period marked a radical change in the ethnic composition of Vojvodina, a historically multiethnic region in northern Serbia.
Before the World War II, ethnic Germans were one of the largest ethnic groups in Vojvodina, numbering 318,000. During the war they joined German military units (e.g., 7th SS Division Prinz Eugen, notorious for atrocities against Serbs) in significant numbers and were later seen as collaborators with the Nazi occupiers and held collectively responsible for Nazi wartime atrocities against civilian population. As German forces retreated at the end of the war, approximately half of ethnic German population fled westward, abandoning homes and farms. Of the roughly 170,000 who remained in Vojvodina, reprisals were swift and brutal: Yugoslav Partisans, exacting vengeance for collaboration and war crimes, interned most of them in labor camps, where starvation, disease, and forced labor claimed almost 50 thousdand lives — a staggering 29% mortality rate. Additional tolls included 10 thousand executed by Yugoslav Partisans and Soviet Red Army, yielding a revised total death count of about 60,000. By 1948, when camps were dismantled and citizenship revoked, the ethnic German population had plummeted to 41,460; most survivors emigrated to West Germany and Austria, before further assimilation and exodus reduced their numbers to a mere 14,533 by the time of the 1961 Census.
Parallel to this purge, the Yugoslav government launched an ambitious colonization program to repopulate confiscated German properties. Between 1945 and 1948, more than 200,000 settlers, predominantly Serbs from impoverished rural regions of Croatia (Lika, Kordun, Banovina) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosanska Krajina and Herzegovina), were incentivized with land grants, tax exemptions, and housing. This influx not only filled the void left by German departures but also shifted ethnic balances: Serbs, who comprised a third of Vojvodina's pre-war population, surged to an absolute majority by the 1950s.
Post-war Serbia saw a period of relative demographic stability, but this was soon complicated by mass labour emigration in the late 1960s, and throughout 1970s and 1980s. This period saw the Gastarbeiter phenomenon, where hundreds of thousands of Serbians, primarily from country’s rural areas, emigrated as “guest workers” to Western Europe (primarily West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) driven by unemployment and bilateral labour agreements between Yugoslavia and respective countries.[5] This outflow, often involving less-educated rural populations, contributed to rural depopulation and exacerbated urban-rural divide, foreshadowing future emigration waves.
The 1990s were marked by the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars as well as economic collapse caused by the international sanctions against Serbia, that led to a dual demographic shock: mass emigration of young people fleeing economic turmoil and political instability, and a significant inflow of Serb refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and later Kosovo.[6] This net influx temporarily stabilized numbers, preventing steeper decline despite low birth rates below replacement levels since the 1970s.
In recent decades, Serbia has faced acute depopulation driven by high mortality and persistently low fertility (hovering around 1.5 children per woman). Annual net migration losses of about 12,000, compound natural decrease, with the population dropping from 7.5 million in 2002 to 6.6 million in 2022.[6]
Serbia has a comparatively old overall population (among the 30 oldest in the world), with the median age of 44 years (42.4 for males and 45.4 for females).[16][3]
Share of Serbia's population living in areas classified as urban stood at 62.1% as of 2024.[16]
Belgrade is disproportionately larger than any other city in the country, standing as an example of primate city, being four times larger than the second-largest city, Novi Sad. Consequently, the level of metropolisation (share of the country's total population living in the largest city) in Serbia is comparatively high, standing at 19.4%, i.e. almost one-fifth of the population lives in Belgrade urban area alone.
Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority, concentrated predominantly in northern Vojvodina and representing 2.8% of the country's population. Bosniaks are the second-largest ethnic minority, mainly inhabiting the Sandžak region in southwestern part of the country, representing 2.3% of the country's population. Roma constitute 2% of the total population. All other ethnic groups individually account for less than 1% of the total population, including Albanians (0.9%), Slovaks and Croats with 0.6% each, Yugoslavs (0.4%), Romanians, Vlachs, and Montenegrins with 0.3% each; Macedonians, ethnic Muslims, and Bulgarians with 0.2% each; as well as Rusyns and Bunjevci with 0.1%, respectively. Some 0.1% declared regional identity (e.g. Vojvodinian) instead of specific ethnicity.
According to data from the 2022 Census, some 2% of the population did not declare their ethnicity since answering on the census question on ethnicity was not mandatory. The census category "Unknown" pertains to citizens whose data has been collected from administrative databases.
Note: data shown in the table are for Serbia excluding Kosovo. a ethnic Albanians largely boycotted 1991 and 2011 censuses; their figures are an official estimations by the Statistical Institute of Serbia.
Serbia is largely a homogeneous Christian country with Eastern Orthodoxy as main religion.[21]
The Eastern Orthodoxy is by far the largest religion in Serbia with 81% of population identifying as the Orthodox Christians. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the traditional church of the country, adherents of which are overwhelmingly ethnic Serbs but also smaller ethnic communities such as Montenegrins, Macedonians, Vlachs, and Bulgarians, as well as Roma. Besides the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church is the only other Orthodox church in Serbia, serving the ethnic Romanian community in Banat.
Catholicism represents 3.8% of the population, adherents of which are mostly ethnic Hungarians and Croats.
Protestantism accounts for about 0.8% of the country's population, chiefly among ethnic Slovaks and a small part of ethnic Hungarians.
Islam, with 4.2% of the population, is the second-largest religion. It has a strong following among ethnic Bosniaks and Albanians; in addition, estimates are that roughly a third of the country's Roma population are Muslim.
Historically, prior to World War II, Judaism had a notable presence in Serbia with a substantial ethnic Jewish population, but now only a tiny fraction (0.01%) of the population adheres to Judaism.
A comparatively small portion of the population is non-religious or skeptical, with 1.1% identifying as atheist and an additional 0.1% as agnostic.
According to data from the 2022 Census, some 2.5% of the population did not declare their religion since answering on the census question on religion was not mandatory. The census category "Unknown" pertains to citizens whose data has been collected from administrative databases.
Serbian is the official language of Serbia, member of the South Slavic group of languages and standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatianpluricentric language. Serbian is native language to 84.4% of the population, including almost all ethnic Serbs and majority of ethnic Montenegrins, ethnic Muslims, Yugoslavs, Croats, Macedonians, as well as over third of ethnic Roma and Bulgarians.[23][24]
Recognized minority languages in Serbia are: Hungarian (native language to 2.5% of population), Bosnian (2.2%), Romani (1.2%), Albanian (1%), Slovak (0.6%), Romanian, Croatian, Russian, Macedonian, Rusyn, and Bulgarian. Bosnian and Croatian, as standardized varieties of the Serbo-Croatian, are mutually intelligible with Serbian. Minority languages are in official use in local government units where more than a 15% of the population consists of ethnic minorities or where local legislation mandates their use.[25] In Vojvodina, official languages of the provincial administration, besides Serbian, include five minority languages (Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, and Rusyn).
According to data from the 2022 Census, some 2.5% of the population did not declare their native language since answering on the census question on language was not mandatory. The census category "Unknown" pertains to citizens whose data has been collected from administrative databases.
Serbia has experienced predominantly negative net migration for decades. Over the past decade or so, Serbia saw an average annual net migration loss of approximately 12,000 people, underscoring a persistent demographic outflow, though recent influxes of Russian expatriates and South Asian laborers have occasionally tipped the balance toward positive in specific years like 2022.
Compared to other Eastern European countries, Serbia experienced relatively low levels of emigration until the latter half of the 20th century. From the 1960s onward, and particularly since the 1990s, Serbia has been a country of emigration. The estimates on the size of Serbian diaspora varies: from 1.3 million (recent emigrants and foreign-born Serbians living abroad) to 3-3.5 million (including distant diaspora, i.e. ethnic descendants).[27][28]
During the era of socialist Yugoslavia, Serbia experienced internal migrations, mainly consisting of movements of ethnic Serbs from other constituent republics like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Montenegro. These were often driven by urbanization, employment in Belgrade and other cities, or family ties. In the 1990s, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and ensuing wars lead to a massive influx (around half a million) of mainly ethnic Serb refugees from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, making Serbia host to Europe's largest refugee population at the time.
In recent years, country has seen significant wave of immigration from Russia, following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. More than 300,000 Russian nationals have entered Serbia of which some 53,000 settled in the country i.e. had been issued a residence permit.[29]
There is a relatively present Chinese diaspora in Serbia; estimates are that up to 15,000 Chinese people live in Serbia, mainly in Belgrade, Bor, and Zrenjanin.[30] First wave of Chinese immigration occurred during the late 1990s and was driven by relaxed visa policies, primarily traders from Zhejiang and Fujian who settled in Belgrade. Second wave is largely tied to economic activities, investments of Chinese companies in mining and manufacturing, and is concentrated in towns of Bor and Zrenjanin.
Additionally, the 2020s have witnessed a sizeable influx of South Asian migrants, primarily Indians and Sri Lankans, as working migrants on large-scale infrastructure projects and in transportation and courier services.
About two-thirds of the foreign-born population consists of ethnic Serbs from neighbouring countries: the most common countries of birth are Bosnia and Herzegovina (32%), Croatia (25%), and Montenegro (8%).[31][32] The rest consist predominately of Russian nationals, and to a far lesser degree of Chinese and South Asian immigrants.
Ocić, Časlav (2006). "Kosovo and Metohia: Ethnodemographic Changes from the End of World War II to 1991". Срби на Косову и у Метохији: Зборник радова са научног скупа(PDF). Београд: Српска академија наука и уметности. pp.441–460. Archived from the original(PDF) on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 1 August 2017.
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6,586,476 (2024) [1] 
14.9 per 1,000 pop. (2024) [2] 
75.4 years (2024) [2] 
4.6 deaths/1,000 infants (2024) [2] 
