Croatia's population totals 3.87 million, including 801,374 women of reproductive age, aged 15 to 49, which is a discouraging fact established by the 2021 census, the Croatian Vecernji List daily reported on Tuesday.

The share of women of reproductive age in the total population now stands at 39.9 percent as against 43.9 percent in the 2011 census. By comparison, in 1953 the share of women of reproductive age in the total population was 52.7 percent.

As the number of women aged 15 to 49 is important for the biological reproduction of the population, the current data show that Croatia cannot expect the number of new births to exceed the already low figure of 36,000 but rather only a further decline in the number of births, notably if the state does not intervene with pronatalist policies to include measures going beyond an increase in maternity and parental allowances and provision of kindergarten care.

Even though Croatia has 2,006,704 women, and they outnumber men by 51.83 percent to 48.17 percent, women of reproductive age are the least numerous.

The largest group are women aged 60-64 (152,013), followed by women aged 65-69 (149,378), while the least numerous are women aged 15-19 (91,501) and women aged 20-24 (101,750). Even though more boys than girls are born, the share of women above 65 is higher (25.3 percent) than the share of men in that age group (19.4 percent), which is also due to the longer life expectancy for women.

The drop in the number of women of reproductive age is due to a long-lasting decline in the number of newborns as well as the emigration of young women over the past decade, an assessment that demographer Drazen Zivic agrees with.

Three-four decades ago, it was mostly men who emigrated, while now the gender structure of emigrants is almost the same, even though it is still men who emigrate more.

Nowadays both women and men of reproductive age are emigrating, and that understandably is having an impact on the share of women of reproductive age in the total population, the daily reported.