Demographic Resources of Districts in the Republic of Serbia: Cluster Analysis Approach

Abstract

Bearing in mind how important demographic resources are for the socio-economic development of specific administrative-territorial units, the objective of this paper is to classify the districts in the Republic of Serbia according to the available demographic resources and to create an adequate typology of demographic areas, based on the comparison of values of relevant indicators of demographic and educational resources. These values were calculated using 14 demographic and educational variables, based mainly on the data from last census in 2011. For this purpose, hierarchical and non-hierarchical procedures of cluster analysis, as a method of multivariate statistical analysis, were used. The resulting typology and categorization clearly confirm the presence of unfavorable demographic tendencies and pronounced territorial disparities of demographic resources at the district level in the Republic of Serbia. More specifically, approximately 80% of the 25 analyzed districts belong to the type of demographically endangered areas, which are characterized by weak and very weak demographic resources. The obtained "snapshot" of the current demographic situation together with created typology of districts can serve as a useful source for understanding and monitoring of complex demographic phenomena and processes as well as for the definition of measures of population and regional development policies aimed at mitigating the effects of an alarming demographic situation.