26
May 2020
PROFILE
Wildly wrong: North Macedonia’s population mystery North Macedonia’s official population statistics are not just a little off — they are dramatically incorrect. And that has consequences. TIM JUDAH | BIRN | SKOPJE
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ccording to the State Statistical Office, the population of North Macedonia is almost 2.08 million — or to be precise, 2,077,132 as of 31 December 2018. The problem is this number is plain wrong. At least that is the view of Apostol Simovski, the State Statistical Office’s own director. “I’m afraid there are no more than 1.5 million in the country, but I can’t prove it.” If Simovski is right — and some think he is too pessimistic — then North Macedonia’s population would have fallen 24.6 per cent since independence in 1991 when the country had a resident population of 1.99 million. This percentage would be far higher than for any other country in former Yugoslavia — even Bosnia and Herzegovina, which suffered four years of all-out war. It would also be even more dramatic than neighbouring Bulgaria, which has lost almost 21 per cent of its population in the past 30 years. Some economists speculate that North Macedonia’s population is actually between 1.6 million and 1.8 million, which would still mean the country had lost between 19.6 per cent and 9.5 per cent of its population since 1991. If it is the latter figure, North Macedonia’s population loss falls within the same range as Serbia and Croatia, which have lost between eight and nine per cent of their populations. The problem is that no one knows the true number, and it is rare that the head of a national statistical office will admit that the most basic figure for their country is not just wrong but probably wildly so. “Believe me,” he said. “I’m frustrated.” No consensus There is a good reason why Simovski does not know for sure how many people live in North Macedonia. In 2011, Macedonian and Albanian politicians inter-
fered to such an extent in the holding of that year’s census that the exercise collapsed. Macedonian nationalists wanted a result that showed that the country’s Albanian minority were less than 20 per cent of the population, he said. That is the threshold that gives ethnic Albanians certain rights under the Ohrid peace agreement of 2001, which pulled the country back from the brink of civil war. In contrast to the Macedonian nationalists, ethnic Albanians unsurprisingly wanted to increase their share of the population by as much as possible. Both sides encouraged their supporters to add so many family members living abroad — and hence ineligible to be included — that before the census was over they realised the inflated numbers would be so incredible “that no one would accept them”, so they aborted the process, Simovski said. A new census due to be held in April this year was postponed until 2021 because a snap general election was called
Infographic: Ewelina Karpowiak/Klawe Rzeczy
Illustration: Ewelina Karpowiak/Klawe Rzeczy
Some economists speculate that North Macedonia’s population is actually between 1.6 million and 1.8 million, which would still mean the country had lost between 19.6 per cent and 9.5 per cent of its population since 1991. If it is the latter figure, North Macedonia’s population loss falls within the same range as Serbia and Croatia, which have lost between eight and nine per cent of their populations.
for the same month. That election was then postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. For that reason, North Macedonia still uses the population figure from the 2002 census as a baseline for all other data. Despite attempts at political interference back then, Simovski said the census was conducted well and can be considered reliable. Thus, to get to today’s official population figure of almost 2.08 million, births and deaths and a very small number of immigrants and officially registered emigrants have been added to the 2002 census population figure of 2.02 million. The fundamental problem is that hundreds of thousands have emigrated — but are not registered as having done so, and no one knows how many they are. However, Verica Janeska of Skope’s Saints Cyril and Methodius University’s Economics Institute cautioned against using foreign data for the numbers of Macedonians abroad to try to estimate the total number of people in the country. The reason, she said, is that these figures often contain “those who have left the country over the last four or five decades as well as second and third generation emigrants”. Also, while it might be possible to make rough estimates of the population based on various national databases, none of them — by themselves — are fully reliable. For example, tax data does not capture people in the grey economy. However, six national databases will, for the first time, be used to cross-reference the 2021 census. Until then, “no one can give a realistic estimation of the total population”, Janeska said. So, until the 2021 census is completed, not only is North Macedonia’s official population figure wrong but so is the rest of
