Eleven Thousand Fewer in Three Months: The Silence We Refuse to Break

In a conversation twenty days ago with the principal of a primary school in Sumadija, I received a piece of information that hit me harder than every statistic I had read before. The principal said, almost in passing:

Last year we had a first-grade class of twelve children. This year, in the registration for the coming school year, we have four signed up. Next year, if this continues, we will not open a class at all.

He was not dramatic, nor was he speaking as political criticism. He spoke of a school that has existed for 134 years as one already being wound down. Calmly, the way one speaks of an old clock in a family home that no one winds any more, yet still chimes the hour.

The figures are historical

That single sentence captures the entire demographic condition of Serbian society in 2026. The Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia published a figure in May 2026 showing that in the first quarter (January to March) the natural population change was minus 11,400.

Inside that figure: 14,166 live births and 25,566 deaths. In other words, in 91 days, Serbia’s population shrank by 11,400. Reduced to a daily figure, that is 125 people. As a sociological metaphor, that is one resident lost every twelve minutes.

The numbers are known. What is not known, what is sociologically most important, is the silence that surrounds them.

The sociology of silence

I pivot to the sociology of silence. In his book “The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life” (Stanford University Press, 2006), American sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel developed a concept he called the conspiracy of silence, which arises in societies where a publicly known fact is one everyone tacitly agrees not to speak of.

Zerubavel’s thesis is the following:

Such silence is not the result of ignorance, but of a structural choice. Society chooses not to speak of something, because speaking would require consequences society is not willing to take on.

Serbia’s demographic decline in 2026 is the subject of exactly such a conspiracy of silence. The figures are published, occasionally mentioned in the media, but without public-policy consequences, without serious debate, without acknowledgment of the historical scale of the process.

Numbers larger than a city

Here I introduce figures that are historical in the literal sense. The UNDP study “The Multilayered Nature of Depopulation in Serbia” (UNDP Serbia, 2022), prepared by demographer Vladimir Nikitovic, projects that Serbia’s population, which stood at 6,586,000 in 2024, could shrink to 5,200,000 by 2052.

A loss of 1,386,000 people over 28 years. To make sense of the number, set it against:

• larger than the total population of Belgrade excluding suburban municipalities (1,190,000)
• larger than Vojvodina’s population outside Novi Sad (around 1,100,000)
• comparable to the total population of all municipalities of southern Serbia combined

In other words, Serbian society is in the process of losing, in two generations, a population larger than its largest city. This process unfolds every day, but is publicly treated as a “demographic topic,” sociological shorthand for “a topic we will not discuss.”

Why Serbian society does not speak of it

One might think the silence is the result of political calculation, that the government does not want to talk about demographic collapse because it is an unwelcome story. Partly it is, but only partly.

The silence about demography in Serbia is not only the government’s doing. It is the result of a structural inability of Serbia’s public sphere to think about itself in long time horizons. Sociologist Anthony Giddens, in “Modernity and Self-Identity” (Polity Press, 1991), describes modern society as a “society of the permanent present,” in which decisions are taken no further than four years out (the election cycle), no further than a quarter (the business report), no further than a week (the news economy).

Within such a structure, phenomena that unfold over twenty, thirty or fifty years do not enter the public conversation. Not even when they are statistically the most important factor for the community’s fate.

Demographic decline is exactly that kind of phenomenon. The consequences appear at an even pace year after year, but cumulate over decades. The principal in Sumadija does not see “demographic collapse,” he sees that his first-grade class has shrunk from twelve to four. Sociologically, he is describing a concrete case, but statistically he is an indicator of something that covers the whole country.

Global, but not an alibi

A counter-argument circulates often in Serbian public space. There is a reading, common in ruling circles and in pro-government commentary, according to which demographic decline is a global phenomenon (Italy, Japan, Germany, every European country is in the same situation), so Serbian society is not particularly troubled. By that logic, the measures other countries have introduced (family support, labour immigration, fiscal incentives) can be applied in Serbia without panic.

The argument carries a partial truth (it is a global phenomenon) and a possible delusion (measures cannot be applied without specific political will). Serbia’s difference from Western countries with demographic decline is twofold. First, Serbia’s decline is more intense. Second, Serbian society has less economic capacity (GDP per capita around €11,000, half the EU average) to take the steps Western countries take.

Without serious acknowledgment of these differences, the counter-argument remains technocratic, but not operational.

Women, work, and the children who were not born

There is one more dimension that is sociologically significant and is almost never raised. Sociologist Marina Blagojevic-Huson, in the essay “Women of Serbia and Transition” (journal Filozofija i drustvo, 2008), showed that the birth structure in Serbia is directly tied to the structure of the labour market and tax policy for women.

Women who give birth are not having fewer children because they do not want them. In surveys, Serbian women report the ideal number of children at 2.4 per woman. They have fewer because the labour market punishes them for childbirth (loss of job, lower pay, lost pension contributions), and the tax system does not compensate for the loss.

In other words, a Serbian woman would have 2.4 children on average if the system allowed her to. The system allows her 1.45 (the 2024 fertility rate). The gap of one person per woman, across the entire female population, equals the demographic decline. This is a sociological finding that should be the basis of every demographic policy. In Serbia’s public debate, it is almost never mentioned.

Schools that become old-age homes

I return to the school principal in Sumadija. As we parted, I asked him: “What will you do with the building if the class closes?”

He replied: “Perhaps a home for the elderly. We are the third school in the municipality thinking about it.”

Schools built sixty years ago for future generations are now being turned into homes for the elderly. I remember, as a child, the opening of a new primary school, with music and a speech by the mayor. In Serbia 2026, homes for the elderly open in the buildings of former schools, with music and a speech by the mayor.

The question that remains, and which belongs not just to demographers but to all of us who still live in Serbian society, runs roughly like this. If we lose one resident every twelve minutes, and in the next thirty years we will lose a population larger than Belgrade, what kind of society do we plan to leave to those who remain.

And, the harder sociological question, did we ever plan that what remains should be a society, or did we plan only that what remains should be an administrative name for a space that was once a society.