Abstract:

In recent decades, human capital has become an increasingly important topic of study. It is regarded as a leading development factor, given that the demographic development itself is closely linked to the overall economic development. Human capital – with its quantitative and qualitative characteristics – can hinder or accelerate the overall development of a given territory, especially when viewed in a spatial aspect, taking into account the specificities of that same territory. This study has found that the polarization of the depopulation processes is a result of various social, economic, demographic, ethno-cultural, political, psychological, natural, ecological and other factors. The spatial expansion of the depopulation processes is examined based on the study of the main demographic indicators on a settlement level. The depopulation processes in rural settlements are much deeper than in urban settlements. Significant spatial disparities are also observed. The relationship between the starting moment of depopulation processes and their magnitude over the last 25 years has been proved. The influence of the regional centers on the demographic development of the adjacent settlements has also been outlined. In most villages, extreme negative thresholds have been reached, which define the deepening unfavorable demographic trends in the future. Only a limited number of villages exhibit population growth. The trend of population concentration in the middle-sized and large urban settlements, together with the dropout of numerous very small villages from the settlement network, continues. The complete depopulation of many small villages located mainly in mountainous and peripheral areas leads to a number of negative consequences associated with serious difficulties in the development of these areas in the near future. By typologizing the villages using the classic method of John Webb (1963), the trends in population dynamics have been traced for the 1992-2001 and the 2001 -2011 subperiods, based on the degree of influence of the two main components that determine the population number change – the natural increase/decrease and the positive/negative net migration rate. In the 2001-2011 subperiod, the number of villages belonging to the types that exhibit the most unfavorable demographic situation has grown compared to the 1992-2001 subperiod. Using the IDW tool in ArcGIS for spatial analysis and visualization, areas with varying degrees of depopulation have been outlined in great detail.