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Bosnia and Herzegovina counted · Part 02 of 09

Two counts for one entity

The state agency’s results and the Republika Srpska office’s results come from the same questionnaires. They differ in who was kept as a resident.

The answer

The state agency counted 1,228,423 residents in the RS; the RS office counted 1,170,342, 58,081 fewer (4.7%). The RS figure is lower in every one of the 62 municipalities. The largest gap is in Prijedor, 8,481 people, and Bosniaks account for 40% of the difference.
1,228,423
RS residents, state agency (2016)
1,170,342
RS residents, RS office (2016)
−58,081
the difference, 4.7% of the state figure

One census, two sets of rules

Why there are two counts

After the count, every questionnaire had to be sorted into resident or not, from its answers about where the person lived, worked and studied, and for how long. Between 5.7% and 7.4% of records could not be clearly sorted under any of the rule sets the offices tried. The offices could not agree on one, and in May 2016 the state agency applied the set the international monitors had recommended, which set aside 6.9% of the people enumerated (Part 00).

The RS office rejected the outcome and published its own results under an RS law passed for the purpose. In its own account of the dispute, the 2017 “Open book on the census”, it says the state agency’s director gave resident status to about 196,000 “disputed questionnaires”. That figure is the RS office’s; no state agency document states it. What both offices did publish are their municipal tables, and those can be set side by side.

Source: Agency for Statistics of BiH, census 2013 final results · International Monitoring Operation, final report §§ 14–16, 238–240; RZS RS, Otvorena knjiga o popisu (2017)

RS municipalities

How much lower the RS count is, place by place

The difference as a share of the state agency’s figure. Darker means a larger share of residents the RS office did not keep. The gaps are widest in the east along the Drina, Srebrenica, Milići, Bratunac, Zvornik, Vlasenica, and around Prijedor, and in two small municipalities, Pelagićevo and Istočni Drvar. They are narrowest in the municipalities of Istočno Sarajevo, in Laktaši and Banja Luka, and in Bileća.

The RS office’s count below the state agency’s, as a share. Point at a municipality.

<3%3%–5%5%–7%7%–10%10%+Outside the RS

Source: Statistics Institute of the Republika Srpska (RZS RS) and Agency for Statistics of BiH, municipal tables

People and shares

The largest gaps

In people, the gaps follow size: Prijedor, Banja Luka, Zvornik and Bijeljina are among the largest municipalities in the RS. As a share, the list changes. Municipalities under 1,000 residents are left out of the shares, where a handful of people moves the figure several points.

Fewer people

  1. 1Prijedor−8,481-9.5%
  2. 2Banja Luka−4,989-2.7%
  3. 3Zvornik−4,449-7.6%
  4. 4Bijeljina−3,841-3.6%
  5. 5Doboj (with Stanari)−2,927-4.1%
  6. 6Gradiška−2,531-4.9%
  7. 7Novi Grad−1,875-6.9%
  8. 8Srebrenica−1,711-12.8%
  9. 9Bratunac−1,689-8.3%
  10. 10Prnjavor−1,599-4.4%

Largest share

  1. 1Pelagićevo-16.5%−862
  2. 2Srebrenica-12.8%−1,711
  3. 3Prijedor-9.5%−8,481
  4. 4Jezero-9.2%−105
  5. 5Milići-8.7%−996
  6. 6Bratunac-8.3%−1,689
  7. 7Osmaci-7.8%−470
  8. 8Zvornik-7.6%−4,449
  9. 9Vlasenica-7.1%−810
  10. 10Novi Grad-6.9%−1,875

Source: Statistics Institute of the Republika Srpska (RZS RS) and Agency for Statistics of BiH

By declared ethnicity

Whom the RS count left out

Both offices publish residents by declared ethnicity for the RS, the RS office in fewer categories: Bosniaks, Croats, Serbs, others, undeclared and unknown. In people, the gap is shared between Serbs and Bosniaks. As a share of each group, it is not: the RS count has 13.6% fewer Bosniaks than the state count and 3.0% fewer Serbs.

RS residentsState agencyRS officeDifferenceOf the group
Bosniaks171,839148,477−23,36213.6%
Serbs1,001,299970,857−30,4423.0%
Croats29,64526,509−3,13610.6%
Everyone else25,64024,499−1,1414.5%

The census does not say why any one person was set aside, so this table cannot say whether the rules fell harder on one group or whether one group simply had more people living part of the year elsewhere. It says only whom the two counts differ on.

Source: Statistics Institute of the Republika Srpska (RZS RS) table 4 and Agency for Statistics of BiH, Book 2 table 2.1