Who was counted

Residents, not people present

Enumerated, then counted

A census can count everyone present on census night, or everyone who usually lives in the country. Bosnia’s 2013 census used the second, as the European rules it was monitored against require: someone away for twelve months or more, or who meant to be, is not a resident. The monitors saw people who lived abroad enumerated all the same, so once the questionnaires were in, each one had to be sorted by its answers. That took a set of rules, and the offices never agreed on them.

In May 2016 the state agency applied the rules the international monitors had recommended, without the RS office’s agreement. Of 3,791,622 people enumerated, 260,463 were set aside. The monitors found the census “as a whole conducted in compliance with international standards”, while their survey after the count estimated a net over-count of 4.6%.

1. Federation2,219,220of 2,371,603 · −6.4%
2. Republika Srpska1,228,423of 1,326,991 · −7.4%
3. Brčko District83,516of 93,028 · −10.2%

Solid: residents · outline: enumerated

Source: Agency for Statistics of BiH, census 2013 final results · enumerated: International Monitoring Operation, final report, table 4

The RS office published its own results under its own law, with its own rules, and counted 1,170,342 residents in the RS. Part 02 sets the two counts side by side. Every other part uses the state agency’s figures, the only ones that cover the whole country.

Twenty-two years apart

Fewer, by a measure that changed

The 1991 census counted 4,377,033 people; 2013 counted 3,531,159, 845,874 fewer (19.3%). The war, the people it killed and the people who left are in that gap, but so is a change of definition: in 1991 people working abroad were counted at home, as part of the permanent population. In 2013 they were not. The real fall is smaller than the raw one, and no official table says by how much.

Nor do the places line up. The 109 municipalities of 1991 were cut along the line between the entities into today’s 142 units, and no office publishes a table that maps one onto the other. This series compares the two censuses only for the whole country; Part 03 asks the 2013 residents themselves where they lived in 1991.

Source: Agency for Statistics of BiH, census 2013 final results · 1991: Zavod za statistiku RBiH, final results by municipality, as published by the Federal Office of Statistics

Five-year groups

The country by age

The most numerous five-year group was people aged 50 to 54, born in the early 1960s. Each of the three groups under 15 was smaller than any group from 20 to 64. 501,996 residents were 65 or older and 543,719 were under 15. Part 05 follows the ageing municipality by municipality.

Source: Agency for Statistics of BiH, census 2013 final results