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North Macedonians are mainly Christian Orthodox. Albanians are the largest minority group. They are mainly Muslim, speak Albanian, and live predominately in the west of the country. Other minorities include Turks, Roma, Serbs and Vlachs. No national census has been held since 2002.
North Macedonia (/ ˌ m æ s ɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ə / MASS-ih-DOH-nee-ə), officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the north.
- dd.mm.yyyy (AD)
- Overview
- Ethnic groups
- Language
- Religion
- Settlement patterns
- Demographic trends
- Economy
The population of the Republic of North Macedonia is diverse. At the beginning of the 21st century, nearly two-thirds of the population identified themselves as Macedonians. Macedonians generally trace their descent to the Slavic tribes that moved into the region between the 6th and 8th centuries ce. Albanians are the largest and most-important min...
The population of the Republic of North Macedonia is diverse. At the beginning of the 21st century, nearly two-thirds of the population identified themselves as Macedonians. Macedonians generally trace their descent to the Slavic tribes that moved into the region between the 6th and 8th centuries ce. Albanians are the largest and most-important min...
The Macedonian language is very closely related to Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian and is written in the Cyrillic script. When Serbian rule replaced that of the Ottoman Turks in 1913, the Serbs officially denied Macedonian linguistic distinctness and treated the Macedonian language as a dialect of Serbo-Croatian. The Macedonian language was not offici...
Religious affiliation is a particularly important subject in North Macedonia because it is so closely tied to ethnic and national identity. With the exception of Bosniaks, the majority of Slavic speakers living in the region of Macedonia are Orthodox Christian. Macedonians, Serbs, and Bulgarians, however, have established their own autocephalous Or...
Successive waves of migration, as well as economic and political modernization, have left their mark in a diversity of settlement patterns. The inhabitants of the highlands are generally shepherds. In more fertile areas, small-scale subsistence and market-oriented agriculture are practiced. Several small market towns are of great antiquity. In Roman times Bitola was a commercial centre known as Heraclea Lyncestis. Ohrid became a major administrative and ecclesiastical centre in the early Middle Ages. The coming of the Ottoman Turks in the 14th century promoted the growth of Skopje as a governmental and military centre and created large agrarian estates, which were later socialized by the communists and given over to extensive mechanized cultivation. This latter process was responsible for the growth, beginning in 1945, of Kavardarci and Veles.
Industrialization in the second half of the 20th century had a dramatic impact upon population distribution. The population of Skopje grew to nearly one-fourth of the population of the republic, its attractiveness as a pole for migration having been enhanced both by its location at a transcontinental transportation route and by its status as the republic’s capital. Acting as a reasonably effective counterforce to the pull of Skopje is the growth of tourism around Ohrid. At the beginning of the 21st century, about three-fifths of the population of North Macedonia was urban.
Historically, the Balkans have experienced high rates of natural increase in population. The rate declined remarkably in the 20th century in response to industrialization and urbanization. The rate of natural increase in North Macedonia at the end of the first decade of the 21st century was about three-fifths less than it had been in the mid-1990s....
Along with the rest of the Balkan Peninsula, Macedonia underwent an impressive economic transformation after 1945—in this case within the framework provided by Yugoslavia’s system of “socialist self-management.” Even so, Macedonia remained the poorest of the Yugoslav republics and was included throughout the communist period in the list of regions that merited economic aid from wealthier parts of the federation. While this status undoubtedly brought much investment, several projects were placed without adequate attention to the supply of materials or access to markets. A prime example was the choice of Skopje as the site for a steel industry.
Although socialized production dominated industrial and commercial life after the communists’ rise to power in 1945, the private sector remained important in agriculture, craft production, and retail trade. About 70 percent of agricultural land was held privately, accounting for some 50 percent of output. However, privately owned enterprises were typically traditionalist in structure and outlook, and, even after the liberalization of the communist system in 1991, they were unable to develop a dynamic economic role.
Following the onset of the Yugoslav civil war in 1991, the economic position of Macedonia became very precarious. The republic had previously depended heavily on Yugoslav rather than foreign markets, and its participation in Yugoslavia’s export trade was heavily skewed toward the countries of the former Soviet bloc, which were concurrently undergoing economic crises. United Nations sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia (the federation of Serbia and Montenegro) added to these difficulties by throttling the transport of goods through Macedonia. Also, an acrimonious dispute with Greece over the name of the republic frustrated Macedonia’s quest for international recognition, thereby deterring foreign investment and delaying economic reform. By 2018 that dispute was resolved, with Macedonia officially becoming the Republic of North Macedonia.
As early as the mid-1990s, however, Macedonia had begun to find new trading partners, and the economy began to prosper. Though gross domestic product (GDP) dipped at the turn of the 21st century, it rebounded quickly, and the country weathered the worldwide economic downturn that began in 2008 better than many other countries. Nevertheless, unemployment remained high, exceeding 30 percent for much of the first decade of the 21st century.
Demographic features of the population of North Macedonia include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
- 9.2 per 1,000 (2020)
- -0.32% (2020)
- 12.4 per 1,000 (2020)
- 1,836,713 (2021)
Greece's invisible minority - the Macedonian Slavs. 23 February 2019. Getty Images. Greeks protest in Thessaloniki against the agreement on the name North Macedonia. In January, Greece...
30 giu 2023 · TIMELINE. Getty Images. Ethnic Albanians pressing for greater minority rights staged an uprising which brought the country to the brink of civil war in 2001. Some key dates in North...
Stay up to date on the state of human rights in North Macedonia with the latest research, campaigns and education material from Amnesty International.
