From Decline to Disappearance: Mapping Depopulation Clusters in North Macedonia’s Smallest Settlements

Abstract

Rural depopulation at the extreme lower end of the settlement hierarchy—a key driver of agricultural land abandonment and land-use change—remains understudied in the Western Balkans. Using data from the 2002 and 2021 national censuses of the State Statistical Office of North Macedonia, this study analyses the full universe of 562 settlements with 20 or fewer inhabitants—357 near-abandoned settlements (1–20 inhabitants) and 205 abandoned settlements (0 inhabitants)—introducing the depopulation clusters approach as an analytical framework. The number of near-abandoned settlements (1–20 inhabitants) grew 60-fold between 1948 and 2021, reaching 52.2% of all small settlements. Of the 357 near-abandoned settlements, 245 (68.7%) experienced population decline exceeding 50% between 2002 and 2021. Their remaining 2959 inhabitants in 1542 households exhibit extreme demographic stress: ageing index 617.7 (national average 101.3), sex ratio 1396.0 males per 1000 females, average household size 1.9 persons, and 290 settlements (81%) with no population aged 0–14. Applying the homogenization index (A0 = NK0 ÷ N) to 556 of these settlements (six were excluded due to a methodological issue between data sources) identifies 128 clusters in aggregate across municipalities (aggregate municipality-constrained A0 = 0.230). Kavadarci (A0 = 0.069) and Novaci (A0 = 0.080) record the lowest raw values; a size-normalized variant further reveals a more nuanced ranking among smaller municipalities, indicating that municipal comparisons should account for settlement count alongside the raw index. The results indicate that depopulation is territorially concentrated into coherent zones of demographic exhaustion, and that the homogenization index offers a potentially useful diagnostic tool for identifying priority zones for land management, spatial planning, and rural development policy.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Land, 2026 · DOI ↗