The modern world has a decent amount of distinctive features. One of them is globalization. The term means a lot of interactions, in simple words, among people, among companies, among countries, etc. Now, almost everyone can have free access to any kind of information, and this common enlightenment leads to people searching for better places. That’s why nowadays, countries have such diverse demographics.
Despite its small size, it fits really big amounts of Slovenes as well as minorities of some other nationalities. Its population is 2.1 billion people.
Furthermore, people are not stable units, because they move, they born, they die, they come back. Therefore, the constant change in demographics is inevitable. Let’s define together today’s situation in the Slovenian population, where Slovenes live, in which sites and with whom. We promise this would be an exciting journey.
General Briefing
According to the estimation of July 2020, Slovenia has 2,102,678 of its population. The age structure is following, 0–14 years 13.4%; 15–64 years 69.8%; 65 years and over 16.8% of the common population.
The median age for all the genders is 42.8 years, whereas 41.1 years for males and 44.5 years for females. 50% of all the citizens live in urban areas.
The sex ratio for total population is 0.95 male(s)/female. However, if to consider ages separately, the numbers change for 1.07 male(s)/female at birth, 1.06 male(s)/female in the ages under 15, 1.01 male(s)/female from 15 to 64 years old and 0.66 male(s)/female for over 65.
The average life expectancy is 80 years (for males 77 years, for females 83 years) while the infant mortality rate is 4.12 deaths/1,000 live births.
Population Density
If to compare to other European countries, Slovenia has one of the lowest population density levels: 101 inhabitants per square kilometer. For example, the Netherlands has 402/km², or Italy has 195/km². This is a positive indicator that signalizes for Slovenia enough space in a case of population boom or immigration crisis. Central Slovenia Statistical Region, where it is located Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is the most populous, while the second South-East region, which is called the Littoral–Inner Carniola Statistical Region, is the one with the lowest population density.
Slovenian Cities
In Slovenia, there are 67 towns. To mention, by Slovenian Constitution, the town can be considered the settlement with over 3,000 of the population.
Here are listed the biggest towns with their population:
| Name | Population 2017 | Population2011 |
 Ljubljana | 280,310 | 272,220 |
 Maribor | 94,876 | 95,171 |
 Celje | 38,079 | 37,520 |
 Kranj | 37,553 | 36,874 |
 Koper | 25,319 | 24,996 |
 Velenje | 24,923 | 25,456 |
 Novo Mesto | 23,321 | 23,341 |
 Ptuj | 17,780 | 18,164 |
 Trbovlje | 13,932 | 15,163 |
 Kamnik | 13,768 | 13,644 |
 Nova Gorica | 13,102 | 13,178 |
 Jesenice | 12,928 | 13,440 |
 Domžale | 12,908 | 12,406 |
 Škofja Loka | 11,691 | 11,969 |
 Izola | 11,323 | 11,223 |
 Murska Sobota | 11,194 | 11,614 |
History of Population Change
Slovenia experienced several waves of people emigration. The first one started even before independent Slovenia as a country or a republic. It is the period between 1860 and 1914. At that time, Europe experiences a great increase in population. This happened due to industrialization beginning. Therefore, Slovenians, as well as other Europeans, had to find some other lands to grow nutrition.
The second wave is the period of World War I and World War II, as well as the interwar time. Nazi regimes, danger, unstable political, economic, social situations forced Slovenes to leave their houses and start to find a home in territories of some other countries.
The third wave happened after the Second World War and the end of the 1970s. There were people who did not want to put up with communist regimes, so they left their land and moved to the capitalistic world. Among them were Australia, Canada, Argentina, the USA, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and so on. Therefore, Slovenians built big communities there and spread the culture and traditions of the world.
However, surprisingly, this fact did not influence population-level growth. Here is the data of population change through the history of the country:
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1922 | 1,306,529 | — |
| 1930 | 1,373,082 | +5.1% |
| 1940 | 1,448,991 | +5.5% |
| 1950 | 1,459,622 | +0.7% |
| 1960 | 1,580,535 | +8.3% |
| 1970 | 1,719,906 | +8.8% |
| 1980 | 1,893,064 | +10.1% |
| 1990 | 1,996,337 | +5.5% |
| 2000 | 1,987,775 | −0.4% |
| 2010 | 2,046,976 | +3.0% |
| 2019 | 2,084,301 | +1.8% |
As you can see, the rise is visible. The factor of such a stable increase is due to industrialization, urbanization, etc.
Ethnic Groups
Slovenians are not the only nation that lives in the territory of the country; they are 83.06% of the total population. Of course, there are some other minorities inside it. Hungarians and Italians are indigenous minorities. This means that the Constitution of Slovenia guarantees them seats in the National Assembly. The other big minority groups came from the former Yugoslavia republics. Mainly, they are from Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by immigrants from Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Kosovo.
The peculiar fact that 12.4% of the population was born abroad, whereas 6.87% of the population are citizens of non-EU countries. From 1995, the total number of immigrants is increasing steadily. Moreover, in 2007, Slovenia was one of most of the countries with the fastest growth of net migration rate in the European Union.
Here are the largest groups of foreign citizens:
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 62,946 |
| Kosovo | 16,748 |
| Serbia | 14,020 |
| North Macedonia | 12,329 |
| Croatia | 9,802 |
| Bulgaria | 3,409 |
| Russia | 2,969 |
| Italy | 2,416 |
| Ukraine | 2,202 |
| China | 1,206 |
| Germany | 933 |
| Montenegro | 795 |
| Hungary | 641 |
| United Kingdom | 595 |
| Slovakia | 461 |
| Austria | 446 |
| United States | 418 |
| Romania | 395 |
| France | 299 |
| Thailand | 282 |
Languages
According to the ethnic groups, the language division is similar. Slovenian language is the native one to 88% of the population, and 92% can speak it fluently. This places Slovenia among the most homogeneous countries in the EU in terms of language share. Furthermore, the Slovenian language is often characterized as the most diverse in terms of dialects, among other Slavic languages. Some scientists distinguish almost 50 dialects, while others say that there are only 8-9 of them.
The distribution of the other languages is following: Slovene 88%, Serbo-Croatian 8%, Hungarian 0.4%, Albanian 0.4%, Macedonian 0.2%, Romani 0.2%, Italian 0.2%, German 0.1%, other 0.1% (Russian, Czech, Ukrainian, English, Slovak, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, French, Bulgarian, Arabic, Spanish, Dutch, Vlach, Rusyn, Greek, Swedish, Danish or Armenian.
Religion
Slovenians are predominately Roman Catholics. A small number of the population are Greek Catholics, Lutherans, Protestants (around 1% for each group). There is present a small Jewish community that came to Slovenia during the Holocaust. Islam takes 2.4% of all religions. Most of the Muslims, most of them came from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Orthodox Christianity takes about 2.2% of the population, with most adherents belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church while a minority belongs to the Macedonian and other Orthodox churches.
Around 10% of the population declared themselves as atheists. Therefore, the general religions distribution in Slovenia is the following: Roman Catholic 57.8%, atheist 10.1%, Muslim 2.4%, Orthodox Christian 2.2%, Protestant 0.9%, other and unknown 26.5% (people who did not want to answer the poll, or who did not decide their religion believes yet).
Small and Peaceful Slovenia
Despite the small size of Slovenia, it has a lot of diversity inside. One of these is demographics, also known as the population. As usual, in most European countries, the main core is an ethnic nation. Slovenians used to live here from the time when even Slovenia itself did not exist. They were living here as a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Italy, or Yugoslavia. Therefore, they mixed a lot of different traditions as well as kept their ones for a long time.
Now, Slovenia is a separate European state, and its population is doing quite nicely. It is one of the lowest populated countries of the EU in terms of density. Moreover, the urbanization level is steadily rising every year. All that means that space is enough for everybody, even if to take into consideration the rise in immigration level.
Furthermore, Slovenia almost doubled its population since 1922, and that is not even a problem. Maybe, the only problem for the nation that there are more older people than young ones, but this indicates the high level of life and social security in the country.
The three biggest cities are Ljubljana, Maribor, and Celje. Slovenian people are peacefully living with different national minorities. There are historical minorities of Hungarians and Italians that are protected by the Slovenian Constitution and representers of them have special places in the parliament.
Other nations are people from former Yugoslav republics. The most significant such a minority is Bosnians and Herzegovinians. Thus, the second widely spoken language after Slovenian is Serbo-Croatian here, which takes 8% of the pie. This led to some percentage of Muslims in the country. Also, there are people from other religious groups, such as Jews or Orthodoxies, living here.
However, all the diversity, if not a problem, since Slovenians are friendly and not aggressive people. Nations live here in peace and share common traditions, or even take Slovenian national ones.
