Drivers of population change in the Visegrad countries between 1990 and 2020

Hungary is the only country among the Visegrád Group where the population has been consistently decreasing year after year over the past decades. As a result, between 1990 and 2020, the country's population decreased from 10.4 million to 9.8 million (a 5.8% decline). During this period, the population in Poland remained virtually unchanged (a decrease of only 0.2%), with the population of 38 million, while in the Czech Republic, the population increased from 10.4 million to 10.7 million, and in Slovakia, it grew from 5.3 million to 5.5 million (both increases of 3.2%) according to official data. Changes in population size significantly influence many aspects of societal life (Mason–Lee 2022). Among other challenges, it affects systems based on redistribution between different age groups (e.g., pension systems, health insurance), impacts the utilization of capacities related to state and market services, affects the rate of natural resource use, and contributes to the pace of climate change. Accordingly, demographic trends are a frequent topic in scientific research and are increasingly coming to the forefront of public discourse both domestically and internationally. In public debates, much attention is given to the number of births and international migration and its effects. Additionally, partly in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, there is an increasing focus on life expectancy at birth and the social-economic challenges that arise as a society’s average age increases.