THE DEMOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT OF NIN IN THE 20TH CENTURY

The paper addresses the demographic development of Nin during the 20th century. The study was conducted for the following settlements: Nin, Grbe and Ninski Stanovi. Thereby, these demographic indicators were followed: birth rate, death rate, migration saldo and nuptiality. The demographic development of Nin has been pictured through the usual demographic indicators, together with other Croatian land settlements in the first 70 years of the 20th century. At the beginning of the analysed period, Nin underwent the second, transitional phase described in the Theory of demographic transition, with high birth rate and low death rate, which resulted in population growth. However, in the last quarter of the 20th century, demographic processes untypical of littoral land settlements took place. In the period between the censuses in 1971 and 1981, the number of inhabitants decreased significantly, while in the following period between the censuses in 1981 and 1991, it increased strongly. Finally, in the last studied period between the censuses in 1991 and 2001, it decreased again remarkably. The causes for this kind of demographic changes differed and have not been explained entirely. However, one of the major causes thereof were various census coverages taken into consideration in 1981 and 1991, to which fact demographers had been indicating earlier. This paper has confirmed two theses. The first thesis is that the number of inhabitants in the historic centre had decreased, following thereby the trends of Croatian and European tourist towns and cities and their historic centres. The second thesis is that Nin, though being a littoral tourist town, did not undergo the (beneficiary) process of littoralisation - at least not in the demographic sense, as in the last studied period there was a significant decrease in the number of inhabitants: 634, or nearly 30%.