The spiral of rural and demographic abandonment

In recent years, Albania has been experiencing a demographic drama that is profoundly transforming the country’s rural landscape, turning the abandonment of villages not simply into a statistic, but into a painful story of loss and insecurity. Imagine mountainous villages like those in the North or the South, where once the noise of children and work in the fields echoed, now silent, with abandoned houses and only elderly people waiting for the end of the day.
According to the 2023 Census and Eurostat data for 2025, Albania’s population has fallen to around 2.36 million inhabitants, with an annual decline of 1.2%, which is also the highest rate in the region.

This decline is more pronounced in rural areas, where depopulation has reached critical levels, with some villages completely empty, while over 500 villages have fewer than 10 inhabitants.
This phenomenon is not random, but the result of a vicious spiral that has accelerated in 2021–2025, where low birth rates and massive emigration abroad are draining the population base, creating economic instability and hindering any chance for sustainable development.

Let us start with fertility, which has reached alarming levels in recent years.
In 2024, the fertility rate fell to 1.53 children per woman, while in 2025 it dropped even further to 1.52 – well below the population replacement level of 2.1. This translates into fewer than 22,000 births in 2024 and 2025, with a dramatic decline compared to previous years. UN projections show that by 2050, this number will be halved to 10–11,000 births per year.

The causes are varied, but mainly relate to young people, especially in rural areas, who are postponing or giving up starting a family due to economic insecurity, the high costs of raising children, and the lack of basic services such as kindergartens or nearby hospitals.
In 2025, the youth dependency ratio slightly declined to 23.8%, but population ageing is accelerating, with the median age reaching 43–44 years. This drop in births in 2024–2025 is not just a number, as it is leaving behind a “lost generation” in villages, where schools are closing due to the lack of pupils, making life there even more impossible for the remaining families.

But low fertility is not the only cause, as it is closely linked to massive emigration abroad, which is absorbing the workforce and weakening the foundations of the rural economy.
In 2024–2025, around 50,000 Albanians emigrated, mainly young people aged 19–40, towards Italy, Germany, or the United Kingdom. According to INSTAT and World Bank data, 1.6 million Albanians live abroad, representing almost half of the global Albanian population, and this has resulted in a net loss of 40% of the population since the 1990s. In rural areas, this departure is catastrophic, because young people who leave for higher wages and a better life leave behind only elderly people who cannot work the land.

As a result, family farming is disappearing year after year, as small farms are not profitable due to high input costs and lack of technology, leading to a decline in agricultural production and an increase in food imports.

The effects of this spiral are devastating for the economy and economic sustainability. Emigration is contributing to an annual loss of GDP growth of 0.2–0.4 percentage points in 2024–2050, making Albania one of the most exposed economies in Europe.
A shrinking population is creating severe labor shortages, increasing pressure on public finances with fewer contributors to pensions and healthcare, while dependence on external financial flows (remittances and other informal inflows) reaches up to 8% of GDP in 2024–2025. However, these monetary flows are often spent on basic consumption and on the purchase of real estate and consumer goods, creating an unsustainable dependency, as they do not go into investment in production and agriculture.
In rural areas, this means fewer investments in agriculture or agrotourism, a cycle that fuels even more emigration.

UN projections show that by 2050, the population will decline by 19.5% (see graph), inverting the demographic pyramid and making sustainable development almost impossible without radical reforms.

To stop this trend, urgent actions are needed that go beyond temporary subsidies.
Support for modern agriculture and agrotourism must be increased, as foreseen in the Rural Development Strategy, but with more aggressive implementation.
Providing incentives for young people through favorable loans for rural startups, training, and digital infrastructure could slow emigration, although it is unlikely to be massively applicable, due to cultural factors and informality, but also corruption and a tendency towards activities with quick returns in the service sector.
Pronatalist policies, such as financial support for young families and improvement of healthcare services in villages, are essential to increase fertility, but they seem fragmented and disconnected, forcing the government to change current approaches.
Cooperation with the diaspora for investment and knowledge return can turn loss into advantage. All these measures must be part of platforms of cooperation with all stakeholders, with the objective of not losing not only villages, but also the economic base of food and livestock production, so as not to leave the future in the hands of an ageing and shrinking population.