Introduction
This paper examines Croatia’s demographic and economic indicators in comparison to the USA, UK, and Poland to assess the country’s population trends, age structure, unemployment rate, and health expenditure. The purpose is to identify Croatia’s position relative to other developed nations and evaluate the challenges reflected in its current population dynamics.
Population Trend
The population criteria reflect the population dynamics as it grows and are partially correlated with economic income. Figure 1 analyzes the population in these four countries, where Croatia ranks last in population decrease (Croatia, 2023).
Age Structure
Related to the population is the criterion of the age structure of society, which indicates what resources a country is rich in. For Croatia, there is a significant lag in the whole age structure. The young population is small, while the elderly population is much larger than in other countries (Croatia, 2023). Table 1 presents the age structure of Croatia in comparison to other countries.
Table 1. Age structure
Unemployment Rate
Since all countries can be considered developed, it is essential to assess the employment rate of their populations. Croatia has the highest unemployment rate, with more than 8% of the population unemployed (Country comparator, 2023). Therefore, it has a dominant position regarding unemployed persons compared to other countries. Figure 2 shows the unemployment rate in the four countries under study.
Health Expenditure
The health expenditure criterion, i.e., a country’s ability to allocate funds for health, is often linked to the population’s overall well-being. This criterion is expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP); for Croatia, it is 7.803 (Country comparator, 2023). Figure 4 shows that neither country spends as much as the US.
Conclusion
Based on the above, it can be concluded that Croatia does not demonstrate favorable trends in the analyzed indicators compared with countries such as the UK, the US, and Poland.
References
Country comparator. (2023). Global Edge. Web.
Croatia. (2023). Central Intelligence Agency. Web.