Below is an overview to the demographics of Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia.
According to the 2001 census, the city had 428,672 inhabitants (the estimate for 2005 is 425,459).[1] The average population density was 1,157 inhabitants/km2 (2,997/mi2).[1] The most populous district is Bratislava V with 121,259 inhabitants, followed by Bratislava II with 108,139, Bratislava IV with 93,058, Bratislava III with 61,418 and Bratislava I with 44,798.[2] The largest ethnic groups in 2001 were Slovaks with 391,767 inhabitants (91.37% of the city population), followed by Hungarians with 16,541 (3.84%) and Czechs with 7,972 (1.86%). Other ethnic groups are Germans (1200, 0.28%), Moravians (635, 0.15%), Croats (614, 0.14%), Ruthenes (461, 0.11%), Ukrainians (452, 0.11%), Romani (417, 0.08%), and Poles (339, 0.08%).[1] [2]
Year | Population | Year | Population | Year | Population | |
1400 | 11,000 | 1880 | 48,000 | 1950 | 184,400 | |
1786 | 31,700 | 1900 | 61,500 | 1961 | 241,800 | |
1802 | 29,600 | 1910 | 78,200 | 1970 | 291,100 | |
1820 | 34,400 | 1921 | 93,200 | 1980 | 380,300 | |
1846 | 40,200 | 1930 | 123,800 | 1991 | 442,197 | |
1869 | 46,500 | 1939 | 138,500 | 2001 | 428,672 |
1920 | |||||
Ethnic group | Population | ||||
Slovaks and Czechs | 60,013 | ||||
Germans | 32,801 | ||||
Hungarians | 18,890 | ||||
Jewish | 4,747 | ||||
Rusyns | 199 | ||||
Other | 247 |
1910 census | |||||
Language | Population | ||||
German | 32,790 | ||||
Hungarian | 31,705 | ||||
Slovak | 11,673 | ||||
Croatian | 351 | ||||
Serbian | 24 | ||||
Other | 1,638 | ||||
of these Jewish | 8,207 |
After the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, Bratislava remained a multiethnic city, but with a different demographic trend. After active Slovakization, the proportion of Slovaks and Czechs increased, while the proportion of Germans and Hungarians fell. With the shift in government, many of the largely Hungarian former government employees emigrated. Czechs and Slovaks immigrated to the city to take their places in jobs. In 1938, 59% of population were Slovaks or Czechs, while Germans represented 22% and Hungarians 13% of the city's population.[6]
The creation of the first Slovak Republic in 1939 brought other changes, most notably the expulsion of many Czechs and Jews under Nazi influence, with the deportation of Jews continuing in the early 1940s, leading to most of the 15,000 from Bratislava being killed or dying from maltreatment in German concentration camps.[5] In 1945, most of the ethnic Germans were expulsed. After the restoration of Czechoslovakia, the Beneš decrees collectively punished ethnic German and Hungarian minorities by expropriation and deportation to Germany, Austria, and Hungary for their alleged collaboration with Nazi Germany and Hungary against Czechoslovakia.[7]
This was part of a postwar population transfer approved by the Allies, with the thought of reducing future tensions. Ethnic Germans were expelled from across eastern Europe. The stripping of Slovak citizenship from the Hungarian and German ethnics also forced the minorities to leave the city. Also, Hungary and Slovakia made population exchanges, which further decreased the number of the Hungarians in the city. The city utterly lost its multicultural character and much of its vitality.[7] Since the 1950s, the Slovaks have been the dominant ethnicity in the town, making up around 90% of the city's population.[5] By the mid-1970s, it had surpassed Brno as the second-largest city of Czechoslovakia, and reached one-third the size of Prague, the capital.
Development of the ethnic composition of Bratislava (within the borders of the city in the current year): | |||||
Year | Slovaks | Czechs | Germans | Hungarians | Jews |
1850 | 18% | ? | 75% | 7.5% | ? |
1880 | 8% | ? | 68% | 8% | 16% |
1890 | 16% | ? | 59.9% | 19.9% | ? |
1910 | 14.92% | ? | 41.92% | 40.53% | ? |
1919 | 33% | ? | 36% | 29% | ? |
1930 | 33% | 23% | 25% | 16% | 3.83%1 |
1940 | 49% | ? | 20% | 9.53% | 8.78% |
1950 | 90.2% | ? | 0.6% | 3.5% | ? |
1961 | 95.15% | 4.61% | 0.52% | 3.44% | 0% |
1970 | 92% | 4.6% | 0.5% | 3.4% | 0% |
1991 | 93.39% | 2.47% | 0.29% | 4.6% | 0% |
2001 | 91.39% | 2% | 0.28% | 3.84% | 0% |
2021 | 89.81% | 1.06% | 0.16% | 2.35% | 0% |
1 Of the 12% of the population that declared a Jewish religion, only this percentage declared a Jewish nationality along it. | |||||
By the late 2010s, Bratislava became an increasingly popular immigration destination, predominantly from Balkans and former USSR countries. In the 2021 census, the share of people who did not consider themselves of any traditional ethnic group rose to nearly 10%.[8] The immigrant population has been further boosted in 2022 by the refugees fleeing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, around 11,000 of whom settled in Bratislava.[9]
According to a 2021 census, the average age in the city was 42.6 years. The distribution in 2021 was as follows: 51,783 inhabitants of pre-productive age (0–14), 12.1%; 281,403 of productive age (15–59), 65.6%; and 92,273 of post-productive age (55+ for females, 60+ for males), 21.5%.[1]
According to the 2021 census, 44% of Bratislava inhabitants had no religion, 41% were Roman Catholic and 4% Lutheran.[10]