In 1990 one in ten people in Slovenia was 65 or older (10.6 %). Today it is more than one in five – 22.5 %. Meanwhile there are fewer children under 15: their share fell from 20.9 % to 14.2 %. In 2004, older people outnumbered children for the first time.
The population pyramid shows it best. Press ▶ and watch the “belly” of the pyramid – the large generations born after the Second World War and in the 1970s – move up year after year.
Why?
There are two reasons. The first is good news: we live longer. A boy born in 1960–61 could expect to live 66 years, a girl 72. Today life expectancy at birth is 79.7 years for men and 85.1 years for women.
The second reason is that fewer children are born than before. In 1979, 30,604 babies were born, the most so far; in 2025 it was 16,961 – almost half as many.
Where are older people most numerous?
The oldest region is Pomurska, where 26.4 % of people are 65 or older. The youngest is Osrednjeslovenska with 20.0 %. There are now 123,670 people aged 80 or more – almost three times as many as in 1990.
Centenarians
The oldest group grows fastest. In 1990, 36 people in Slovenia were 100 or older; in 2010 there were 196, and today there are 434 – twelve times as many as in 1990. Most of them are women: 362 women and 72 men, five women for every man.
The most centenarians live in the Osrednjeslovenska region (145), but relative to the population Goriška has the most: 30 per 100,000 inhabitants. Jugovzhodna Slovenija has 12 per 100,000, Slovenia as a whole 20.
Note: the Statistical Office changed its definition of the population in 2008, so data before that year are not fully comparable with later data. In the charts the difference is barely visible.