The Croatian island area is one of the least developed areas in the country, and almost all islands face major demographic problems. Although the island of Hvar belongs to the group of larger and socio-economically more developed islands and is well connected with the mainland, it also follows very negative demographic trends. From the beginning of the 20th century until today, it has lost almost 40% of its population, and the last census recorded the smallest number of inhabitants since the first census. Currently, the island of Hvar is recording negative trends according to all indicators, except for the migration rate, but this is also very questionable given the increasing occurrence of the fictitious population. A special problem is a large percente of the elderly population, which has resulted in a narrowing of the biological recovery base. Also, there is an increasingly polarization of population on the island, as well as the increasing extinction of small settlements in the heartland of the island. Given all these problems, in this paper with the use of the professional literature and the collected statistics, demographic developments will be analyzed and try to define the causes, scale and consequences of contemporary demographic problems of the island of Hvar.