The paper analyzes dependence of spatial-demographic tendencies in the development of 86 settlements of Knjaževac community on their hypsometric distribution. It deals with absolute and relative changes of total amount of population, agricultural population, as well as the populational size of settlements. The whole municipality is characterized with the concentration of the population in the lower hypsometric zones, settlements becoming smaller and, with the exception of the town centre, negative demographic developmental tendencies. Statistical analysis done on a period between 1971-2002 shows the dependence of majority of analyzed indexes on their altitude zone.