This field refers to society’s most important resource: population, analysed together with two components that are crucial for development policies: labour market and quality of life. Demographic evolution is directly or indirectly influenced by a series of economic, social, political and cultural factors. Thus, the political and economic transitions of the last decades, accompanied by crises, restructuring and social instability, have changed profoundly people’s lifestyles, mentalities, attitude towards families, and demographic behaviour. In this context, Romania’s population has been dropping, which has resulted in severe imbalance of age and occupational structure. The census in 2011 has shown that in ten years Romania’s population dropped by almost 1.6 million people. The demographic decline has continued, being associated with another dramatic phenomenon: massive migration of population from Romania to Western Europe. For instance, in 2016, approximately 200.000 people left Romania, which shows that emigration flows are far from stable. The cumulative effect of these worrying phenomena is an aging population and Romania’s massive depopulation. When human capital is lost systematically, development is extremely difficult, if not impossible. [read more]
Given the complexity of this theme, we have divided the field in three subfields: Demography, Labour market and Quality of life. For each subfield we have selected a number of main and secondary indicators, in order to describe the most significant demographic processes and their implications at social level: birth rate, infant mortality rate, natural change of population, life expectancy, employment rate, emigration dynamics, the factors that define qualify of life and people’s perception on objective living conditions.
Demography
Labour market
Quality of life
An awareness of demographic indicators is essential for describing and interpreting the state of the nation. The main indicators used in this subfield help us build a comprehensive image of demographic processes and analyse their impact on Romania’s social and economic development, in the medium and long term. The most important indicator is Natural change of population, that reflects the relationship between birth rates and death rates, thus highlighting the natural increase or decrease in population. According to data offered by the National Institute of Statistics, Romania’s natural change of population was negative in January 2018 by 6.495 people; however, this was half the number for January 2017 (13.704 people). [read more]
Life expectancy is another main indicator, which expresses synthetically the population’s health, in relation to various factors such as standard of living, diet, habitation, medical care, lifestyle, education, etc. Romania has the lowest life expectancy in the European Union, respectively 78.7 years in females and 71.4 in males. The EU average is 83.6 years in females and 78.1 in males (2014 data). On average, we live longer, but healthy life expectancy is decreasing. To evaluate the population’s structure and natural dynamics, other indicators are relevant, such as infant mortality rates, total fertility rate, net migration, number of marriages and divorce rate.
In Romania, the low birth rate is connected to the population’s massive migration to other countries, in search of jobs. The number of young people leaving Romania negatively affects the number of births and significantly diminishes the country’s entrepreneurial potential, given that this is associated mainly with the young population. Against the background of general population decline, population aging raises difficult problems for the national pension and social protection systems.
The statistics in this subfield highlight the correlations between the evolutions on the labour market and social, demographic, and economic phenomena. The main indicators that define the labour market are: the employment rate and the unemployment rate. These indicators are analysed by the following social and demographic characteristics: sex, age, residence and development region.
EU strategy, and implicitly Romania’s strategy, focus on the training of the labour force, favouring a sustainable development model, based on increasing social cohesion and inclusion. For a contextual evaluation of the parameters defining labour market, the data included in the aggregator allow comparisons between Romania and other EU member states, especially CEE countries. [read more]
Other important indicators describing the labour market in Romania refer to: earnings, labour costs, labour productivity, relationship between job offer and demand, job security, education and lifelong learning. The main and secondary indicators in this subfield show how human capital is used by our country, compared to other countries. They offer relevant data for monitoring labour market, but also for designing adequate policies in education, taking into consideration the new competences and specialties required by scientific and technological progress.
Quality of life is a synthetic concept gathering various aspects and dimensions of social life. In contemporary approaches, quality of life is described and evaluated by means of two categories of indicators. Firstly, the indicators that look at the objective living conditions, material resources, quality of the environment and housing quality, earnings, income and income inequality, access to utilities and contemporary life infrastructure (including Internet connectivity). The second group of indicators refers to “subjective well-being”, the perceptions, representations and assessments of these objective living conditions, people’s subjective well-being, measured by means of life satisfaction and happiness, taking into consideration the relationship between expectations and real living conditions. [read more]
Consequently, this subfield comprises indicators that refer to both objective conditions, and people’s perception of their well-being. Many indicators that describe the quality of life have been approached in other sections of the aggregator (for instance, GDP/capita represents a relevant instrument for evaluating wealth). Let us mention that the UN has established 20 March as the International Day of Happiness, on which occasion it publishes an annual World Happiness Report (based exclusively on measuring subjective well-being).
It is competence that makes the difference!
„This project is co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme Administrative Capacity 2014-2020“
The use of data on this site is in line with OGL-ROU-1.0
The content of the materials on this site does not necessarily reflect the official position of the EU.
Initiators are fully responsible for the correctness and coherence of the information presented here.
EN
Română