Demography

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.