Can Romania’s Demographic Decline Be Stopped?

Increasingly vocal in public debates, demographic experts have again warned about the country's progressive depopulation.

Bogdan Matei, 20.04.2016, 12:16

The first
serious warning came in December, when the National Statistics Institute
published Romania’s demographic annual report. The report, which contains
statistical data about the number and structure of Romania’s population, as
well as its natural and migratory dynamics, shows that Romania loses several
thousand inhabitants every month. Along with its modernisation, the country is also facing negative
phenomena, which western societies first saw decades ago.

The number of
children per family is on the decrease, as women give birth at an older age,
the number of marriages has been dropping and that of divorces is on the rise.
The director of the Romanian Academy Centre for Demographic Research Vasile
Ghetau said on Tuesday that in 2015 the fertility rate reached its lowest level
in the last 50 years. He also reiterated that the death rate had been exceeding
the birth rate for quite a few years. Depopulation has accelerated in the last
quarter century since the fall of the
communist regime, as a result of the opening of the borders, which until then
had been closed, which has allowed millions of Romanian citizens to leave the
country and settle abroad.

The migratory hemorrhage appears to have slowed
down recently, so the number of people leaving Romania no longer exceeds that
of people coming back. However, depopulation still continues as a result of
migration, because the people who have emigrated are in the 25 to 34 age
bracket, which affects the birth rate. Since 1989, Romania’s population dropped
from 23.2 million to 19.8 million, thus reverting the tendency seen in the
previous decades, when, as a result of the 1966 abortion ban, the population increased by 26%. Specialists are
of course opposed to such brutal intervention of the communist state in family
life and underline that such immediate results can only be obtained in a
totalitarian system. They point out, however, that there are countries in the
West, like France, where population has grown by 13% in the last 25 years.

Experts say Romanian families should have more than two children for the
demographic decline to be reversed. This figure, explains Vasile Ghetau, should
be maintained for at least half a century, through measures to support
families, provide child care services, reduce child mortality and increase life
expectancy. State funds allocated for the implementation of such measures
should grow by 10% every year. For the
time being, a new law has been passed that eliminates, starting on July 1st,
the child rearing benefit cap, which
until now stood at 760 euros. From now, the allowance will account for 85% of
incomes. The experts from the Centre for Demographic Research say the measures
to increase birth rates should be accompanied by a health ministry programme to
reduce death rates.