Romania’s resident population hits lowest level in past half century

Romania had a resident population of 19.4 million people at the beginning of 2019, 125,500 lower than in January 2018.

It is the lowest population since 1967, commented Andrei Rădulescu, director of Macroeconomic Analysis at Banca Transilvania, quoted by Ziarul Financiar.

The main cause of the decline was the negative natural increase, but migration also contributed.

During the past year, the number of deceased persons exceeded the number of live births by 75,729 persons. At the same time, 238,000 persons emigrated and other 181,000 (immigrants) chose to move to Romania.

The immigrants are those persons who settle for more than 12 months in Romania, either foreigners or Romanians who have lived for more than 12 months elsewhere. Similarly, emigrants are those who, having stayed for more than 12 months in Romania (be them Romanians or foreigners), choose to settle for more than 12 months abroad.

Separately, the process of demographic aging has deepened, as seen from the increase in the share of the elderly population (65 years and over). The index of demographic aging has increased from 116.3 (on January 1, 2018) to 118.8 (on January 1, 2019) elderly people to 100 young people. The share of the population aged 0-14 years remained at 15.6%, while the share of the population aged 65 and over registered an increase of 0.3 percentage points, to 18.5%.

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