Romania is slowly but surely running out of children, the Romanian newspaper Adevarul concluded, commenting that last year fewer than ever, only 180 thousand children were born in the country of 19 million inhabitants, MTI reported.
The age group born in 1961 was the last one to take care of its own "replenishment", the reproduction rate of the ones after that falls short of the replacement level - pointed out academician Vasile Ghetau, the former head of the statistical office. He added that the aging of society is a pan-European problem, but the population decline is extremely steep in Romania, and the difference may also be related to the fact that in the West, measures to encourage childbearing were introduced earlier.
According to Vladimir Alexandrescu, the spokesperson of the statistical office, the pandemic may also have played a role in last year's dramatic decline in reproduction, in that the number of live births decreased by almost 10 percent in a single year. In 2020, slightly less than 200,000 children were born in the country.
The communist government tried to curb the population decline that occurred in the early 1960s with the abortion ban introduced in 1966, as a result of which in 1967 more than ever, 556,000 children were born in Romania, but the downward trend returned after a few years. After the regime change in 1989, induced abortion became legal again in Romania, the majority of women put off their professional empowerment and put off starting a family until later, and thus the average age at which women give birth to their first child is increasing, approaching 30, he summarized. Alexandrescu.
He also touched on the fact that Germany built on strong immigration, but Romania has nowhere to import labor, except from Africa or Asia. "Such immigration would raise major integration problems, since we are talking about people of different faiths and customs, so we should rather follow the French example," argued Alexandrescu, referring to the fact that in France they tried to help women with nursery and kindergarten programs and social measures to support new mothers. in that they return to their workplace as soon as possible after giving birth and do not have to give up their career in order to have a child.
According to sociologist Gelu Duminica, with the current rate of population decline, within 15 years there will be four "dependents" per active person, which is unsustainable, the retirement of the baby boomers of 1967 could therefore lead to the collapse of the social security system in Romania. He added that the social integration of Ukrainian refugees would give the country "a breath of oxygen", because in the short term only the opening of the borders can help make up for the lack of young workers absorbed by Western countries, and in the long term only the introduction of the demographic policies applied by the French for half a century can put them back on a growing path Romanian society.
Source: Magyar Hírlap/MTI
Image: Pixabay
