In Romania, 1,220,000 people declared themselves to be of Hungarian nationality in this year's census, so the Hungarian minority makes up 6 percent of the population among those who answered this question, the Romanian national statistical institute announced on Friday.
At the most recent census in 2011, 1,227,623 people declared themselves to be of Hungarian nationality, which means that the number of Hungarians decreased by more than 225,000 in ten years.
According to preliminary data, the population of Romania reaches 19,053,800 people, of which 16,568,900 people declared their nationality. Among them, 89.3 percent, or 14.8 million people, declared themselves to be of Romanian nationality. The population has decreased by 1.1 million since the last census.
After the Hungarians, the Roma minority is the most populous, with 569,500 people and 3.4 percent of the population. Nationalities with more than 20,000 people are Ukrainian (45,800), German (22,900) and Turkish (20,900).
6.3 percent of the population named Hungarian as their mother tongue. 91.6 percent use Romanian as the first language in the family. Romani is spoken by 1.2 percent, Ukrainian by 0.2 percent. 16,551,000 people answered the question about religious affiliation: 85.3 percent declared themselves Orthodox Christians, 4.5 percent Roman Catholics, and 3 percent Reformed. The proportion of those who declared themselves to be non-religious or atheist was 0.9 percent.
Kelemen Hunor, the president of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (RMDSZ), emphasized in a statement issued by the union on Friday that it was possible to maintain the proportion of Hungarians above 6 percent in Romanian society. He indicated: the detailed results of the census will be analyzed by the RMDSZ next year.
The statistical institute announced that the aging of the population continued, the proportion of people over 65 increased: there were 121 elderly people for every 100 young people, while in 2011 there were 101.8 elderly people for every hundred young people. Thus, this indicator deteriorated by 20 percentage points.
Compared to the 2011 data, the proportion of university graduates increased from 12.9 percent to 16 percent, while the proportion of those with low qualifications decreased from 50 percent to 40 percent. The census was originally supposed to be organized in 2021, but it was postponed to this year due to the epidemic.
Source: Democrat
Image: Pixabay (Transylvanian landscape)
