On January 1, 2021, 895,000 minors were registered in Romania, almost 38,000 less than one year before, announced the National Statistics Institute in a communiqué released on the occasion of Children’s Day. This means that the percentage of children in Romania dropped by 1 percent last year: Children under 18 years of age now make up 17.6 percent of the whole population.
Last year, 178,609 babies were born in the country, 24,500 less than in 2019. By comparison, the number of deaths in 2020 approached 300,000. Never since 1930 have there been so few babies born in Romania, although there is no data for the period between 1941-45.
Last year, the number of babies born to 1,000 women of fertile age (15-49) dropped from 35.3 to 34. From the website of the National Statistics Institute, it turns out that the ratio of fertile women in Romania dropped below 1.3. The birth rate was the highest in Bucharest and the Ilfov region, the metropolitan area of the capital, at 9.1 live births per 1,000 inhabitants and the lowest in Oltenia at 7 live births per 1,000 inhabitants. According to the institute, the real population of Romania is 19.3 million. According to the communiqué released on the occasion of Children’s Day in Romania, 3,495,000 kids (out of which more than 1 million are in kindergarten) attend the 6,970 educational institutions of the country, where almost 236,000 teachers work.
Featured photo: Debrecen hirei
