The COVID-19 pandemic has had a visible impact on Romanian demographics, the latest report released by the National Institute of Statistics shows. In particular, the number of deaths has followed an upward trend since June 2020, while in December 2020 rose significantly compared to the same month in 2019, and the negative natural increase nearly doubled in 2020 compared to the previous year. In the last three months of 2020 alone, the negative natural increase nearly reached the level of the whole of 2019.
While in 2019 the institute registered 57,000 more deaths than births, in 2020 that number increased to 118,587.
In December 2020, more than two-thirds of the total number of deaths were recorded for persons aged at least 70: 15,389 deaths, accounting for 42.6% of the total, were recorded for the age group of 80 years and over; 9322 deaths, accounting for 25.8%, were among persons aged 70–79; and 6772 deaths (18.8%) were among persons aged 60–69. Naturally, by contrast, the fewest deaths were recorded for the age groups of 5–19 years (62 deaths), 0–4 years (98 deaths), and 20–29 years (122 deaths), the institute reported.
That month was disastrous in terms of demographics, as the number of deaths was 2.3 times higher than the number of live births (−20,259 persons in December 2020, compared to −7188 in December 2019).
The number of births fell in each month compared to the same period in the previous year; however, in December 2020, more live births than in the same month of the previous year were recorded. The number of live births was higher by 433 compared to December 2019, as the births of 15,857 children were recorded in December 2020, 2103 more than in November 2020.
The population of Romania has been gradually falling for the past 30 years, dipping under 20 million in 2014, despite there being more than 22 million at the time of the regime change. More than 4 million citizens live abroad, the majority of whom are aged between 25 and 45.
Title image: Father and newborn baby. Image credit: Pixabay
