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MoldovaGEOGRAPHY
Size: Approximately 33,700 square kilometers.
Topography: Gently rolling hilly plain in north;
thick
deciduous forests in center; numerous ravines and gullies
in
steppe zone in south. Highest point 430 meters.
Climate: Moderately continental. Average annual
precipitation ranges from 600 millimeters in north to 400
millimeters in south.
SOCIETY
Population: 4,473,033 (July 1994 estimate);
average
annual growth rate 0.38 percent (1994 estimate).
Ethnic Groups: According to 1989 census, 64.5
percent
Romanian, 13.8 percent Ukrainian, 13.0 percent Russian,
3.5
percent Gagauz, 2.0 percent Bulgarian, 1.5 percent Jewish,
and
1.7 other, including Belarusian, Polish, Roma (Gypsy), and
German.
Languages: Moldovan (a dialect of Romanian)
official
language; Russian retained as language of interethnic
communication; areas of non-Romanian ethnic majority may
also use
local language as means of communication.
Religion: About 98.5 percent Eastern Orthodox
(1991);
also, Uniate, Jewish, Armenian Apostolic, Seventh-Day
Adventist,
Baptist, Pentecostal, and Molokan.
Education and Literacy: Mandatory School
attendance,
ten years; literacy, 96 percent (1992). Approximately half
of
students study in Romanian language and half in Russian
language.
Health: Health care provided by state, mostly
free of
charge. Infant mortality rate 30.3 per 1,000 live births
(1994).
Life expectancy (1994) for males sixty-five years and for
females
seventy-two years. Modern medical equipment and facilities
in
short supply. In 1990 about 129 hospital beds and forty
doctors
per 10,000 inhabitants.
Data as of June 1995
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