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Romania Demographics
Romania had a population of more than 23 million in
1987, but
the active work force numbered about 10.7 million--an
increase of
only 550,000 workers since 1975. Women accounted for only
about 40
percent of the labor force in 1988 and therefore
represented the
largest reserve of underused talent. After the mid-1970s,
the rate
of growth of the industrial labor force dropped
significantly
compared with the previous quarter century, falling from
5.1
percent in 1976 to 2.3 percent in 1980. Moreover,
demographers
forecast a growth of only 2.5 to 3.6 percent for the
entire Eighth
Five-Year Plan (1986-90).
Three major trends precipitated the slowdown in the
growth of
the labor force. First, the reserve of underused rural
labor that
could be transferred to the industrial sector was nearing
depletion; the countryside had lost nearly half a million
men in
the four years between 1976 and 1979 alone. Second,
Romania's
birthrate--after Poland's, the highest in Eastern
Europe--declined
as urbanization proceeded, and despite the government's
pronatalist
policy, this trend was not reversed. And finally, large
numbers of
skilled workers were emigrating.
As in all of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,
Romania's
fertility level dropped significantly as urbanization
brought more
women into the work force and abortion became available on
demand.
In 1958 112,000 abortions were performed, but by 1965, the
figure
had skyrocketed to 1,115,000 annually, or approximately 4
abortions
for every live birth. Realizing that a lower birthrate
would
inhibit economic growth, the government began instituting
a
pronatalist policy and in 1966 declared an end to abortion
on
demand. But abortions--legal and illegal--continued to be
performed
at a worrisome rate, reaching 421,386 in 1983. A
relatively
ungenerous incentive program to promote childbearing,
instituted in
the 1960s, had little positive effect. As a result, the
birthrate
declined steadily after 1967 and by the early 1980s had
become a
serious concern for Romania's economic planners.
Compared with the other communist regimes of Eastern
Europe,
Romania appeared to have a rather liberal emigration
policy, but in
the 1980s applicants for emigration increasingly were
subjected to
harassment and persecution. Most of the once-thriving
Jewish
community had been allowed to emigrate to Israel. In the
late 1970s
and throughout the 1980s, nearly 1,000 ethnic Germans were
permitted to depart each month for the Federal Republic of
Germany
(West Germany). Large numbers of ethnic Hungarians
illegally
crossed into Hungary to escape economic and cultural
oppression.
Western diplomats in Belgrade claimed that as many as
5,000
refugees crossed into Yugoslavia each year, and that in
1988 some
400 persons were shot to death and many others drowned
trying to
swim across the Danube. Those seeking permission to leave
legally
often lost their jobs, housing, and health benefits and
were forced
to wait long periods for their exit papers. These harsh
policies
reflected the seriousness with which the regime regarded
the loss
of the country's skilled workers and its concern for the
overall
deterioration of the labor pool.
Data as of July 1989
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