A Crisis Half-Understood and Half-Addressed
This article is part of the series “Body, Family, Nation – Three Crises Romania Refuses to Hear”
“This year, there was only one wedding in the commune, and only five children were born.” — The mayor of Gogoșu, Dolj County, on a locality that had 3,600 inhabitants in the 1960s and now has just 445.
There is a mental exercise I propose to anyone who wants to understand what is happening to Romania’s demographics. Take a map of the country. Mark all the communes with fewer than 500 inhabitants. Now mark those with fewer than 200. Then consider that, every year, dozens of localities move from one category to the next—toward zero. Not suddenly, not spectacularly, not with headline-grabbing drama. Slowly. An elderly person passes away. A family leaves. A school closes. A town hall, in its final administrative act, serves a village of ghosts.
This is not a metaphor. It is the cartography of a real, statistically documented process, with economic and social consequences that Romania is neither prepared to manage nor, more worryingly, willing to fully comprehend.
Romania’s demographic crisis did not begin yesterday. The data shows it with precision: the country’s population has steadily declined from 23 million at the time of the 1989 Revolution to approximately 19 million in 2025—a loss of 4 million citizens in 35 years, the cumulative result of falling birth rates, mass emigration, and gradual ageing. Four million people have vanished from Romania’s statistics—through death, emigration, or simply the decision not to be born. That is roughly the combined population of two cities the size of Bucharest. And for those living in provincial towns, the reality is even bleaker: rows of empty houses, streets lit only by the occasional porch light, and the absence of friends and relatives who have long since moved abroad.
And yet, Romania treats this crisis as periodic news, not the national emergency it is. Historically, declining birth rates have followed one of two trajectories: a return to initial values or physical and cultural replacement.
This article was produced with AI editorial assistance (Claude, Anthropic), in accordance with the author’s declared transparency policy.
The Numbers We Refuse to Face
Romania’s demographic statistics are, quite literally, terrifying. I do not exaggerate. They are terrifying in the technical sense of the word: they would justify a state of alarm in any serious demographer who analyses them.
A century ago, Romania saw over 600,000 births per year. In 2025, that number dropped to 145,669—four times fewer, the lowest in the past hundred years. In the span of a single century, the country has lost three-quarters of its capacity to sustain life.
Romania recorded a 35% decline in the number of births in 2023 compared to 1998—a rate three times faster than the EU average. We are not just in decline. We are leading a ranking no one wants to top.
The natural population growth remains negative: the number of deaths is 1.7 times higher than the number of births. In practical terms, Romania is dying faster than it is being born—every month, every year, without interruption for decades.
As of 1 January 2025, the ageing trend has deepened: the young population (0–14 years) has decreased by 92,200 people, now representing just 15.4% of the resident population, while the elderly (65+) have increased to 20.3%. We are ageing rapidly. The demographic pyramid is inverting. A nation that was once young is becoming, slowly and irreversibly, an ageing one.
And the future projections are no more reassuring. All scenarios from Romania’s National Institute of Statistics (INS) predict a population decline, regardless of the model used. In the most probable scenario, Romania’s population will shrink from 19.036 million in 2025 to 15.6 million in 2080—a 17.9% decrease. And if nothing changes, the constant scenario predicts an even steeper decline: from 19.036 million in 2025 to 14.367 million in 2080—a loss of nearly a quarter of the current population.
Read that again: a quarter. If nothing changes, Romania will lose the equivalent of 5 million people in 55 years.
Why Aren’t People Having Children? Beyond the Convenient Excuses
There is a reflexive tendency in public discourse to explain the decline in birth rates through shifts in values or the mindset of young people. “They don’t want children anymore.” “They prefer their careers.” “It’s modern individualism.” These explanations contain a grain of truth—but only a small one, and they are misleading to the extent that they suggest the problem lies in the minds of young people, rather than in the concrete conditions in which they live.
Recent data from a study cited by European media shows that 25% of women either do not want children or are undecided—a significant proportion. Among the reasons cited are lack of desire to become a parent, health issues, a wish for personal freedom, financial concerns, and anxieties about an uncertain future. But here’s the key point: not wanting children is not, in itself, a moral failing or a flaw in values. In many cases, it is a rational decision in the face of concrete conditions that make parenthood prohibitively expensive, risky, and unsustainable.
The reasons for the decline in birth rates are numerous:
- Lifestyle changes among young people, focused on professional achievement, leading to a later age for first pregnancies.
- Rising living standards—people want more before starting a family.
- The redefinition of the couple and the disappearance of the “grandparent institution,” which once provided childcare support.
- Economic pressures—raising a child in Romania entails enormous costs.
- Emigration.
Family policies have had minimal impact on increasing birth rates. The financial aid provided does not cover the costs of childbirth and child-rearing.
One structural issue almost never mentioned in public debate: World Bank studies suggest that in Eastern Europe, approximately 70% of household chores are performed by women—the equivalent of a second, often unpaid, job. A woman who knows that, with the birth of a child, she will implicitly take on most of the unpaid domestic labour—on top of her paid job—has objective reasons to delay or refuse motherhood. This is not a problem of values. It is a problem of unequal distribution of the costs of social reproduction—and the state’s refusal to redistribute them through real public policies.
While prices and services have aligned with EU standards, salaries have remained low, and this imbalance discourages young people from having children. This may be the most complete formulation of Romania’s economic equation for natality: a country with European prices and Eastern European wages, where raising a child means, for middle-class families, a real sacrifice in living standards—not a comfortable lifestyle choice.
Add to this:
- The lack of nurseries—the number of daycare centres and kindergartens is too small, and parents must register their children immediately after birth to secure a spot.
- Poor access to medical services in rural areas.
- Structural economic instability.
And what emerges is not a portrait of a selfish generation, but of a rational generation making correct calculations in a hostile environment.
Emigration – The Haemorrhage We Never Stopped
You cannot talk about the birth rate crisis without talking about emigration. They are two sides of the same coin.
Since 1989, nearly 4 million Romanians have emigrated for work. Four million—a number that overlaps with the 4 million inhabitants lost from the resident population is not a coincidence, but a direct causality. Not all emigrants left forever. But many have settled, married, and had children abroad—children who do not appear in INS statistics, children who will pay pensions in Spain or Germany, not in Romania.
The demographic segment most likely to emigrate consists of people aged 20 to 49—precisely the fertile age group, the economically active population, the group that should have formed the backbone of Romania’s demographic reproduction.
70% of those who leave are between 15 and 44 years old, and with them, the essential skills needed to sustain Romania’s future economy disappear. It is not the elderly who are leaving. It is not those with nothing to lose. It is precisely those who could have changed things.
And emigration does not just destroy natality directly, through the physical absence of people. It also destroys it indirectly, by atomising family networks. A child raised without a father who has gone to work in Austria grows up with a different relationship to the idea of family, to the desire to start one, to the model of fatherhood they will later replicate or reject. Beyond the immediate demographic loss, emigration produces a cultural trauma with generational consequences that we have not yet seriously begun to assess.
The “Decreței” Generation and the Fiscal Time Bomb
There is a unique aspect of Romania’s demographic crisis that should be the subject of urgent national debate: the legacy of Decree 770.
In 1966, Nicolae Ceaușescu banned abortion and contraception. The effect was immediate: in 1967, the first year after the decree’s implementation, 526,000 children were born—compared to 274,500 in 1966. The increase continued in 1968 (512,500 births) and 1969 (over 460,000). Thus, between 1967 and 1969, over 1 million children were born, later dubbed the “decreței” (the decree generation).
These children, now 55–60 years old, are set to retire en masse in the next decade. Their retirement will place considerable pressure on a system that already struggles to meet current pensioners’ needs.
The data is clear and alarming. At the beginning of 2025, there are 10 active workers supporting 8 pensioners—a far weaker ratio than the optimal one. If the decline in the active population continues, it is estimated that by around 2050, a single employee will have to support one pensioner.
One of the most critical projected problems for Romania is the increase in pension contributions, due to the “decreței” generation reaching retirement age. This numerous generation will retire in the coming years, and without a sustainable pension reform, the pressure on the public budget will become unmanageable.
In concrete terms: the state will have to find an additional €7 billion for pensions—money that does not currently exist in the pension budget. Seven billion euros that do not exist. Generated by a demographic policy imposed by a dictator who died 35 years ago. The consequences will be borne by a generation of young people who are only now entering the labour market—a labour market that is increasingly thin, increasingly pressured, increasingly discouraging for those who should, in turn, become parents.
The circle closes on its own—and it closes downward.
Rural Depopulation – The Silent Disappearance of “Deep Romania”
There is a dimension to the demographic crisis that does not appear in fertility rate graphs and is not visible from Bucharest: the physical disappearance of entire rural ways of life.
In Gogoșu Commune, Dolj County, over 23 years, the locality has lost two-thirds of its population—from nearly 1,400 in 1992 to 445 in 2025. The mayor says that in the 1960s, the commune had over 3,600 inhabitants—eight times more than today. “This year, there was only one wedding in the commune, and only five children were born.”
Gogoșu is not an exception. It is a typical case. In dozens of counties—Vaslui, Teleorman, Giurgiu, Olt, Mehedinți, Botoșani—there are hundreds of communes where the process is just as advanced. Schools with 35 students across all grades (from preparatory to 8th grade)—a number smaller than a single class in a medium-sized city. Closed medical clinics. Town halls with a single employee. Cemeteries more populated than the villages themselves.
On a territorial level, rural depopulation and the decline of small towns generate spatial waste:
- Infrastructure investments lose relevance.
- Public services become unviable.
- Built heritage is abandoned.
This is not a metaphor—it is economics. The state has invested tens of millions of lei in roads, sewage systems, schools, and clinics for localities that are now emptying out. Investments that are becoming, literally, monuments to a vanished way of life.
But beyond the economic cost, there is a cultural and human cost that no European convergence indicator can quantify. The villages that disappear are not empty places. They are places full of memory—cemeteries filled with stories, houses that have sheltered generations, customs, dialects, forms of practical wisdom passed down from father to son. When the last family leaves a village, everything that village knew leaves with them. And no one is there to record the loss.
What the Romanian State Knows—and Fails to Do
The Romanian state knows. The numbers are public, INS studies are accessible, demographers have consistently sounded the alarm. There is no genuine ignorance at the institutional level. Instead, there is a structural inability to translate demographic knowledge into coherent, funded, and long-term policies.
The demographic decline and its consequences manifest as a long-term trend, weakening the labour market and creating pressure on the long-term sustainability of social and pension systems—as even Romania’s National Employment Strategy acknowledges. The official state document recognises the problem. And yet, in practice, Romanian family policies remain fragmented, insufficient, and often contradictory.
- The in vitro fertilisation programme exists—but with funding that covers only a tiny fraction of actual needs.
- Parental leave exists—but it is taken almost exclusively by mothers, while fathers remain invisible in the state’s reproductive policy.
- Child allowances exist—but at levels that do not cover the real costs of raising a child.
- Nurseries exist—but in insufficient numbers, with waiting lists of months or years in major cities, and almost nonexistent in rural areas.
No matter how good social policies may be, demographic effects cannot be seen immediately. Population growth cannot have a “boom!” effect unless a decree like the one in 1966 is reimposed. But that is precisely the problem: the Romanian state acts as if it could solve the demographic crisis with punctual, symbolic gestures, while reality demands structural interventions on a scale and consistency that no political coalition since 1989 has had the courage, will, or political longevity to implement.
The Shadows of History – Decree 770 and the Lesson We Never Learned
There is a tragic irony in Romania’s post-1989 demographic story. Ceaușescu tried to increase birth rates by force—banning abortion, imposing pregnancy, criminalising women’s bodies. The immediate result was a demographic explosion. The medium-term result was the “decreței” generation, partially raised in orphanages, in families that had not wanted them, with collective traumas that Romania has never fully processed. The long-term result is the fiscal catastrophe of the coming decade.
The lesson should be clear: birth rates do not rise through coercion or ideology. They rise through conditions. They rise when people have concrete reasons to believe they can raise children safely, with sufficient resources, with real institutional support, in a society that values them as parents—not just as taxpayers.
Today’s Romania does not provide these conditions.
- Not in the healthcare system, where childbirth can still be a risk for the mother (as shown in Pillar I).
- Not in the media space, where the family as a serious subject is almost entirely absent (as shown in Pillar II).
- Not in public policies, where pro-natalist rhetoric is not backed by the investments that would make it credible.
What Should Be Done—and Why It Isn’t
The solutions exist. They are documented, internationally benchmarked, fiscally calculated. They are not secrets.
1. Universal and Accessible Nurseries
Not as pilot projects or election promises, but as nationally guaranteed infrastructure, just like schools. Every child under three should have the right to a nursery place. Without this, motherhood remains a prohibitive choice for any woman with a career.
2. Equitable Parental Leave, with Days Reserved for Fathers
Following the Swedish model, which has shown that when fatherhood becomes a legal norm, it also becomes a cultural norm. A father who spends the first months of his child’s life at home develops a different relationship with his child, with his partner’s motherhood, and participates differently in the family’s demographic decisions.
3. Real Anti-Emigration Policies
Not through restrictions, but by eliminating the causes of emigration:
- Competitive salaries.
- Functional infrastructure.
- A dignified healthcare system.
- Access to quality education.
People do not leave Romania because they hate it. They leave because the state does not provide, on its territory, the conditions they find elsewhere.
4. Pro-Natalist Fiscal Reform
Not symbolic, but massive:
- Real tax deductions for families with children—not amounts that cover one day of monthly expenses.
- France and Hungary have shown that the state can significantly alter the economic equation of motherhood through fiscal policy. Romania has chosen not to do this.
5. Structural Pension System Reform
Not by delaying the “decreței” crisis through another tax hike, but by restructuring the ratio between the first and second pillars and being honest with young people about what they can and cannot expect from the state.
The fertility rate has recently fallen below 1.5 children per woman, and as the population ages, the consequences will be felt in education, healthcare, and labour demand in the medium term. The generational replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman. We are at 1.5—and falling. There is no public policy, no matter how well-designed, that can fill a 35-year demographic gap in two years. But that does not mean we should not start immediately.
So why isn’t it being done? For the same reason structural reforms have not been implemented in Romania for decades: because they are costly in the short term and profitable in the long term, and Romanian electoral politics rewards small costs today and ignores tomorrow’s catastrophe.
Gogoșu as Metaphor—and Warning
Let me return to Gogoșu. To that single wedding in an entire year. To those five children born in a commune that once had thousands of inhabitants.
Gogoșu is not "deep Romania" in agony. It is "deep Romania" in clinical death—and we, those in the cities, watch from a distance as it dies, with the detachment with which we watch bad news about a region we have never visited.
But what is happening in Gogoșu will happen, in decades, in larger localities. The process does not stop at the border between rural and urban. Small towns are already emptying out—Botoșani, Focșani, Alexandria, Drobeta-Turnu Severin are constantly losing population. The natural population decline was 94,000 people in 2025—approaching 100,000, a dangerously threatening level for the future of the resident population.
One hundred thousand people per year. Lost not through catastrophe, not through war, not through epidemic—but through the simple, slow, inexorable equation of a state that has not created the conditions for people to want to stay and have children on its territory.
Conclusion – Demographics as Destiny
There is a phrase I encountered in demographic literature that has haunted me: “Demographics are the destiny of any society.” Not in a fatalistic sense—destiny is not fixed; it can be changed. But in a tautological one: what you are, demographically, determines what you can be, economically, culturally, politically.
A country with 15 million inhabitants, an ageing population, unsustainable pensions, and a dramatically shrinking workforce cannot be the same country that joined the European Union in 2007.
Not because it should be morally judged. But because the numbers do not lie: the number of active people in Romania is declining from approximately 8.304 million in 2024 to between 6.027 million and 6.535 million in 2080—a 21–27% reduction, depending on the scenario. And the economic dependency ratio will deteriorate: more and more non-working people will depend on an ever-shrinking workforce, putting pressure on the state budget and the sustainability of the pension system.
I do not write these things to produce anxiety or resignation. I write them because I believe there is a direct link between their absence from public debate and the lack of urgency in the political response. A society that does not feel the crisis does not enact reforms. A society that feels the crisis but sees it only as an abstract number in INS reports does not mobilise the necessary resources to address it. A society that understands the crisis—in its body, in its family, in its history—might, just might, do something different.
This is why I wrote these three articles. Not to provide a set of solutions for a minister to copy. But to contribute, from my place—from a corner of Moldavia that knows well what it means to watch a village die—to a more complete, more honest, less tribal understanding of the crisis we are in.
- Pillar I spoke about the female body, treated with indifference by a healthcare system that has never fully understood it.
- Pillar II spoke about the family, ignored by a media that prefers scandal and identity politics over structural analysis.
- Pillar III speaks about a Romania that is fading away, slowly, without making enough noise for someone with real power to be convinced that action is needed today.
Perhaps that noise is the duty of those who write. At least that much.
Petru Cojocaru is the founder of ABSOLUT WEB EXPERT SRL and writes analytical essays on cojocarupetru.info. This article is part of the series “Body, Family, Nation – Three Crises Romania Refuses to Hear”.
This article was produced with AI editorial assistance (Claude, Anthropic), in accordance with the author’s declared transparency policy.
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