The natural growth was negative in December 2016, as the number of deaths surpassed the live births by 9,782 people.
The data for the entire 2016 indicate a decline of the Romanian population by 66,718 people, which shows that this phenomenon is accelerating – in 2015, the population has decreased by 60,674 people, according to INS.
The monthly negative growth of 9,782 people is the largest in the recent years – the record was in March 2015 when it reached minus 9,985 people.
Overall, the natural growth of minus 66,718 is also a historical record (in the graph we can see the turning point in 1992 when the natural growth became negative):
Evolution of natural growth
The main reason for the population decrease remains the diminished number of live births: a new record has been reached in 2016, of only 189,783 children born, which brings us closer to the year 1876. However, there have been registered 164,547 children born then per only 4.4 million population, while in 2016 the population was nearly 20 million and the number of babies was 189,783.
The revised INS data for 2015 show the threshold of 200,000 live births has been exceeded – 201,023 children.
Evolution of live births
The data do not include though the babies of the approximately 3.4 million Romanians from abroad, where fertility is higher.
Vital statistics, December 2016:
- The number of live births was lower by 542 in December 2016 compared to December 2015
- The number of people who died was higher by 2,464 versus December 2015
- The natural growth was negative both in December 2016 (9,782 persons) and December 2015 (6,776 people)
- The number of children under one year who died was higher by 34 in December 2016 compared to December 2015
- The number of marriages was higher by 1,143 in December 2016 than in the same month of the previous year
- By definitive court rulings and according to Law 202/2010, 141 fewer divorces have been decided than in December 2015
