Demographic ageing gains further ground in 2018, in Romania

Demographic ageing gained further ground last year, as the elderly population aged 65 and above exceeded by 434,000 the number of the young aged 0 - 14, the National Institute of Statistics (INS) said in a release published on Thursday. On January 1, 2019, more than 3.674 million people were in the elderly age bracket, while the young population was 3.240 million strong. "The demographic aging process advanced, compared to January 1, 2018, as a slight decrease was evident in the share of young people (0 - 14 of age), while the share of the elderly population (65 years and over) inched up 0.3 percentage points," the INS said in the release. "The demographic ageing index went up from 110.0 (on January 1, 2018) to 113.4 elderly people to 100 young people (on January 1, 2019)," says INS. The average age of the population was 41.6 years, 0.3 years higher than on January 1, 2018. The median age was 41.5 years, up 0.4 years from January 1, 2018. On January 1, 2019 the resident population was 22.171 million, down 0.2 pct from January 1, 2018, with a majority of urban and female population (56.4 pct and 51.2 pct, respectively). The resident urban population was 12.506 million, slightly down from January 1, 2018 (0.1 pct). The female population as of January 1, 2019 was 11.343 million, down 0.2 pct from the same date of the year before. The 40 - 44 age group accounted for the largest share in the total population (8.6 pct), with the male population in this age bracket accounting for 9 pct and women for 8.2 pct. The weight of the 0 - 4 years age group was 4.5 pct, lower than that of the 5 - 9 (4.9 pct) and 10 - 14 years age groups (5.2 pct).AGERPRES(RO - editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Maria Voican)