The 1968 reorganization also made extensive changes in the lower portion of the local administrative structure, reducing the number of communes by about 40 percent and villages by nearly 15 percent. Typical counties had about fifty communes of about 4,000 to 5,000 persons each. The smaller local units were created, dissolved, or combined as population and local requirements changed but, as of January 1970, there were 236 towns, 2,706 communes, and 13,149 villages. Of the towns, the forty-seven most important were classified as municipalities, and the communes included 145 that were suburban areas of the larger towns (see ch. 8).
POPULATION
The area approximating that defined by the 1971 boundaries of the country had a population estimated at about 8.2 million in 1860. Thirty years later it had increased to about 10 million. Growth began to accelerate slightly after 1890, with periods of greatest increases between 1930 and 1941 and between 1948 and 1956, until it reached an estimated 20.6 million in 1971.
The 1971 estimate was derived from the 1966 census and projected from vital statistics compiled locally through 1970. On this basis the estimated annual rate of growth was 1.3 percent, exceeded in Europe only by that of Albania. Density of the population was 224 persons per square mile. Projected at the 1971 growth rate, the population in 1985 would be 23.3 million, and it would take fifty-four years for the population of the country to double.
The 1971 growth rate, however, may not be maintained. Legislation enacted in 1966 stringently restricted abortions and discouraged birth control practices, resulting in an increased birth rate for the next few years, but by 1971 there were indications that the rate was again declining. Unofficially, it is expected that the population will reach only 25.75 million by the year 2000, or about 27 percent more than in 1970. The projection is based on a growth rate of less than that of the 1970-71 period. It is expected to average about 1.1 percent for the 1971-75 five-year period and to decrease thereafter, resulting in an average of between 0.7 and 0.8 percent over the entire period. Moreover, the increase is expected to be far greater in the over-sixty age group and to provide only about 14 percent more workers in the productive age brackets between fifteen and fifty-nine.
In 1970 the birth rate, at 23.3 births per 1,000 of the population, was also exceeded only by Albania's in all of Europe. The rate of infant mortality, at 54.9 deaths during the first year of life for each 1,000 live births, was slightly lower than those of Yugoslavia and Portugal and was exceeded significantly only by that of Albania. The death rate, at 10.1 per 1,000 was very close to the overall European rate of ten per 1,000.
According to the 1971 official estimate there were 10.1 million males and 10.4 million females, or 102.8 females for every 100 males in the population. Males outnumber females slightly in the childhood years and are the majority sex in each five-year segment of the population to about the age of thirty. Females outnumber males in the thirty to thirty-four age group, after which there is near numerical equality between ages thirty-five and forty-four. Females attain a clear majority beyond age forty-five. Female life expectancy, at 70.5 years, is approximately four years greater than that of males.
The population group with ages from fifty to fifty-four had both a low overall figure and an abnormally low percentage of males (see table 1). The low total reflected a low birth rate during World War I years; the abnormal sex distribution reflected World War II combat losses. The low total in the twenty-five to twenty-nine group resulted from the low birth rate during World War II, and the low figure for the five-to-nine age group reflected the fewer number of parents in the group twenty years its senior and their disinclination to have children because of low incomes and inadequate housing.
The size of the five-to-nine age group was of concern to the country's economists because it will provide a smaller than desirable augmentation to the labor force at the end of the 1970 decade and for the early 1980s. The seemingly much larger group that was under five years of age in 1971, on the other hand, would appear on the surface to more than compensate for the smaller one preceding it. The country's economists, however, did not believe that an alleviation of the chronic shortage of people in the most productive working ages would occur during the twentieth century.
Table 1. Romania, Population Structure, by Age and Sex, 1971 Estimate (in thousands)