| Age Group | Total | Percentage of Total Population | Male | Female | Number of Females for Each 100 Males |
| Under 5 | 2,255 | 11.0 | 1,149 | 1,106 | 96.4 |
| 5-9 | 1,392 | 6.7 | 713 | 679 | 95.3 |
| 10-14 | 1,743 | 8.5 | 892 | 851 | 95.3 |
| 15-19 | 1,787 | 8.7 | 911 | 876 | 95.6 |
| 20-24 | 1,588 | 7.7 | 806 | 782 | 97.2 |
| 25-29 | 1,316 | 6.5 | 666 | 650 | 97.6 |
| 30-34 | 1,533 | 7.4 | 757 | 776 | 102.4 |
| 35-39 | 1,541 | 7.5 | 773 | 769 | 99.2 |
| 40-44 | 1,502 | 7.3 | 752 | 750 | 99.6 |
| 45-49 | 1,303 | 6.3 | 623 | 680 | 109.2 |
| 50-54 | 806 | 3.9 | 363 | 443 | 121.7 |
| 55-59 | 1,020 | 5.0 | 468 | 552 | 117.8 |
| 60-64 | 950 | 4.6 | 452 | 498 | 110.0 |
| 65-69 | 737 | 3.6 | 351 | 386 | 109.6 |
| 70-74 | 540 | 2.6 | 235 | 305 | 129.8 |
| 75 and over | 551 | 2.7 | 227 | 324 | 142.1 |
| Total population | 20,565 | 100.0 | 10,138 | 10,427 | 102.8 |
| Source: Adapted from Godfrey Baldwin (ed.), International Population Reports (U.S. Department of Commerce, Series P-91, No. 18), Washington, 1969, pp.32-33. | |||||
Aside from natural growth and additions and subtractions of territories and their occupants, the country's population has been comparatively stable. It has been affected to a lesser degree than others in eastern Europe by migrations during and after World War II, probably losing between 300,000 and 400,000 persons in various resettlement and population exchange movements. The largest emigration involved Jews to Israel. Israeli data show an average of about 30,000 immigrants from Romania during the three immediate postwar years, and Jewish people accounted for a major share of all emigration between then and the late 1960s.
Within the country the greatest shift of people has been from rural to urban areas. The rural population grew by about 0.5 million, from 11.9 million to 12.4 million, between 1945 and 1971. During the same period urban population increased by about 3.5 million, from 4.7 million to about 8.24 million, and has become about 40 percent of the total. Officials anticipate that the rural population will stabilize and that most future increases will be to the towns and cities.
Of the 60 percent of the people who still live in small villages and settlements, most depend upon agriculture for their livelihood. Isolated farms and dwellings prevail in the more remote hills and mountains, and life in those areas has been little affected by industrialization of the country or by the collectivization of agricultural land, which has been accomplished in most of the better farming areas.
Older villages most typically have individual family houses, with farm buildings adjacent and with considerable separation between houses. In areas that have been collectivized there has been some effort to remove buildings from productive land and to nucleate the villages.
Population is most dense in the central portion of Walachia, centering on, and west of, Bucharest and Ploiesti and along the Siretul River in Moldavia. Southwestern Walachia and central and northwestern Transylvania are also more densely settled than the average for the country. The area around Dobruja, lands of high elevation, and marshlands along the lower Danube River are the most sparsely settled areas.
LIVING CONDITIONS
According to semiofficial Romanian sources, the national income increased by six times during the twenty-year period between 1950 and 1970, and real wages, by 2.7 times. Between 1966 and 1970 improved economic conditions and a broader based industry had created about 800,000 new jobs, most of them in the industrial sector.
Increases in national income have been accompanied by increased outlays for social and cultural programs. The 1970 allocations for such programs were ten times greater than in 1950 and amounted to 27.5 percent of the total national budget.
Housing, production of consumer items, and changes in food consumption had also improved. Between 1966 and 1970 about 345,000 state-funded apartments and about 315,000 privately built dwellings became available. New facilities for production of automobiles, furniture, wearing apparel, television sets, and other domestic electrical appliances increased output in these areas by about seven times that of 1950. Foods with high nutritive value were consumed in larger quantities. Consumption of milk, garden vegetables, fruit, eggs, and fish nearly doubled between 1966 and 1970. More meat and cheese were also eaten, but the increase in their consumption was less spectacular.