In some Romanian villages the patter of tiny feet is a distant memory,
The sharp depopulation of rural areas as residents move to cities and abroad in search of better paid jobs has fueled a declining birthrate.
It’s best illustrated in a handful of villages where no child has been born for several years.
The starkest drop in births has affected in the villages of Ocoliș, Râmet in the central Alba county and Brebu Nou and Bătrâna in southwest Romania where not a single child has been born since 2021.
Hundreds of other places are facing a similar barren fate with a maximum of five births in 2023 reflecting a general trend of an aging population.
The situation has steadily gotten worse in the last ten years.
In Bătrâna, the most fertile year for births was 1991, when four infants came into the world. And in nearby Bunila, six children were born in 1993 and it’s been downhill since then.
Until 2003, the number of births in rural areas was higher than births in cities, by about 20,000 per year. However, in the last 20 years, the trend has been reversed, with 21,000 more children being born in cities than villages, according to 2023 data from the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
The declining birthrates in villages reflects a depopulation of rural areas. For example, the population of Ocoliș was 479 inhabitants in the 2021census, down from 616 in the previous 2011 census.
