on 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.

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.

_Table 1. Romania, Population Structure, by Age and Sex, 1971 Estimate_
(in thousands)

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