ed
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.

Efforts on behalf of public health were reflected in increasing the life
expectancy from forty-two years in 1932 to a figure that was more than
60 percent greater in 1970. Additional and better equipped hospitals and
other medica