Visiting the doctor’s office once a year is an unpleasant experience for many people. Being poked and prodded and asked personal questions is about as fun as waiting in line to get your driver’s license renewed. Imagine, then, being required by law to be medically examined by a doctor who would monitor your menstrual cycle and ask why you were not pregnant. This extreme pro-natalist policy was reality for women in Nicholae Ceausescu’s Romania.
Romania is facing a serious problem that has been going on for over the past 50 years: the problem of an aging and declining population. This decline as well as policies implemented in an attempt to reverse the trend have created National Security problems for the country, particularly in terms of a population bulge.
In the 1950s, Romania experienced a demographic change almost unheard of at the time: a decline in TFR. Between 1950 and 1965, the TFR decreased from 2.87 to 2.04, below replacement level. This drastic decline worried then leader Nicholae Ceausescu, who implemented pro-natalist policies in an attempt to “raise the birth rate while ensuring economic growth would not slow down due to an inadequate labor force.”
While these policies worked, they did so for only a short time. Despite the baby boom of 1967, 1968, and 1969, TFR began to drop again in the 1970s and has continued to do so until the present day. In short, not even a dictator can force women to have babies if they don’t want them.
Romania’s TFR has taken an even steeper dive since the 1989 fall of Ceausescu’s Communist regime. After the fall of the regime, pro-natalist policies were repealed, birth control became available, abortion was legalized, and education levels of women increased. Women gained control over their reproductive lives, and they chose not to reproduce.
This upswing in fertility in the late 1960s followed by drastic decline in TFR has created problems for Romanian national security. Although the baby boomers are still of working age and contributing to the economy, they are quickly approaching retirement. This will place an extra-heavy burden on the state and on subsequent generations because the state will have to care for these retirees and the working population will have to support an elder generation that is exponentially larger then themselves. The state is not prepared to support these people into their elder years. In fact, the state was never prepared to support these people at all. Ceausescu concentrated on increasing the number of babies that were born, but he neglected to plan what he was going to do with these babies as they grew. The baby boom generation grew up with too little money, too little food, and too little educational opportunities. Not surprisingly, the baby boomers at the belligerent age of twenty when Ceausescu’s regime collapsed. In effect, Ceausescu’s attempt, unjust as it was, to secure Romania through population growth may have contributed to his demise.
What can be learned from Ceausescu’s attempt at reversing his country’s population trend? Just as sandbagging only keeps an ocean at bay for a short time, pro-natalist policies, even extreme ones like requiring women to have monthly doctor visits, only work for a limited number of years before the declining fertility trend continues on its natural course. Other methods of increasing population size must be found.
If the Romanian government ceases to take action, the population will continue to decrease and by 2050 the population will have shrunk to 16,269,000 from its current standing at 21,190,000. For Romania, increasing immigration is seemingly the most effective means of slowing population aging and increasing the work force, and foreign investment in Romania is the best way to entice immigration. If foreign companies invest, immigrants from neighboring countries will move to Romania, increasing Romania’s workforce and furthering foreign investment in the state. This will greatly benefit Romania economically, and a growing economy also means the government can provide better healthcare, which is currently lacking in Romania. More money means Romanian doctors, who flock to higher paying jobs in Western Europe, would receive more compensation for their services and would be more likely to remain in Romania. More money also means that more medical supplies will be available and citizens will experience an overall better quality of healthcare, which leads to more economic productivity and more healthy soldiers fit for military service.
Although increasing TFR may seem to be the most effective way to pull an aging state from population decline, it does not always benefit the country. Indeed, increasing population through economic stimulation is less morally grey than peer pressuring a nation’s women to bear unwanted children.
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