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Romania: the second future gypsy nation in Europe
Or third or fourth actually, since the situation is probably the same in a couple of other countries.
Inspired by this thread for Hungary, I decided to look at the situation in Romania.
First of all, let's start with the rate of Romas/Gypsies in Romania, as determined by the 2011 census.
This rate has been criticesed both internally and externally, as being unrealistic.
The main reason for that is because the community is reluctant to identify as Romas/Gypsies due to stigmatisation caused by the association with poverty, theft, misery and crime in general. A lot of them won't even be full Gypsies, but rather 1/2 and they don't feel the connection and/or benefit of identifying as such.
The 2011 and previous censuses inevitably fall short of identifying the real number because of that.
But how can we estimate this number?
Two independent researches from 1992 and 1998, done by different researchers, ONGs and universities from Romania attempted to find the answer to this question by grabbing a cohort of Romas/Gypsies and asking them a bunch of questions, one of which is of interest to us.
When they were asked to self-identify ethnically, as they would have done at a census, the results were the following [Tables 1 and 3]:
Other ethnic group than Gypsy/Roma
* 1992 - 21%
* 1998 - 39%
This means that in 1998, 39% of the Roma/Gypsy population in Romania was identifying either as Romanian or Hungarian. From 1992 to 1998, the population who hid their ethnic belonging to the Roma community almost doubled.
It is only normal that this trend doesn't stop, especially in the era of digitisation and access to information. If we assume that the same trend followed from 1998 to 2004, then at that point the number of Romas/Gypsies choosing to self-identify as another ethnicity would have been 70%. Conversely, only 30% of them chose to identify as Romas/Gypsies at the 2011 census. Incidentally, these are also the figures quoted by sociologists and Roma activists from Romania, who note that at most only 1/3 of them self-identify as Romas/Gypsies, hence 67%+ declare another ethnicity.
If we assume that this is correct, then the real number of Romas/Gypsies as percentage of the total population was 10.3% in 2011 or 2.08 million, according to my estimates (Formula: (number of Romas/Gypsies at 2011 census / 30% who self-identified as Romas/Gypsies) / total population).
We can compare this number to independent researchers like:
1) Government of Romania (Ministry of Work, Family and Social Protection), World Bank, European Social Fund POSDRU (2014)
2) Transitions, Centre for Independent Journalism, EU Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme (2011, before the census)
3) President of National Agency of Romas from Romania (2011, before the census)
4) Sociologists and Roma activists from Romania (2015)
5) Council of Europe (2011)
They estimate the following population:
1) 1.2 to 2.5 million
2) 1.5 million
3) 2 million
4) 2 million
5) 1.85 million
Assuming that they are spread exactly the same as during the 2011 census, we can present the real number of Romas in 2011 on a map like this.
Now, let's take a look at the future generation to understand how Romania will look like in a couple of decades.
The source from (1) claims that 40% of the total estimated population of Gypsies/Romas are in the 0-14 age category.
For the general population, that figure stands at 15%.
Let's check if the numbers make sense for the general population.
The 2011 census found the total population of Romania to number 20.121.641 people. 15% of that is 3.018.000 in the 0-14 category.
Let's double check the 15% figure from 2014 with the more up-to-date estimates from Romania's Institute of National Statistics (2018).
For 2017 they quote a total population of 19.644.350, out of which 3.057.024 fall into this category. That gives us a figure of 15.5%, so the numbers of the proportion of 0-14 in the general population are verifiable from different sources and turn out to be correct.
We can also verify with the same census, which provides a figure of 3.189.000 people or 15.8% of the population.
Since this figure is confirmed, therefore, we can assume that their other figure, which states that 40% of the total Romas/Gypsies are in the 0-14% category, is correct as well.
As a result, we can modify the map for the real number of Romas in 2011 to restrict it only to the number of those in the 0-14 category.
(Formula 1: (number of Romas/Gypsies at 2011 census / 30% who self-identified as Romas/Gypsies) * 40% which is their share in the 0-14 category out of the total Roma/Gypsy population
Formula 2: (Result of formula 1 / total population in the 0-14 category) * 100%)
All sources from above and others:
http://miris.eurac.edu/mugs2/do/blob...=1044353538498
https://adevarul.ro/news/eveniment/r...a58/index.html
https://adevarul.ro/news/eveniment/r...afc/index.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File...ni_Romania.svg
https://mfe.gov.ro/studiu-de-diagnos...r-din-romania/
https://insse.ro/cms/files/publicati...istic_2018.pdf
https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualit...ai-multi-88856
https://adevarul.ro/news/eveniment/i...d12/index.html
https://www.worldbank.org/content/da...usion%20RO.pdf
http://roma.glocalstories.org/story/...o_say_im_roma/
https://www.gandul.ro/stiri/recensam...047#live_close
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Originally Posted by Blondie
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