Rural development policy and indicators of demographic dependency

The rural economy in Romania is poorly diversified and depends to a very large extent on agriculture, dominated by subsistence and semi-subsistence farms producing mainly for own consumption and only marginally for the market. The main demographic trends of rural Romania are the declining and aging of the population due to both natural birth decrease and migration from rural to urban areas of the young population. The low educational level of the rural population is another important issue in terms of employment. Rural incomes are lower than those from the urban areas and the income gap continues to grow as a result the incidence of poverty is significantly higher in the rural area.