Ukrainian refugees can help improve the demographic situation in Moldova, which risks losing half of its population
According to the latest UN forecast, the population of Moldova may decrease by half by 2100. It is already being discussed in the country that Ukrainian refugees, whose number in Moldova is about 100,000, can have a positive impact on the demographic situation. This is reported in NewsMaker.
According to the UN, in 2024, the population of Moldova will be 3 million people. However, it is not known whether this calculation takes into account the residents of the Transnistrian region, which is not controlled by Chisinau. The results of the population census showed that about 2.4 million people live in Moldova (excluding Transnistria).
The UN predicts a significant decrease in the population of Moldova in the coming decades, and by the year 2100 the number of inhabitants could decrease to approximately 1.5 million people, which is half of the current population.
Doctor of Sociological Sciences and expert on migration management Oleksandr Makukhin notes that one of the main problems of Moldova is emigration. Approximately 63,000 people leave the country every year.
The sociologist believes that most of the countries of Eastern Europe can no longer cope with the decrease in population only at the expense of increasing the birth rate. However, he doubts that the diaspora will want to return to Moldova, even with state incentives. He cites the example of Armenia, where the population has increased only once in recent decades — in 2023, when 105,000 Armenians returned from Nagorno-Karabakh. The most viable solution is to attract people from other countries. Makukhin notes that after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 80,000 to 100,000 Ukrainians settled in Moldova.
“It may sound cynical, but Ukrainian refugees are an opportunity for Moldovan demography, a chance to slightly improve the difficult situation with the birth rate and population size.” – stressed the sociologist.
At the same time, he noted that the level of integration of Ukrainian refugees into Moldovan society is not high, although Ukrainians are culturally close to Moldovans.
People of a different religion and race are not very ready to be accepted by Moldovan society, Makukhin explained.
According to the research for 2023, in Moldova, the index of social distance from citizens of other countries was 1.9. This means that Moldovans agree to live and work in the same country with foreigners, but do not want to create a family or even be friends with them. For Africans and Muslims, this ratio is even higher, since Moldovans do not even want to live next to them.
It will be recalled that the UN predicts the reduction of the population of Ukraine to 15.3 million people by 2100. At the same time, according to the forecasts of the Ukrainian government, by 2051 the population of Ukraine may decrease to 25.2 million people.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that after the end of the war, Ukraine will experience a demographic boom. He is also convinced that after the war, Ukrainians who went abroad will have a great motivation to return to their homeland to restore it.
