"Moldova has a future!” So runs the optimistic slogan of the opposition pro-Russian Socialist Party, which is tipped to win the next parliamentary election, scheduled for later this year.
However, some demographic experts disagree. If current downward trends in the national birthrate are maintained, they warn, the country stands to lose up to 40 per cent of its current population of 3.5 million by 2050.
The average number of live births per 1,000 women has declined in Moldova by some 6 per cent in the last decade, from 1,720 in 2004 to 1,630, according to data drawn from the last census published by the National Institute of Statistics, BNS.
The phenomenon is blamed partly on the mass exodus of young people of child-bearing age, many of them under 30, to Russia, the European Union and elsewhere.
More and more women in Moldova are also now interested in having a career first, and only after that a family, specialists say.
"There is a tendency now among couples to have fewer children and have them at an older age, which obviously affects fertility,” Maxim Calaras, an obstetrician-gynecologist working at a private clinic in Chisinau, told BIRN.
Today, only 57.8 per cent of Moldova women are of childbearing age, defined as aged 16 to 49, which is down by around 7 per cent compared to 2004.
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