------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: Adapted from Godfrey Baldwin (ed.), _International Population Reports_ (U.S. Department of Commerce, Series P-91, No. 18), Washington, 1969, pp. 32-33. Within the country the greatest shift of people has been from rural to urban areas. The rural population grew by about 0.5 million, from 11.9 million to 12.4 million, between 1945 and 1971. During the same period urban population increased by about 3.5 million, from 4.7 million to about 8.24 million, and has become about 40 percent of the total. Officials anticipate that the rural population will stabilize and that most future increases will be to the towns and cities. Of the 60 percent of the people who still live in small villages and settlements, most depend upon agriculture for their livelihood. Isolated farms and dwellings prevail in the more remote hills and mountains, and life in those areas has been little affected by industrialization of the country or by the collectivization of agricultural land, which has been accomplished in most of the better farming areas. Older villages most typically have individual family houses, with farm buildings adjacent and with considerable separation between houses. In areas that have been collectivized there has been some effort to remove buildings from productive land and to nucleate the villages. Population is most dense in the central portion of Walachia, centering on, and west of, Bucharest and Ploiesti and along the Siretul River in Moldavia. Southwestern Walachia and central and northwestern Transylvania are also more densely settled than the average for the country. The area around Dobruja, lands of high elevation, and marshlands along the lower Danube River are the most sparsely settled areas. LIVING CONDITIONS According to semiofficial Romanian sources, the national income increased by six times during the twenty-year period between 1950 and 1970, and real wages, by 2.7 times. Between 1966 and 1970 improved economic conditions and a broader based industry had created about 800,000 new jobs, most of them in the industrial sector. Increases in national income have been accompanied by increased outlays for social and cultural programs. The 1970 allocations for such programs were ten times greater than in 1950 and amounted to 27.5 percent of the total national budget.