There were 559,400 children registered in Moldova as of January 1, 2021, which is 21.5% of the total population of the country.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the occasion of the International Children's Day presented the generalized statistics on children in Moldova. According to the agency, each year the number of citizens under the age of 18 is decreasing (at the beginning of 2018 there were 596.9 thousand children.), and the share of children in the total population is also decreasing (at the beginning of 2017, children accounted for 21.9% of the population). In 2021, 29,200 children were born, down 5.2% from 2020. Last year's birth rate was 11.2 people per 1,000 residents, the lowest in the past 5 years (13.2% in 2017). More than 51.6% of newborns were boys, respectively, 106 boys per 100 girls. Almost 14% of children were born prematurely last year. The average age of first-time mothers is 25.1 years (23.8 years in villages and 27.1 years in cities). In 2021 every 5th child was born out of wedlock. According to statistics, in 2021, there were 1,483 pre-school educational institutions in Moldova, attended by 137,100 children. In general education (1231 institutions) there were 336.7 thousand students registered in 2021-2022, which is 2.3 thousand students more than in the previous academic year. This year, 9,500 children with special needs and disabilities were enrolled in educational institutions (94.2% were in regular schools and 5.8% were in special schools for children with physical or mental disabilities). Last year, 81,400 people received maternity and child care benefits, of which about 59% were insured and 41% were uninsured. As of January 1, 2022, the average amount of lump sum birth allowance was 9459 lei. The monthly child care allowance for insured persons was 2,544.1 lei per month, for uninsured - 740 lei per month. In 2021, about 47,800 insured citizens used parental leave to care for a child under the age of 3 (of which almost 23% were fathers of children), and of the 33,600 uninsured beneficiaries, more than 99% were women. According to the NBS, between 2017 and 2022, the living wage for children increased by 17.3% to 2,074 lei, including 835.4 lei for children under 1 year, 1,803.2 lei for children 1 to 6 years old, and 2,342.5 lei for children from 7 to 17 years old. In 2021 there were 10,600 children with disabilities registered in the country, 46% of them with severe disabilities. The average disability allowance for children was 1,356.5 lei, 2.4 times higher than in 2018. According to official data, about 8.3 thousand children were at risk of violence, had insufficient care, lived in socially vulnerable families, almost 74% of them lived in rural areas. According to statistics, 30.4% of households in Moldova had at least one minor child in their care. Families with many children most often (in 71.1% of cases) lived in rural areas. In 2021 households with children had an average monthly income of 3005 lei per person, which is 1.3 times less than in families without children. At the same time, households with children had incomes ranging from 3568.1 lei per person in families with one child to 2034.7 lei in families with three or more children. // 01.06.2022 - InfoMarket
