Perceptions des jeunes étudiants concernant le vieillissement démographique et les personnes âgées en Roumanie

The succession of the generations is taking place in very different economic, demographic and political contexts, specific for each period. In Romania, the generations of 50 years and more have spent most of their lives under the communist regime. All their moral and social values, their conceptions, attitudes and perceptions are profoundly marked by the ideology of the communist period. On the contrary, the generations who have reached their twenties starting with 2006-2008 have new values, attitudes and perceptions, frequently very different from those of their parents and grandparents. These generations will become the active adults by 2015 and will have to sustain the elderly in a difficult context of rising dependency ratios. This will be the most obvious consequence of the Romanian population ageing, which has strongly accelerated starting with 1990, because of significant migration, a severe decrease in fertility and recently, the increase in life expectancy. In this context, the question raised is how the young people today see their relationship with the elderly. For the ones already retired, is it rather the state or the family (thus the adults and the young) who will help them? How do the young people see the role of the elderly in the society and what are the values transmitted from one generation to the other? The answers to these questions and others regarding this issue were obtained with the help of a survey developed in 2008 on a sample of 2324 respondent students (aged 19-21 years) from various universities in Bucharest.