Home > Arhiva > 2012 > Numar: 1 > Long-term Implications for Widowhood of Romania’s Decree No. 770

Long-term Implications for Widowhood of Romania’s Decree No. 770 [Long-term Implications for Widowhood of Romanias Decree No. 770]

Stephen J. Cutler (Professor of Sociology, Emeritus and Emeritus Bishop Robert F. Joyce Distinguished University Professor of Gerontology, University of Vermont, 31 South Prospect Street, Burlington, VT 05405 USA, 18027582025, scutler@uvm.edu)

Romania’s Decree No. 770, issued in 1966 with little warning and banning most abortions, had the effect of creating a sudden and dramatic, but short-lived baby boom. An eventual outcome of the major disjuncture in the size of adjacent cohorts was an abrupt disruption in the supply of normatively defined, age appropriate mates. Some Romanian women born in the immediate post-decree years responded by marrying men the same age or younger, while some men responded by marrying women the same age or older. This article documents these changes and argues that a long-term dividend of the overall downward shift in age differences between spouses is likely to be a reduction in the magnitude of some of the social and economic problems associated with widowhood.

Keywords: Romania, disordered cohort flow, marriage, age differences, widowhood