Inhabitants
Informations about Inhabitants
The Danube Delta is perhaps the least inhabited region of temperate Europe. In the Romanian side live about 15,000 people, of which 4,600 in the port of Sulina, which gives an average density of approx. 2 inhabitants per km². The rest is scattered in 27 villages, of which only three, all situated marginally, have more than 500 people (2002). The town of Tulcea, at the western edge of the delta, but not included in it, has a population of 92,000 (2002). It represents the node of the region and the gate to the delta. The acute isolation and the harsh conditions of living, based mainly on subsistence, made the Danube Delta a place of emigration, or at least of transit. Very few of the people born here stay through adulthood; at the same time, the origins of the inhabitants fall within a wide range, as people from the most various places of Romania can be found in the delta. The total population has somewhat remained constant throughout the 20th century; there were 12,000 inhabitants in the 1890s, and 14,000 before the Second World War. Romanians count for approximately 80%, and Ukrainians for 10%. Other people living in the delta include Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians (1992). Distinctive for the region, but very vague as an ethnic entity are the Lipovans, descendants of the Orthodox Old Rite followers who fled Russia in the 18th century from religious persecution. About a third of the employed population is engaged in fishing and pisciculture, while another third is engaged in farming (1996). However, the quasi-totality practice fishing, more or less legally, as a means of subsistence or extra money.
The Ukrainian part of the delta is very well populated compared to the Romanian one. The town of Izmail has a population of 85,000, and Vilkovo, the main center of Lipovan community, 11,000 (2001).
Source: www.wikipedia.org