The deep demographic crisis that Romania has been going through, like most Eastern European states, requires complex analyses. The present study aims at analyzing the numerical evolution of the rural population of Romania, extended for more than 100 years (1912–2020), on the basis of which a multivariate analysis was subsequently performed. The manifestation of specific patterns of territorial evolution and the identification of the incidence of some physical–geographical and socio-economic factors are investigated by means of the dynamics of certain distinct processes, such as rural depopulation or ability to adapt to various transitions. The identification of the fragile and dynamic areas allows discussions on the need for public policies better oriented towards mending excesses, illustrated by the persistence of some gaps, in terms of access to basic services. At the same time, the identification of trends towards a shrinking population system, with an increasingly evident concentration of the population in peri-urban areas or along major transport routes, calls for specific policies geared more towards environmental management in depopulated and depopulating areas, or towards creating the conditions for sustainable spatial planning in high-density areas. For the time being, the disadvantaged areas are rather ignored, while the extension of metropolitan areas is rather chaotic and poorly regulated.

The present study proposes a multiscale analysis of the dynamics of life expectancy at birth in Romania from 1990 to 2018, starting from the hypothesis of its dependence on the level of economic development or the quality of the public health infrastructure. Information from official sources (National Institute of Statistics (INS), Eurostat) was processed using agglomerative hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis and multiple regression. The main part of the analysis is devoted to the evolution of this indicator by gender and residence area. The conclusions of this study converge towards certifying the existence of some strong correlations between the evolution of life expectancy at birth at the territorial level and the illustrative factors of the level of economic and social development or of the quality of the environment. The persistence or amplification of territorial disparities attests to the general process of regional polarization. The results of the study confirm the hypothesis of a significant correlation between the level of economic development and that of the quality of the public health infrastructure, expressed through the dynamics of life expectancy at birth.

For the past 25 years, Romania crossed a contradictory evolution between the social–educational and economic aspects. From the inflexible educational system of the totalitarian regime, when all graduates from different levels of education immediately received a job (to avoid unemployment—a phenomenon that the communist authorities did not tolerate), there was a transition to an educational system marked by frequent structural and methodological changes and by an increasing gap between the educational offer and the real necessities of the labor market. In this context, the aim of this paper was to analyzes, in the light of the sociology of education, the difficulties met by the new generations that enter the labor market after following a previously established educational model, often intended to be changed according to European sociological principles, but with deeply rooted mentalities and structure, actually difficult to alter. The ability to adapt to the new socio-economic context and to adjust educational programs to the new labor market requirements, in a strong correlation with the European policies, is constantly taken into account by interpreting the results in the spirit of the sociology of education and sustainable development.