This article is about the demographic features of the population of Romania, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. About 89.3% of the people of Romania are ethnic Romanians (as per the 2022 Romanian census), whose native language, Romanian, is a Daco-Romance language, descended from Latin (more specifically from Vulgar Latin) with some French, German, English, Greek, Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian borrowings. Romanians are by far the most numerous group of speakers of an Eastern Romance language today. It has been said that they constitute "an island of Latinity" in Eastern Europe, surrounded on all sides either by Slavic peoples (namely Southern Slavic peoples and Eastern Slavic peoples) or by the Hungarians. The Hungarian minority in Romania constitutes the country's largest minority, or as much as 6.0 per cent of the entire population. With a population of about 19,000,000 people in 2022, Romania received 989,357 Ukrainian refugees on 27 May 2022, according to the United Nations (UN). The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022 triggered a major refugee crisis in Europe. In connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, as part of the Russian-Ukrainian war, by 15 May 2022, more than 6,223,821 Ukrainian refugees left the territory of Ukraine, moving to the countries closest to the west of Ukraine, of which more than 919,574 people fled to neighboring Romania. Population evolution Romania's population has declined steadily in recent years, from 21.83 million in 2002 to 19.95 million in 2014. Among the causes of population decline are high mortality, a low fertility rate after 1989, and tremendous emigration. In 1990, Romania's population was estimated to be 23.21 million inhabitants. For the entire period 1990–2006, the estimated population loss tops 1.5 million, but it is likely to be higher, given the explosion of migration for work after 2001 and the tendency of some migrants to settle permanently in the countries where they live. Sources give varied estimates for Romania's historical population. The National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (NIRDI) gives the following numbers (the figure for 2020 was provided by the National Institute of Statistics - INSSE): Ethnic groups Slightly more than 10% of the population of Romania is formed of minorities of Romania. The principal minorities are Hungarians and Roma, although other smaller ethnic groups exist too.