Bulgaria’s overall population decline was considered one of the severest in the world, the International Herald Tribune said in an article headlined “In shrinking Bulgaria, where are the people?”.

All 20 of Bulgaria’s larger cities had lost population since 1989, The International Herald Tribune said. The only exception was Sofia, the country’s capital.

Bulgaria’s population would decline from 7.7 to 5 million people, or by 34 per cent, by 2050, a US Population Reference Bureau study said, as quoted by The International Herald Tribune.
The only country that would lose more of its population was Swaziland where 38 per cent of the population had HIV, the study said.

The head of the demographic policy office at the Labour and Social Policy Ministry, Emilia Voynova, was quoted by The International Herald Tribune as saying that in Bulgaria there were 1.5 workers for every two pensioners and the “ratio is getting worse”. In Italy, a country that also has population problems, the ratio was four workers for every pensioner, she said.

The head of population statistics at the Bulgarian National Statistical Institute, Yordan Kaltchev, said that the population decline had begun before 1989, but speeded up after the collapse of the communism and the changes to the economy in 1989. After this point, about 10 per cent of the population had emigrated.