BULGARIA`S OLDER GENERATION STUDY

Over the last few decades we have witnessed dynamic demographic changes around the world, in the European Union (EU) and in Bulgaria in particular. These are related to the decline in the population (depopulation) and its ageing (most often measured by the share of the population aged 65 and over in the total population), as well as migration. As early as the 1980s, the rate of natural population growth in Bulgaria began to decline, but for the first time in 1990 a negative natural growth rate was registered (-0.4‰), and in the following decades it was quite low - around -5‰. Today, Bulgaria is among the EU countries where these processes are most dynamic and even dramatic. As a result of the two factors (natural increase and migration), the population in Bulgaria is decreasing from nearly 9 million in 1988 to about 6.5 million in 2021.