At the beginning of 2005 Bulgarian Minister without Portfolio Filiz Kusmenova announced that Bulgarian population has shrunk by 1.2 million people over the last 15 years. It was estimated that for the period 1991-2001 alone Bulgaria’s population has dropped by 514 000 people.
Experts believe that this unfortunate data is due to two main reasons. First of all is the aging of the population as the number of Bulgarians aged above 65 is going up, while the number of children below 15 is going down. Data from the Bulgarian Social Ministry also showed that birth rate in the country has decreased by 8.3% over the past year which is the other significant cause. The actual birth deliveries in 2003 were still less than the number of those in 1980. The same survey pointed out that half of the children born in Bulgaria last year were out of wedlock. The report pinned that percentage at 48.7. Experts commented that the tendency was linked to the growing number of love couples living like families but without marriage vows.
Probably that is the reason why pupils in Bulgaria have shrunk by half a million for the last year. A survey of the National Statistics Institute revelled that in school year 1990-1991 there have been about 1.86 million pupils and in 2004 there were just 1.4 million. At the same time the number of students in Bulgarian universities has grown rapidly from 148 000 students in 1990 to 288 000 in 2005. The good news, according to the minister is that now there are many more well qualified teachers for Bulgarian children than 15 years ago-their number has grown from 20 000 (1990) to 122 000 (2005). So, we can all lay back and relax as our children will be well taught no matter how few they are!
