Many people, predominantly young and qualified, еmigrate or dream of emigrating from the Balkan countries to other European countries.
That phenomenon puts entire sectors of the economy in the region at risk and warrants urgent answers.
How the Balkan countries, including Bulgaria, are trying to cope with the challenges?
Turkey is the only country to have a real positive population growth rate of 1.32 percent last year.
The other positive growth country is Northern Macedonia. The increase is only 0.02 percent, so small that it can be a statistical error. And it is an increase not of the ethnic Macedonians who are actually declining, but of the Macedonian Albanians and Turks.
In Romania, the population growth in 2018 is - 0.73, and for Bulgaria - 0.71.
The weakest trend of negative growth is now in Albania - 0.06 percent.
Greece, Croatia and Serbia are at almost the same average level, with a trend of negative growth between - 0.46 and - 0.35.
Due to its demographic weakness, Bulgaria has often been referred to as the fastest shrinking nation in the world. There are several reasons why this designation fits the mark.
Bulgaria currently has roughly seven million inhabitants, a steep and ongoing decline from the nine million that it had in 1989 when its population peaked.
The ethnic composition of the country is approximately 85.2% Bulgarian, 8.8% Turkish, 4.9% Roma and 1.5% other, a category composed primarily of other European ethnicities.
The Bulgarian diaspora is thought to number over two million people, settled primarily in the European Union and Turkey. The diaspora grew rapidly following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the poor economic conditions prevalent during the transition away from communism and into capitalism.
By 2050 Bulgaria is projected to have slightly over five million inhabitants, reflecting a roughly 45% drop in population from the 1989 peak.
Overall, a combination of emigration and low birth rates, coupled with a relatively unattractive domestic economy means that the Republic of Bulgaria finds itself in rapid demographic decline.
There is more work to do to arrest Bulgaria’s decline and time is running out before the demographic situation becomes irreversible.
The Bulgarian government has made a commitment to arrest the decline and by 2030 maintain a sustainable population of around seven million.
Its success depends on strengthening pro-natalism (pro-birth position) tendencies and attracting limited immigration, and should it succeed it will provide a template for other Eastern European nations to follow.
(European Demographics)
