You have to bring own toilet paper to the hospital and these kinds of things. The government is introducing a number of measures to try to tackle depopulation by increasing the birth rate: offering help with the costs of fertility treatment, giving childcare, and mortgage support.

Fittingly, it's located in the town’s shuttered kindergarten. Bulgaria has the fastest declining population in the world. Yes, that’s how much of … And Bulgaria is not interested in adding to its integration troubles, says Mr Simeonov, when it has enough difficulties with its own “gypsy refugees” (the language is decorous; in 2014 Mr Simeonov dismissed Bulgaria’s Roma as “arrogant, ferocious anthropoids”). After Communism fell, in 1989, and collective farms were broken up, that trend of leaving the countryside for the towns sharpened. But overall, Rupeva says the mood among the elderly and those few younger people still left in the villages is one of quiet fury. Employers say they cannot find skilled workers; locals say there is no work. So does enticing émigrés back. Both received treatment they needed and went home satisfied. “Their whole attitude is that they’ve been abandoned by the world and no one cares about them,” she says. About 1 million Bulgarians live outside the country. While young professionals are leaving home in search of higher wages, better working conditions and a less corrupt environment, many Bulgarians do not even wait until graduation to start looking abroad for opportunities. Western European countries like Germany have older populations, but their wealth leaves them better placed to weather the fiscal implications of a declining workforce, and they are importing immigrants. Thanks in part to a border fence manned by guards with a reputation for brutality, the refugees who poured out of Turkey in 2015-16 largely bypassed Bulgaria for Greece. Last year in the U.S., the total number of births hit a 32-year low, and the average fertility rate dropped to 1.72 births per woman from 1.76 — the fourth straight year the rate has decreased. A population decline (or depopulation) in humans is a reduction in a human population caused by short term events such as pandemics, wars, famines or other catastrophes, or by long-term demographic trends, as in sub-replacement fertility rate, or persistent emigration..

As a result, Bulgaria’s population, as is the case throughout the industrialized world, is growing older. All this means that Bulgaria’s future is very hard to predict. Angel Dzhambazki, a member of the European Parliament from Bulgaria's far-right VMRO party, said his bloc opposes the admission of any refugees to Bulgaria. Or I can start an argument with my neighbor.”. With her children living elsewhere and few friends left, she would not know where to turn if she had an accident.

Some are in the cemetery, the rest are in towns.". Established in 2004, the Thrace Foundation says it funds research and improves access to museums and protection of cultural heritage while caring for its founder’s collection of more than 3,000 precious artefacts.