Deniz Kılınç / Istanbul, October 4 (HNA) – Bulgaria’s population shrank by 11.5 percent in the past decade to 6.52 million, its sharpest decrease registered to date, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) of Bulgaria said a press release on Monday, citing final data from a census held in 2021.
“We take censuses every ten years to provide a detailed picture of the population and the conditions in which they live, and while this is a snapshot in time, it shows how we change in the decades between censuses” read the press release.
The population of the country as of September 7, 2021, was at 6,519,789, including 3,383,527 (51.9 pct.) women and 3,136,262 (48.1 pct.) men (927 men per 1,000 women) according to the NSI of Bulgaria.
As much as 59.3 percent of the population decline was due to negative natural population growth. The remaining 40.7 percent resulted from migration, the statistical office said in the press release.
As of September 7, 2021, people over 65 years accounted for 23.5 percent of the total population, as their number rose by 12.6 percent from the previous census in 2011.
People in economically active age fell by 19.1 percent, forming 62.4 percent of the total population.
The census, Bulgaria’s 18th, was conducted from September 7 to October 10 through both online census software and household visits.
Bulgaria’s centre-right coalition of GERB and the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) led by former prime minister Boyko Borissov won 25.33 percent of the votes in Sunday’s snap general election, the country’s fourth parliamentary vote in 18 months, final official results showed on Monday.
Seven parties crossed the 4 percent threshold for entry into parliament amid record-low voter turnout, according to data by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) based on 100 percent of the ballots counted.