This article presents the issue of human evolution while Homo Sapiens is a centre of ecosystems, shaking natural selection and being involved in a demographic expansion, facing the challenges of its own reproduction as well. The highest population growth rates over the last three centuries and the danger of exhausting resources needed for the existence of today’s and future generations are discussed. The club of Rome is one of the first informal scientists’ group and acts as a whistle-blower. In the 1970s it was indicated using the method of system dynamics that a high population growth rate in the developing countries is world menace and its stop have been recommended, while the UN undertook a multifaceted population programme aimed at birth control and acceleration of demographic transition in those countries (at present embracing 81% of world’s population, about 7 billion by 2011). It is highlighted that many versions have been drafted concerning the future population growth and the transition finalising but nothing is being said about the post-transition perspectives. This is the context where the Bulgarian case is presented as an example of fast transition without reaching stable population and jumping into negative natural growth while the descending birth rates, increasing mortality and fast ageing are dominating: a process acquiring the nature of a crisis. The hypothesis is that the same model could be followed by the global population. This model considered by some Bulgarian scholars as the demographic transition’s fifth stage, probably might lead to the end of Homo Sapiens’s existence. Avoidance of such perspective is to be among the key issues on researchers’ agenda having in mind the responsibility not only for the next generation, but the human being surviving on the planet alike.

Fertility dynamics during the last decades is analyzed in the paper. The central argument is that teenage fertility in Bulgaria is too high compared to the other European countries, what calls the need for a special policy. The society is misguided with respect to the assessment of fertility trends, as far as the general opinion it that it is too low and decreasing, while in reality it has been increasing during the last decade. The present levels of fertility are at the European medium level. The tendencies are upwards, and the expectation based on some demographic arguments (restructuring of the age distribution of fertility) are that this trend will continue in the future. Nevertheless urgent policy is needed to decrease the teenage fertility. With the present policy the high teenage fertility is a modus of poverty alleviation, preformed rationally in a specific (“traditional”) social setting, typical for some segments of the ethnic Roma population. In these settings young people (teenagers) are being pushed to early childbearing by their extremely poor families as a source of income (provided by social assistance allowances distributed upon the income “per capita”) for the whole family. At the same time these teenagers “drop out” from school, which in turn perpetuates the vicious circle of poverty and early childbearing.

As the small rural villages in Bulgaria are defined villages with a population of 200 inhabitants. Half of the 5,000 villages in Bulgaria fall into this category, but they occupied only 8.2 percent of the country‘s rural population according to the census of population and housing in 2011. Due to the prolonged impact of the processes of depopulation on vast, predominantly agricultural areas in the country, the category of the smallest villages increased significantly in scope during the period after 1946. The main reason for such kind of development is depopulation of villages with a population of 500, 1000 or even 2000 people who have passed into the category of the smallest settlements. At the same time, at least a large number of settlements from viewing the category is deleted in the past 6 decades by the complete depopulation, and in nearly 200 existing smallest villages no longer lives. Demographic situation among residents of the smallest villages, located mainly in mountain regions, is very difficult because of the marginal population aging. Only in inhabited mainly by pomacs in Rhodopes mountains small villages a positive natural growth is registered. This region has a chance for sustainable development due to relatively low migration mobility among the youngest rural population in Bulgaria.

This study is an effort to set up a causal model of relations between the educational structure (ES) of the economically active population (EAP) and the major determinants of its evolution. It sets out the results obtained in the process of identification and analysis of factors for changing EAP educational level over the transition period to market economy. The notion of “educational structure” was used as a measure of the population’s educational level. The study includes the most significant determinants having impact on formation and momentary state of EAP ES over the transition period. It is also a summary of the results of the review of the specialised economic and demographic studies on the issue of modelling the relations between EAP ES and the major determinants of its evolution. In addition, the main categories were discussed of macroeconomic models where population’s educational level is present as a separate element and could be used to identify the relations between EAP ES and major determinants of its evolution at macroeconomic level. A review was made of the published research works where the subject-matter of study were EAP ES partial dependencies (or sub-groups thereof) from a specific determinant and the models of such dependencies. Two causal models describing the process of formation and the cross-sectional state of EAP ES in Bulgaria over the reference period were propounded.

The current study describes how through a complete analysis on the research of Bulgarian historical demography we determine its place in the Bulgarian historiography. Investigating the historiography devoted on this topic allowed us to reach one main conclusion: despite the results in the research of the demographical history of Bulgaria, it is still in an early stage of its development as a separate domain in the historiography of our country. In order to overpass this stage and to reveal the perspectives in its development we determine the main future tasks for the researchers who would put their efforts in this research field.