The life expectancy of a person aged x years isconsidered one of the most general measures of the socio-economic characteristics of a particular country. Although in interpreting life expectancy we should take into consideration its conventionality, this characteristic is a lot more often used in comparison with the other elements in the life table. As a general rule, in a number of papers, what is meant when the life expectancy is mentioned is the longevity at birth. The synthetic character of the measure is determined by the fact that it reflects the changes of the death rates in the different age groups. The paper presents a discrete method published by Edwardo Arriaga in 1984, which helps to explain the change in the life expectancy considering the changes in the age-specific mortality rates. This method can be applied for x = 0, i. e. for a newborn baby as well as for the life expectancy between two randomly chosen, definite ages. The method presented here can be used to analyse the changes and the differences in the death rates according to gender, region, ethnic belonging etc. This paper analyses the life expectancy dynamics of Bulgarian population during the 1974-2009 period. With the help of respective life tables and the Arriaga method, the different effects of changes in the level and age structure of mortality are assessed.

A technique for age-specific mortality analysis using the surviving function is proposed. We locate some points of demographic importance on the curve of surviving by using the numbers of left alive to different ages and calculate finite differences from them. To facilitate the interpretation of the results, we have applied numerical interpretation of some functional relations between life table variables. The method has been applied to the case of Bulgaria: we have studied the trends in surviving and age-specific mortality for women and men in this country for a long period of time (from the middle of last century until present). In Bulgaria, more and more women survive to late adult ages from the beginning of this century. Unlike tendency exists among Bulgarian men – less and less of them survive to late adult ages from the 1980s. It is in contradiction with the situation in the contemporary developed world.

The paper aims to reveal the impact ofeducational characteristics of women on the risk of second birth. The study is based on data from Gender and Generation survey, wave 1, 2004. In order to study the effect of women’s educational level and activity on the risk of second birth we apply piecewise exponential model. The model controls also for women’s ethnicity, family background, age of first birth and partnership status. Additional controls for calendar time, partner’s education and sex of first child are also included. The results reveal the presence of strong negative educational gradient in the risk of second birth in Bulgaria. Among women with lowest educational level the risk of giving birth to another child is highest. In the period since 1990 the differences in the hazard rates of women with low, secondary and university are steadily declining but the trend is slower among lowly educated females. The analysis reveals also that both partners’ educational characteristics have strong direct effects on the risk of second birth. However, in a combined model the female educational level and activity offsets the effect of partner’s characteristics which become insignificant. This result is explained by the high employment rates of women and the prevalence of dual earning model in Bulgaria.

The demographic transition as a change of the rate of natural increment is a process initially observed and predicted in Europe concerning a period of almost two centuries. The present situation is interpreted mainly as a change of the ratio between the birth and death rate leading to under reproductive level, ageing and diminishing of the size and proportion of European population in the world trend. The Bulgarian case is an example of negative growth called sometimes demographic crisis. Even in this case demographic process is not uniform. The existing greater ethnical groups exercise different stages of this demographic transition. The article includes presentation of three demographic profiles of the three main groups – Bulgarian, Turks and Romas by which way it is demonstrated that the transition is over among Bulgarians, sharing 83% of the total population when the two groups – of Turks and Romas are still above the reproductive rate by 2–3.5 children per woman. The authors considered this as a positive phenomena in case of adequate population policy optimizing the growth and quality of human capital and standard of living of all citizen s of the country.

Continuous decline over the past six decades, the number of rural population has led to the removal of about 1000 rural settlements in the List of settlements in Bulgaria and to a serious erosion of the rural settlement network. Its continuing decline is predetermined by the fact that currently in 200 villages practically nobody lives, and the number of dropouts each year by administrative villages without inhabitants from the list of settlements is not declining. If the rate of depopulation of villages in Bulgaria continue with the pace of the last decade, in fact after 50 years of its peasant population now existing and 5100 villages will disappear completely from the map. The proposed paper aims to focus on the relationship between the deterioration of the demographic situation in the villages and degeneration of the rural settlement network in Bulgaria. To achieve the set objective is an attempt to present actual replication potential of rural residents through the prism of four categories of villages grouped according to number of inhabitants – small (500 inhabitants), medium (from 500 to 1000 inhabitants), large (1000 to 3000 inhabitants) and largest (over 3000 residents). The hypothesis that was proven in the course of the study is that changes in demographic potential of the rural population are very closely related to changes in structure and scope of the rural settlement network. The size of settlements and the type of unifying them rural urban network significantly affect the dynamics of indicators of natural and mechanical movement of the rural population.

During Post-Socialism social and economic inequalities among the largest ethnic groups in Bulgaria (ethnic Bulgarians, Bulgarian Turks and Roma) augmented significantly. This fact is often explained with cultural differences. The 2007 EUREQUAL survey allows us to examine an extensive body of empirical evidence relating ethnic inequalities in the country. Comparative analysis of the beliefs and values of these three largest ethnic communities confirms the claim that culture does matter. But the comparative data suggest that the exclusion from labour market and from political and social spheres matters much more than religion and culture when we try to understand political, moral, and gender differences. On the other hand, ethnicity in the “nationalizing national state“ is a major factor for minorities’ economic and social exclusion. The aborted process of replacement of the model of nation from ethnic to a political one, together with the prolonged economic crisis, enforced the role of ethnicity on the construction of inequalities and on social exclusion of the largest minority groups in the country.

The paper looks at inequalities emerging between different generations in the context of political-economic reforms in Bulgaria. Its central concern is with the senior generation (those between 50 years and retirement) which after 1989 has faced exclusion from the new formal labour market. Particularly affected are factory workers as the closure and scaling down of once state-owned enterprises has left a large number redundant and with little hope of future employment. In the paper I explore these issues by focussing on two case studies involving female ex-factory workers from the city of Plovdiv, and on the strategies they adopted in their attempts to reenter the labour market. While reentry is possible, the costs are high and the future insecure and uncertain. Devaluation of the older generation and their marginalisation in terms of the labour market has occurred in parallel to the increased privileging and prominence of the younger generation in the formal market economy. Such generational inequalities are seen as one consequence of postsocialist neoliberal reforms.

Family studies are of utmost significance as it represents established ethnic norms and values. The current article presents some of the results from the completed social study which is part of “The Synchronization of the Bulgarian National Values with Those of the European Union: Accomplishments and Setbacks“ project. The project deals with research of Bulgarian Muslims in the country. The economic and ethno-cultural factors contribute the most to the formation and evolution of the set of values of each individual while the influence of the environmental ones cannot be ignored either. The analysis allows us to conclude that Bulgarian Muslims, when compared to the rest of the ethnic and religious communities, seem to retain their traditional patriarchal values the most which is evident in both pre-marital and marital relations. Proof of this is the high esteem of marriage which manifests itself in the Islamic religion beliefs, the well maintained traditional legal environment, the social and economic status of both men and women as family units which preserves their traditional roles and upholds their high degree of traditionalism and conservatism. Territorial delimitation, the specific characteristics of their employment, and the strong influence of the Muslim religion and ethno-cultural traditions support these processes. All these processes contribute to the high appreciation of reproductive values and norms as evidenced by the favorable values of key indicators for natural reproduction. The modernization process is relatively slow due to the differences in demographic trends among different ethnic and religious communities in which higher birth rate remains. The analysis leads us to conclude that Bulgarian Muslims are emerging as the most conservative group in the country.

The results of a study on the economic activity levels by educational categories over the period 1985-2001 in Bulgaria are presented in the article. The study is focussed on analysing variation of economic activity level over the above-mentioned period depending on the combination of three socio-demographic attributes: sex, age and level of education. The sex and age are the two basic demographic attributes having a significant influence on the economic activity and the education is one of the most important labour force qualitative characteristics in the modern global economy. The combination of those three attributes gives an opportunity to study, at a certain degree, not only the variation of economic activity of the different cohorts of labour force but also to retrace the trends of its evolution over the transition period to market economy in the country. Changes in the regulations having impact on the educational system over the first part of the transition period to market economy in the country are examined as well. Indices measuring the size of the labour force and economic activity as well as the function of economic activity curves by educational categories are discussed. Critical analysis of the available data base over the studied period in Bulgaria is made. The results of the analysis of the 24 economic activity curves constructed by educational categories over the period 1985-2001 are presented in the article.

Setting the topic of migration politics in Bulgarian territories during the renaissance as a main subject of this article relies on the statement that for every type of population migration different migration politics apply. Due to the nature of this research and in accordance to the specifics of the available source material the exposition describes the main points about the migration politics that were conducted by the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Austrian (since 1867 – the Austro-Hungarian) Empire and the neighboring countries on the Balkan peninsula: the Down-Danube principalities, the Greek kingdom and the Serbian kingdom. The exposition goes in detail over the different politics, their aims, the actions which are taken to realize those aims and their influence on different aspects of the overall process. The summary of their character and specifics leads to the following conclusions: 1. By its migration politics every country aims to attract population to its own territories. 2. To realize the goals that each politics tried to achieve, various actions and methods were taken which often were even violent. 3. Also, these actions had diverse influence over the population that inhabited the studied geographical space. Mainly, this influence was negative and restricted the temps of population development.