Bulgaria unveils plan to boost population, improve mortality

Bulgaria announced ambitious, long-term reforms Monday to ward off demographic catastrophe and bring the country's mortality and birth rates into line with European levels, the minister of labor and social affairs said Monday.

Facing widespread poverty, a sharply declining population base, and an infant mortality rate nearly three times the European Union average, the government set out specific targets in a 15-year plan to improve Bulgarian living standards.

The strategy, which must be approved by all the political parties in parliament, "targets a reproduction of quality" and an increase in life expectancy, said the minister, Emilia Maslarova.

"The demographic trends in Bulgaria are extreme compared to the EU," which Bulgaria hopes to join in 2007, she said.

Specifically, the government would aim to reduce infant mortality from 12.3 per 1000 (in 2004) to 9.5 in 2015 and 7 in 2020, and to boost the fertility coefficient through financial incentives from 1.2 children per woman of child-bearing age to 1.5 by 2020.

The plan also calls for housing credits and a network of infant childcare to help families lift themselves out of poverty.

More than 70 percent of newborns arrive into very poor families and are "threatened with social exclusion" Maslarova said, a clear allusion to Bulgaria's Roma, or gypsy, population, which has a much higher birthrate -- and poverty rate -- than average.

The government estimates that nine percent of Bulgaria's people are Roma.

The plan also seeks to reverse a declining population.

From 1990 to 2004, the number of Bulgarians declined by 1.2 million to a total of 7.76 million, according to official statistics. The US Census Bureau estimates that Bulgaria's population will drop off another 34 percent by 2050.

The plan seeks to lower the country's extremely high abortion rate -- 75 terminated pregnancies for every 100 live births -- to 55 per 100 by 2015, and to also lower the rate of births out of wedlock, currently 48 percent.

Finally, the government is seeking to stem the outward flow of highly educated youth -- 217,000 Bulgarians emigrated between 1992 and 2001.