Bulgaria is the world’s fastest-shrinking country
Bulgarian here, there are a lot of aspects the article does not cover.<p>First one is that up until 1989, Bulgaria was largely an agriculture state with the soviet union being the only market. A heavily controlled market at that. Some might argue that Bulgaria used to produce computers but it was mostly a small assembly line using Intel chips, so no, not really. Mind you the math education was on a good level, hence the reason why so many people can easily jump into cs. But families like most rural countries tended to be large. I happen to have a family tree dating back to the late 17-th century and most of the people back then had 8+ children. Needless to say, that isn&#x27;t the case anymore. Looking at people around me, I can only think of one or two examples that have more than 1 child. Combine that with the other factors in the articles and you start seeing the bigger picture.<p>Now, on immigration: I was a child in the early 90&#x27;s when the first real information from the west started coming in. And as people tend to do, we only saw what we wanted to see. I grew up daydreaming about the day I&#x27;d move west where everything is bread and butter. And I did as early as I could: I was ~16 at the time. I was pretty disappointed in a lot of aspects: life abroad was not as advertised. It turned out to be complicated and rough. Yes, roads were better, streats were cleaner and people had a tendency to try to maintain the environment around them. Something which has started to happen here noticably. But there I was faced with entirely new problems which I would have never imagined could exist in the real world.<p>As I went through university, some other rough moments hit me hard and at the end I was so fed up, I wanted to move away from there. As I was talking to old friends, I figured that as a software engineer with a university degree, moving back to Bulgaria might be a possible option. Back then getting a work permit was still difficult as a new EU member state so I decided to skip the hassle and move back and give it a shot. Bottom line is it turned out to be a a great solution.<p>Like most market economies these days, young people and by extension working people gravitate towards the big cities. And naturally the smaller cities are dying out.<p>Because life is incredibly cheap compared to most of Europe, your odds of making a decent life are much greater - the bar can be set much lower. To give you an idea - my monthly paycheck at my first job was just over 700 euros(underpaid even for a developer with little to no experience). I had rent, bills, transportation and food to take care of and even with that, I was still able to save up around 250&#x2F;month. Something unthinkable for most European capitals on such a tight budget. Now, many years later, things look really well for me.<p>Ocassionally you do hear someone on the streets saying something along the lines of &quot;See this <i>points at something</i>, this would never happen in any other country&quot;. Since what I&#x27;ve said here has been a subject of discussion with many friends, we usually look at each other, roll our eyes and walk away. Which brings me to the final point:<p>The article doesn&#x27;t cover the large amount of people returning home after spending years abroad either. And looking at many of my friends, the number is pretty high: a good 60-70% at a glance. Far not only software engineers(who on average make a few times the national average).<p>What I&#x27;m trying to say is that a lot of people still live with the illusion that in countries such as France, Germany, Italy and so on, everyone has a 1000 square meter mansion with 2 hellicopters and a collection of one-off hypercars. Which is not to say that my life abroad was a bad experience - on the contrary. If anything, it made me a lot more resiliant and capable of handling difficult situations. As a matter of fact I&#x27;d encourage young people to pack a bag and move abroad for a year while you are still 19(referring to the intro of the first book of the Dark Tower series titled &quot;What it&#x27;s like to be 19&quot;).