When The Macedonians and Gypsies in the country—whom Bulgarian official sources include as fully integrated into the Bulgarian population—are not counted separately, Bulgarians constitute about 91 percent of the population. The approximately 700,000 Turks out-number all other non-Bulgarians in the population by a large margin. Small numbers of Greeks, Romanians, Armenians, and Jews make up a total of only about 1 percent (see ch. 4).
In the absence of official statistics, the number of Macedonians and Gypsies are impossible to estimate accurately. It is probable that there are a few more Gypsies than Macedonians and that they total about 5 percent of the population. Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians), who tend to live separately, have been persecuted on occasion and have represented a social problem. Some authorities have listed them as a separate ethnic group but, with diminishing emphasis on religion, local authorities attempt to make no distinctions between them and the rest of the population.
Bulgaria is one of an extremely few countries in the world where the males in the population have outnumbered the females over a considerable portion of its modern history. This has been a phenomenon that could not be adequately explained by events or circumstances; but of nine censuses taken between 1887 and 1965, only in those taken in 1920 and 1947 did the females constitute a majority. These two years following the great wars were undoubtedly atypical in that, although Bulgaria did not suffer great manpower losses from war casualties, the males were probably more mobile, and many of them may not have returned to the country or, in the immediate aftermath of the wars, may not yet have settled down (see table 1).
Table 1. Bulgaria, Population by Age and Sex, 1973 Estimate
| Number of People | |||||
| in Age Group | Percentage of | Male | Female | Females per | |
| Age Group | (in thousands) | Total Population | (in thousands) | 100 Males | |
| Under 5 | 676 | 7.8 | 348 | 328 | 94 |
| 5-9 | 609 | 7.0 | 313 | 296 | 94 |
| 10-14 | 647 | 7.5 | 331 | 316 | 95 |
| 15-19 | 665 | 7.7 | 340 | 325 | 96 |
| 20-24 | 703 | 8.1 | 357 | 346 | 97 |
| 25-29 | 629 | 7.3 | 317 | 312 | 98 |
| 30-34 | 558 | 6.4 | 280 | 278 | 99 |
| 35-39 | 616 | 7.1 | 310 | 306 | 99 |
| 40-44 | 649 | 7.5 | 327 | 322 | 98 |
| 45-49 | 668 | 7.7 | 334 | 334 | 100 |
| 50-54 | 467 | 5.4 | 231 | 236 | 102 |
| 55-59 | 421 | 4.9 | 210 | 211 | 100 |
| 60-64 | 460 | 5.3 | 225 | 235 | 104 |
| 65-69 | 372 | 4.3 | 178 | 194 | 109 |
| 70-74 | 264 | 3.0 | 122 | 142 | 116 |
| 75 year | |||||
| and over | 263 | 3.0 | 110 | 153 | 139 |
| TOTAL | 8,667 | 100.0 | 4,333 | 4,334 | 100* |
| * Overall ratio for total population. | |||||
| Source: Adapted from Godfrey Baldwin, (ed.), International Population Reports, (U.S. Department of Commerce, Series P-91, No. 18), Washington, 1969. | |||||
The male majority, however, narrowed and has apparently evaporated for the foreseeable future. The reversal reflects a change in life expectancy statistics. Around the turn of the century average life expectancy was forty years, and females are estimated to have outlived males by less than six months. Seventy years later, average life expectancy had increased by twenty-five years, but females were outliving males by an average of about four years. Projected from the 1965 census and from vital statistics information accumulated since that time, numerical equality between the sexes came about in the late 1960s, and in mid-1973 it was estimated that females outnumbered males by the small majority of 4.334 million to 4.333 million.
Another exceptional feature of the Bulgarian population is the unusual number of very old people. Nearly 1 percent of the population in 1970 was eighty years old or older, and more than 500 people were centenarians. Of these, three-fifths were women.
People in rural areas, after having long outnumbered those in cities and towns, became the minority in 1969. More than four-fifths of the population was rural at the time of independence in 1878, and more than three-quarters was still rural in 1947. The movement to the towns accelerated with the post-World War II industrialization. Towns that attracted industries have grown by factors of five or more since 1920, and by far the most dramatic growth has occurred since 1947.
With 8.7 million people occupying 42,800 square miles in 1972, the average population density for the country was 203 persons per square mile. Regions where the densities were highest include the Sofia Basin and the southwestern portion of the Thracian Plain. The population was more dense than average in the western and central portion of the Danubian plateau, in the lower eastern Rodopi, and in the vicinities of Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea coast. It was least dense in the higher mountains, particularly in the high western Rodopi, the Pirin and the Rila, and along the narrow high ridge of the Stara Planina.
Dynamics