Abstract

The population of this country has aroused interest ever since its foundation. At the time when our ancestors came here from the steppe near the Volga river they certainly knew how many warriors there were in the horde, how many families, they also knew the number of women and children they were supposed to provide food, transportation and shelter for. The khans and tsars needed data on the inhabitants, on the number of soldiers available, on taxpayers, etc. We do not know exactly how this data was gathered, but surely there must have been a way to obtain such data from the separate clans, tribes and territorial units. Later on, at the time when the Third Bulgarian state was established in 1877-1878, the interest towards the population kept growing, since the state authorities - both central and local - needed statistics on human resources due to economic, political, social and other considerations, with respect to the state constitution and the making of decisions on the country's development. The factors and causes, determining population growth in the country, are of a complex nature. Apart from the purely biological - the need to reproduce in the individual families, there are also the social, economic, spiritual (moral), etc. The main factors determining population growth are the birth rate and mortality rate, setting the natural increase in population, and the passive increase rate, formed as the difference between the number of emigrants and immigrants.