Depopulated Bulgaria: 592 Villages have only One Person Each or are Completely Deserted

Society | September 13, 2022, Tuesday // 11:17
Bulgaria: Depopulated Bulgaria: 592 Villages have only One Person Each or are Completely Deserted @Flickr

A total of 592 villages in Bulgaria have no population or a single-digit number of inhabitants. This is shown by a BTA reference in the data as of December 31, 2021 of the National Register of Settlements (NRS) of the NSI.

As of the same date, there are 5257 settlements in the country, of which 257 are towns, 4998 are villages, and there are two monasteries with the status of a settlement - Klisur and Rila.

Villages without a population or with a single-digit number of inhabitants are 15 more than in the previous year, 2020, the data show. The total number of settlements in which one to a maximum of nine people live is 425, and 167 are those in which there is no permanent resident. Villages without population increase by three compared to 2020.

There are exactly 60 villages with one inhabitant in the country. Two people live in 54 settlements, and three in 50. Fifty-one are the settlements in Bulgaria with four inhabitants each. There are 38 villages with a permanent population of five people, and 37 villages with six inhabitants. A total of 41 villages have seven inhabitants, another 51 have eight inhabitants, and 43 villages have a population of nine.

Most villages without a population and with a single-digit number of inhabitants are in Gabrovo region

Gabrovo region has the most completely deserted villages or villages with a single-digit number of inhabitants - a total of 163 or 3 more compared to the previous year. There are a total of 349 settlements in this region, so nearly half of them are either uninhabited or have less than 10 inhabitants.

In general, deserted settlements are located in 12 regions of the country, and those with a single-digit number of inhabitants are scattered in 22 regions.

After the Gabrovo region in terms of number of settlements in this group, ranks the Veliko Tarnovo region. A total of 336 settlements are located in it, of which 50 are without a permanent population and 88 villages - with less than 10 inhabitants. More than half of the villages in the considered group - 301 in total - are located in the two regions.

There are 12 uninhabited villages and 26 with a single-digit population in the Kardzhali region. In the Smolyan region, there are 10 settlements without a population and 33 in which less than 10 people live. In Kyustendil region, there are seven villages without inhabitants and 19 - with less than 10 inhabitants. Six settlements in the Haskovo region are without a single inhabitant and another 22 with a single-digit number of people. There are 5 villages without population and 28 with less than 10 inhabitants in the Sofia Region. In the districts of Stara Zagora and Targovishte, there are four uninhabited villages and respectively 5 and 18 settlements with a single-digit number of inhabitants. Three villages each in Blagoevgrad and Dobrich regions do not have a single inhabitant, and respectively 24 and 9 settlements have less than 10 inhabitants. The last district in which there are villages without a population is Burgas. On its territory are located two villages without permanent residents and 5 with a single-digit number of inhabitants.

Inhabitants are under 100 in 1716 populated places

The BTA report also shows that a total of 1,716 settlements, including the Klisura and Rila monasteries, which have the status of a settlement, have a population of less than 100 people. If the villages with zero population are added to them - 167, the total number of settlements with less than 100 inhabitants becomes 1883 - or more than a third of all settlements in the country, including towns.

The group of villages with a population between 101 and 200 is the most numerous

The most numerous is the group of settlements in which between 101 and 200 people live inclusively - 747, and compared to the end of 2020, their number increased by 20. Next is the group of villages with a population between 201 and 300 people, which includes 496 settlements. The third largest is the group of settlements with inhabitants between 301 and 400 people, which includes 408 villages.

The biggest Bulgarian village – Lozen, is larger than 148 towns

And at the end of last year, the largest Bulgarian village remained Lozen (Sofia-city region) with a population of 6,142 people, the same number of inhabitants as Hisarya. In fact, in terms of population, it is larger than 148 towns or more than half of the towns in the country.

The next largest village is Aydemir (Silistra region) with a population of 5295 people. The top 10 largest villages are completed by Bistrica (Sofia-city region) with 5,198 people, Draginovo (Pazardzhik region) with 4,670 inhabitants, Kazichene (Sofia-city region) with its 4,445 inhabitants, Rozino (Plovdiv region) with 4,228 inhabitants, Gradets (Sliven region) with a population of 4,150, Trud (Plovdiv region) - 4,068, Bukovlak (Pleven region) with 3,818 inhabitants and Malo Konare (Pazardzhik region) with 3,706.

It is curious that as many as 2,561 villages, or more than half of the country, are larger than the smallest town in Bulgaria - Melnik, in which only 171 people were registered at the end of last year. Exactly twelve villages - Valkovich, Draganovo, Kukuryak, Oreshnitsa and Yamino (Kardzhali region), Deleyna, Podgore and Toshevtsi (Vidin region), Babino (Kyustendil region), Banya (Burgas region), Bashtino (Silistra region) and Dinya (Stara Zagora Region) at the end of 2021 have the same population as the smallest town in Bulgaria.

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