Nothing but LIES and PROPAGANDA!
BBC is unfortunately on par with the National Enquirer (NE) when it comes to bias and reliability. And I have repeatedly observed that the NE is actually really good in reporting true upcoming issues at least in the celebrity world.

First and foremost, as the BBC "article" states, Latvia and Lithuania are potentially worse than Bulgaria. Not that being second to last in terms of population growth is anything to brag about but this is yet another example of BBC "journalism" that serves primarily a propaganda purpose. Why single out Bulgaria when it seems the same problem plagues many former Eastern Block countries??
Furthermore, if you look at the stats on Wikipedia, the last reliable data available for Bulgaria was from 2015. Based on that data there were 10+ other countries worse than Bulgaria in terms of population decline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

If you look at the actual UN report the BBC cough..shitpost...cough references you will see that, again, it does NOT single out Bulgaria as the "winner" in this category but mentions it along other countries with largely the same problems. Many of those countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc have been praised relentlessly by UK media as a model of embracing capitalism after socialism's collapse. Yet they seem to also be in pretty dire states, not unlike Bulgaria. Actually, one of the countries mentioned in the report on par with Bulgaria is Andorra - a rich tax haven, hardly on anybody's list as a country to bitch about in any capacity, including population.

https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Hig...

"...The largest relative reductions in population size over that period, with losses of around 20 per cent or more, are expected in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and the Wallis and Futuna Islands."

"...As a proportion of
the total population, the largest projected declines
are for Lithuania and Bulgaria, where the projected
population in 2050 will be 23 per cent smaller than
in 2019, followed by Latvia (22 per cent), the Wallis
and Futuna Islands (20 per cent), and Ukraine (20
per cent)."

"...Another eight countries or areas also experienced population decrease of more than five per cent since 2010: Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna Islands."

And last but not least, the BBC shitpost itself states that Bulgaria does not keep stats on emigration, which (again as the article states) is the biggest factor in these "terrifying stats" on population shrinkage.

"...Low birth rates are the biggest factor for such steep decline. But what sets Bulgaria apart from other declining European countries is its massive outbound migration. The government does not keep reliable statistics but some economists, including Cvetan Davidkov, estimate that at least 60,000 Bulgarians leave each year.

So...the famous BBC decided to do a "sky is falling" article based on the unofficial estimates of one economist!? How convenient!

Anyways, unfortunately I will have to call malice on this one instead of stupidity, even though BBC has lately been the source of some really stupid crap. If you do a quick search on the negative press concerning Bulgaria you will find out that the vast majority of it comes from the UK. In fact, I challenge Bulgarians reading this and living in the UK to find me a single positive article on Bulgaria published in the British press in the last 15 years. Nothing but shitposting about Bulgaria while at the same time heaping praise on the "Baltic wonders" such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and even Ukraine. Well, as both Wikipedia and the UN report make it quite clear, those "wonderful" countries have very little to brag about when it comes to either economy or population. If life is so great in the Baltics, why is everybody there leaving too, on par with Bulgarian emigration rates??

I will also have to disagree strongly with other people saying mrtksn's comments are spot on. The reality is much simpler. Bulgaria, together with the rest of the Eastern Block, was unlucky enough to move towards a capitalist economy and Western "values" at a time when these ideas were already in decline in the West itself. So, by the time the country had changed sufficiently to embrace a capitalist economy and lifestyle...there was nothing left to embrace. The Western world is crumbling too, but of course, it will oppress and abuse small countries like Bulgaria long before it admits its own shortcomings. Basically, Bulgaria spent the 90s battling mafia and corruption and that was the true "transition" period, akin to the American "Frontier" times. When the (illegal) redistribution of wealth was more or less complete, and the country was deemed sufficiently "civilized" to join institutions such as the EU, Bulgaria realized that the West had nothing to offer except predatory practices that destroy the standard of living in Bulgaria. Those "rich" Western countries are themselves collapsing, and UK is one of the worst in that respect. You need to look no further than the Brexit fiasco to see how desperate things in the UK are. The sad reality is that the last 19 years (since year 2000) have been lost time for the West and as such the situation in "newcomer" capitalist countries like Bulgaria would be proportionally worse. As a result, even the characteristics of the Bulgarian emigration have changed dramatically. In the 1990s, people leaving Bulgaria (like myself) were mostly intent on leaving for good. Having lived through 2 massive recessions and seeing that the shitshow in the West is rapidly catching up with the Bulgarian one, many of those "permanent" emigrants migrated back to Bulgaria. This reverse emigration was especially evident after the 2008 recession when about 40% of the young Bulgarians who left their country in the 1990s to go to school/work in US an Western Europe came back to Bulgaria and settled there. WHERE IS THE BBC ARTICLE ON THAT PHENOMENON??
This reverse emigration continues to this day and in fact the little data that is available on the subject suggests that it is primarily talented/educated/wealthy Bulgarians that are coming back while the new emigrants to the West are mostly blue collar workers. Moreover, even those new blue collar emigrants are not emigrating permanently. The attitude towards immigrants and hence the employment/financial opportunities for them have drastically soured in the West over the last 10 years. So, when these new emigrants go to another country they quickly realize that life in the new country won't be much easier or significantly better renumerated compared to Bulgaria. So, most of them stick around for a year or two and then they come back.

In summary, IMHO most UK media (including BBC), is on a crusade against European former communist countries but is particularly biased and vicious towards Bulgaria. This has been going on since the times of Churchill who is famous for repeatedly stating that he will "uproot that thorny bush" (referring to Bulgaria) that is interfering with UK imperial foreign policy. While Bulgaria is clearly not in a good spot population-wise, it is not much different from most other former Eastern Block members. The problems Bulgaria faces have a lot more to do with the decline of capitalism (late stage capitalism anyone?) and Western democracies in general, than some kind of inherent problems with the country as BBC and other UK media have been consistently insinuating over the last 100+ years. Bulgaria was simply kind of "late to the show". So, the combination of a transition period and crumbling Western world left the country stuck between a rock and a hard place. However, despite all the lies and propaganda in UK media, the country is probably experiencing reverse, quality, emigration by having many of the Western-educated Bulgarians who left for good come back home. In addition, many of the blue collar workers who leave the country are only doing so temporarily. Upon realizing the harsh conditions in the countries they try to emigrate to, most of them come back within 2-3 years.

There is simply no true journalist any more. It's mostly clikbait shitposting even by "respected" outposts such as BBC or The Economist. The closest you will come to real journalism these days is ProPublica but even they have been succumbing to Mammon lately.

What comes out of many Western media outlets these days is simply a version of "Look, over there - these other countries have it worse than us!" It's nothing but a diversion tactic to shift attention from how rapidly deteriorating quality of life has been in the West over the last 20 years.
Just my 2c.