Bulgaria’s printed media accentuates on Thursday on the latest demographic data of the National Statistical Institute. The population of Bulgaria will be under 7 million people by 2019. Each year the Bulgarian population melts down with some 52,000 people, Standart daily frontpages a headline on April 13. The newspaper specifies that if the population of that country continues to dwindle at the current pace, it will amount to under 7 million people in two years only. On December 31, 2016 the population of Bulgaria amounted to 7,101,859 people, or 1.4% of the population of the European Union. Last year the population melted down with 51,925 people (0.7%) as compared to 2015. The data are even more pessimistic than the statistics of the Central Intelligence Agency published on February this year (according to CIA Bulgaria’s population amounted to 7,144,653 people), Standart further informs. The good news is that in 2016 infant mortality and total mortality decreased and the average life expectancy in Bulgaria increased, Sega daily writes on its first pages on Thursday. Despite the improvement of those indicators, Bulgaria still lags behind other EU countries. Infant mortality is higher in Romania only and Latvia and Lithuania are the only EU countries where life expectancy is lower than in Bulgaria. Between 2014 and 2016 the average life expectancy rose slightly to 74.7 years and compensated the decrease registered in the previous two years, Sega daily informs. Ageing is another problem of Bulgaria’s demography, the newspaper further writes. Nearly 21% of the Bulgarians are aged 65 or above and the number of people in this group increases each year. Trud daily pays attention to the country’s demographic trends on two whole pages. Population in Bulgaria’s capital increases, whereas in other districts dwindles, Trud frontpages a headline on April 13. Sofia is the only Bulgarian district which registered an increase of its population whereas in the other 27 districts the population last year fell as compared to 2015. 48.6% of the country’s population is male and 51.4%- female. In other words, there are 1,000 men in Bulgaria per 1059 women. The number of men aged 53 or under exceeds the number of women in that age category. At the end of 2016 there are 4,304,000 Bulgarians in active age, or 60.6% of the country’s population.