Egoism and Solidarity in a Shrinking Society
Egoism and Solidarity in a Shrinking Society

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with some social and economic drivers of demographic change in Bulgaria. Migration of socially vulnerable groups which represents a significant proportion of overall migration can be explained by a failure of basic mechanisms of solidarity in society. Redistributive solidarity at the level of the whole society and solidarity between generations are given as an example. The case of using the EU funds in Bulgaria illustrates inequality generating territorial distribution, which cannot but reinforce migration to more urbanized regions within Bulgaria and emigration. The result is massive loss of working age generations and rapid ageing of the population. In the last section a modified simulation of income distribution in an artificial society and real empirical distributions of incomes in Bulgaria are used to illustrate some possible effects of ageing on poverty and inequality. The key conclusion is that Bulgaria needs to rethink its policies designed to serve a young, homogenous and self-reliant society. Bulgarian society is shaped by rather disruptive demographic forces generating inequality and ageing, which require a much stronger emphasis on solidarity.

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