Populations across many countries in the EU are aging and shrinking: Bulgaria has seen its population decline by more that 15 percent since 1990. Unless adaptive policies are adopted, decline in the size of the labor force risks undermining economic growth. Bulgaria can minimize economic and social consequences of demographic change by investing in people. The data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) about Bulgaria are of concern. More than a third of Bulgarian 15-year-olds perform below Level Two in the PISA mathematics assessment. The practice of selecting students early into general and vocational education tracks produces an highly inequitable picture, less than half of the 15-year-olds in Bulgaria manage to meet the critical thereshold in math skills defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The nowadays situation of bulgarian women in mathematics suffers of these difficulties of the country: on one side they are still a very strong part of the academic life but they have difficulties, due to low salaries, in supporting their families. It seems that this situation will benefit in the near future of the annual economic growth in Bulgaria which in 2016 should reach 3%.

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