The Situation of Children and Young People at the Regional Level in Bulgaria Prepared by Bulgaria Country Statistical Team Co-ordinator: Finka Denkova National Statistical Institute, Sofia MONEE Country Analytical Report November 2004 The project to monitor the impact of economic and social change on children in Eastern and Central Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (MONEE) was initiated at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in 1992. The project seeks to monitor, analyse and disseminate information on economic and social trends affecting children’s rights and wellbeing in countries in the region. A key feature of the Project is a network of correspondents in the 27 National Statistical Offices (NSOs). On an annual basis these correspondents complete an extensive data template which in turn is used for calculating indicators, supporting research of the project and, in due course, being made publicly available as the TransMonee database and in tables and graphs of the Innocenti Social Monitor. For a number of years, each participating NSO prepared a Country Analytical Report based on extensive outline from UNICEF IRC on a different theme on the situation of children every year. These analytical reports have provided valuable input into the research at UNICEF IRC and, as significantly, have also served as important national documents on monitoring aspects of child wellbeing in the countries. Some of these Country Analytical Reports have been issued by the NSOs (in the national language) as part of their publication programme. UNICEF IRC attaches great value to these national assessments of the situation of children and is committed to promote the efforts, including through translating the reports into English (where the submitted report has been in Russian) and offering its website to make them accessible to a wider research audience. The Country Analytical Reports are owned and authored by the National Statistical Offices and are not the intellectual property of UNICEF (see below). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or view of UNICEF. The text has not been edited for official publication standards and UNICEF accepts no responsibility for errors. The designations in this publication do not imply an opinion on legal status of any country or territory, or of its authorities, or the delimitation of frontiers. 2 Child Well-being in the regions of Bulgaria (Report based on statistical data) During the past decade Bulgaria has undergone a profound socioeconomic transformation. Aiming to carry out the transition from central planning to a market economy, and ensure macro-economic stability, the state had to remove its excessive control that could hinder the spontaneous performance of markets. After the years of economic crisis, since 1998 Bulgaria started to feel the results of the decisive steps taken by state authorities to stabilize the economy and speed up structural reform. The stabilization and normalization of economic conditions switched the efforts’ focus to the new dimensions of social development emphasizing employment, educational, and well- being aspects. But the opportunities for improving quality of population life are mainly determined by the existing economic potential. So, improving the quality of population life is a result of continuous growth, macro-economic stabilization and efficient distribution. At the same time the opportunities for improving population’s economic and social status are being searched in the frame of limited financial resources, under the conditions of hard budget constraints (the currency board introduced in 1997 restricts the government’s ability to borrow from the Central Bank). Under these conditions the policies should encourage growth based mainly on encouragement the opportunities for private business development and self-employment, which are expected to create new job places and higher income and to provide the necessary preconditions for social investment; establishing frameworks to protect consumers and taking care of the more vulnerable population groups (women, children, individuals etc.), which condition had deteriorated as a result of the transformation process. Trying to analyse of how Bulgaria’s social and economic problems during the transition period have impacted the different dimensions of child and family well-being, this report puts the spotlight on a number of issues, such as: demographic, transition problems in the fields of education and health, income levels, unemployment, basic economic data etc. During the last decade the National Statistical Institute continues its tradition to collect information about the basic features of the country’s demographic, social and economic development and to analyse the tendencies of development in the context of transition process. A lot of socio-economic differences arise when the states are surveyed on national level. If surveyed on regional level these differences go deeper. Regional policy is an important tool for achieving sustainable and balanced regional development in the EU, as well as in Bulgaria. Special funds are created to support successful regional policy. Their usage is regulated thanks to legal base with clear criteria. The development of the National Economic Development Plan (NEDP) to 2006 is un importrant step towards harmonization of the governance with the EU. An important part of the NEDP defines the guidelines for development of the 6 planning regions and the 28 districts. What is important is not the existence of a plan, but the knowledge that the Bulgarian administration gains in the process of its preparation. In the process of preparation participants will gain experience in creating and using a tool, which will be fundamental after Bulgaria’s accession in the EU. Some of the most important requirements towards this tool are: • It should be realistic – the assumptions contained in it must be based on objective analysis and trustful statistical information; • The purposes contained in it must be measurable; Both requirements directly formulate the need of reliable statistical information. 3 The possibilities for analyzing the regional development are limited by lot of reasons: Objective problems 1 1. Unsatisfactory precision of the indicators, estimated through sample surveys The reason is that these samples are designed to be representative on national level only. Good indicators on regional level (acceptable stochastical errors) require increase of the size of the samples, and from there the financing, which is now beyond the strength of the Bulgarian statistical institute, as well as for the wealthy European statistical offices. One of the powerful means for solving this problem is the wider usage of administrative data sources. 2. Confidentiality of data on the lower regional levels. This is true, mostly, for data about economic entities. In many cases this leads to refuse to supply data, without which it is impossible for decisions to be made. At the same time, however, the vague definition of confidentiality creates preconditions for its subjective interpretation. This leads to problems with receiving and disseminating data. Here, again, except for clarification of the definition of confidentiality, a solution is the wider usage of administrative sources for collecting information. The fact that the restriction for disseminating confidential data is true for users outside the national statistical system only, has to be taken into consideration. When supplying data to NSI departments or to other statistical bodies, they could be confidential. The unit that receives the data is responsible for keeping confidentiality inside the national statistical system. The latest changes in the Law on statistics solved this problem, at least according to dissemination of information for governmental decision making purposes. Art 26(2) of the law says: “Statistical information on economic condition or environment condition, collected by economic and other subjects may be submitted under para.1, p. 2 and 3, in the cases when this is necessary for providing basic information of established public significance and when it is foreseen in the National Programme for Statistical Surveys.” The law defines “Basic information of established public significance”: ”Basic information of established public significance” is the information received from constant statistical surveys, included in the National Programme for Statistical Surveys and needed for the elaboration and reporting of the National Plan for Economic Development and the National Plan for Regional Development of the country.” 3. There is no information on regional level for some indicators, traditional for the EU – information is either no produced at all, or not available on regional level. It would be acceptable if this is based on methodological or other objective reason. 4. There is strong correlation on regional level – the lower the level, the fewer information about it is. This is true especially for economic data. Significant efforts are needed, so that this correlation is weakened. 5. Another significant problem concerns data storage and archiving. In most of the cases information for old periods/moments is stored on paper. This requires its reentry, but this is not the essence of the problem. The more complex problem is that usually archives are located far from those who work with the data (ex. the archive of NSI is placed in the village 1 Regional statistical development