Chapter 47: Chapter 047: Reform 3 (Population, Agriculture)

"Food for the people, food for the safety!"

It solved the food safety problem. On the surface, it was a crackdown on rogue people in business and provided the basis for the development of monopolism.

Only Ferdinand himself knew that the deeper reason was to accelerate population growth. A country with a population of more than three million people cannot become a powerful country.

Although no one has counted, Ferdinand can be sure that the Bulgarians spread worldwide, even if added together, will never exceed 10 million. And the entire Balkan region, the Bulgarians are now roughly in the range of six million to eight million.

Compared with the European powers at the same time: France has a population of more than 38 million, Germany has nearly 50 million people, Russia is 120 million people. The population of Bulgaria is only three and a half million, less than a tenth of the above the great powers.

So the population problem is the most severe core issue for Bulgaria to develop and grow in the future. For Ferdinand, every Bulgarian is precious.

Ferdinand thought long and hard about how to grow the population. He conducted another survey on the ground in Bulgaria.

Due to the stability of the situation, the rapid development of the domestic economy, and the population's stability, the birth rate in Bulgaria has been greatly increased.

The birth rate in Bulgaria in 1885 was 4.07%, and in 1889 it gradually increased to 4.25%. From the statistics of the first half of the year, he can assume optimistically that the birth rate in 1890 will be between 4.36% and 4.39%.

And the mortality rate of the Bulgarian population: in 1885 it was 2.65%; in 1889, it was 2.78% (including those secretly executed); in 1890, the mortality rate of the population counted in the first half of the year was 1.01% (not including foreign workers).

As things stand, the Bulgarian people are relatively conservative. The motivation to have children is still very high. As long as the economic conditions allow, everyone is still willing to have more children.

Ferdinand knew that this figure had many potentials to be found, and it was far worse than Russia's counterparts: in 1864, the birth rate was 5.29% and had remained around 5% for many years.

The death rate was also similar. Compared to the Great Powers, Britain and France largely kept it to about 2%, a figure that was even lower when it did not take maintenance casualties in the colonies into account.

But the survival rate of babies, Ferdinand could hardly believe it when he saw the survey data (and neither could the author). Not too low, but too high.

In 1889, the survival rate of Bulgarian infants was 85.7%. In the same period, it was 74.4% in Austria, 82.6% in France and 77.4% in Germany. The countries with the highest survival rates were Ireland and Norway, both of which exceeded 90%.

Ferdinand, before traversal, would not believe that these data are valid. However, he had to accept this fact after the actual statistics in Bulgaria.