The contextual database of the generations and gender program in Bulgaria: conceptual framework and an overview of the Bulgarian context concerning the central database topics

This paper outlines the concept and content of the Contextual Database of the international Generations and Gender Program and gives an overview of the context of demographic behavior in Bulgaria. The Contextual Database provides an instrument that together with the Generations and Gender Survey allows studying how differences in context shape demographic processes. The database offers the opportunity to analyze in a comparative way the interaction between the micro and macro dimension. Bulgaria is among the first countries fielding the Generations and Gender Survey and that is engaged in contextual data collection within this comparative framework. While both micro- and contextual data for Bulgaria will become available in the course of the year 2005, we present in this paper a text contribution that provides an overview of the Bulgarian context and introduces the list of variables that make up the database.