birthrate in spain still in low hours. Spain is the country with the highest number of first-time mothers aged 40 and over in the European Union. According to the Eurostat list, Romania, Lithuania and Slovakia are closed, followed closely by Greece, Italy and Portugal. According to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), there has been a 23.1% decrease in births in the last decade, with the rate falling by 2% in 2023. This is not a new trend, but the consequences are gestational: dwindling new generations will have to support a pension system that is under great pressure as workers now caught in the middle by the ‘baby boom’ retire. 45 and 65 years old. The reasons stem from employment. Job uncertainty combined with little flexibility discourages women, especially college graduates who want to have children, because the result will be leaving their job.
According to Virginia Sánchez, author of the ‘Birth and institutions’ report published a year ago by the Savings Banks Foundation (Funcas), one of the reasons behind the low birth rate in Spain is “labour instability resulting from high birth rates”. temporary contracts and the high unemployment faced by Spanish households”. The country is characterized by: high rates of split shifts and high workplace presence which doesn’t help co-parenting. Workforce flexibility, understood as the opportunity to work remotely in recent years, has also not been successful. Only 12.6% of women worked remotely in 2022, according to the National Observatory on Technology and Society (ONTSI).
But there are more factors. Sánchez points out that “the generosity of aid received by families with children and the spending on early childhood education is limited,” as well as the difficulties of accessing a first home. in spain Only 16.3% of young people aged 18 to 29 made it emancipation (about 7 million), compared to the European Union average of 31.9%, according to the latest report of the Youth Council Observatory on Emancipation for the first half of 2023. Rapidly increasing rental prices prevent new generations from owning a home. You may start thinking about starting a family and delay the age at which you have your first child. Added to these reasons is the “unequal distribution of child care between fathers and mothers”, which can lead to a low birth rate “due to the desire of Spanish women to become mothers”, according to Funcas’ report.
Fewer people supporting pensions
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The combination of the low birth rate and rising life expectancy plaguing Spain means retirees are taking longer to collect their pensions. The sustainability of the pension system is being questioned by the Independent Authority for Accountability (AIReF). Final agreed reform for organization approved Increase public deficit by 1.2 percentage points of GDP by 2050That’s because pension spending will “begin to accelerate particularly” from 2035, rising to 16.3% of GDP in 2049, compared to the current 13.7%.
As the ‘baby boomers’ generation born between 1946 and 1964 retire, pension fund spending increases pressure on young people who cannot effectively replace their elders due to low birth rates. Spain will need to exceed 10 births per 1000 people have enough workforce Supporting the existing pension systemsomething that seems difficult right now.