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entrenched.
Yet modernization exacted its social cost. The institution of the family, once dominant in Spain, lost its
primacy. Priorities for most young and middle-aged women (and men) are career, building wealth,
buying a house, having fun, travelling, not incurring in the burden of many children, observes
Macarron. Many, like their northern European counterparts, dismissed marriage altogether; although
the population is higher than it was in 1975, the number of marriages has declined from 270,000 to
170,000 annually.
Falling Births, Falling Fortunes
Now Spain, like much of the EU, faces the demographic consequences. The results have been
transformative. In a half century Spains fertility rate has fallen more than 50% to 1.4 children per
female, one of the lowest not only in Europe, but also the world and well below the 2.1 rate necessary
simply to replace the current population. More recently the rate has dropped further at least 5 percent.
Essentially, Spain and other Mediterranean countries bought into northern Europes liberal values,
and low birthrates, but did so without the economic wherewithal to pay for it. You can afford a Nordic
welfare state, albeit increasingly precariously, if your companies and labor force are highly skilled or
productive. But Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal lack that kind of productive industry; much of the
growth stemmed from real estate and tourism. Infrastructure development was underwritten by the
EU, and the country has become increasingly dependent on foreign investors.
Unlike Sweden or Germany, Spain cannot count now on immigrants to stem their demographic decline
and generate new economic energy. Although 450,000 people, largely from Muslim countries, still
arrive annually, over 580,000 Spaniards are heading elsewhere many of them to northern Europe
and some to traditional places of immigration such as Latin America. Germany,which needs 200,000
immigrants a year to keep its factories humming, has emerged as a preferred destination.
Declining Population
As a result Spain could prove among the first of the major EU countries to see an actual drop in
population. The National Institute for Statistics (INE) predicts the country will lose one million
residents in the coming decade, a trend that will worsen as the baby boom generation begins to die off.
The population of 47 million will drop an additional two million by 2021. By 2060, according to
Macarron, Spain will be home to barely 35 million people.
This decline in population and mounting out-migration of young people means Spain will experience
ever-higher proportions of retired people relative to those working. This dependency rate, according
to INE, will grow by 57 % by 2021; there will be six people either retired or in school for every person
working.
If Spain, and other Mediterranean countries, cannot pay their bills now, these trends suggest that in
the future they will become increasingly unable or even unwilling to do so. As Macarron notes, an
aging electorate is likely to make it increasingly difficult for Spanish politicians to tamper with
pensions, cut taxes and otherwise drive private sector growth. Voters over 60 are already thirty percent
of the electorate up from 22 percent in 1977; in 2050, they will constitute close to a majority.
Without a major shift in policies that favor families in housing or tax policies, and an unexpected
resurgence of interest in marriage and children, Spain and the rest of Mediterranean face prospects of
a immediate decline every bit as profound as that experienced in the 17th and 18th Century when these
great nations lost their status as global powers and instead devolved into quaint locales for vacationers,