Spain's population is disappearing among all European countries the Hispanic fertility rate of 1.16 children per woman is the lowest of all this means that for every couple only one baby will be born in other words the native population of Spain will be reduced by half within one generation with only one child for every two parents and so on if the trend continues in just five generations the number of Spaniards will go from 42 million to 1.3 the entire population of Spain would fit on an island like tenor Reef which by the way explains news like
this Spain is facing a major demographic crisis and we are not aware of its seriousness of course the demographic problem is not unique to Spain it's something that is happening all over the world but in Spain the problem is severe the reason much of it is cultural modern economies are focusing on Leisure and youth consumption going to a spa in a boutique hotel to a new trendy restaurant of the week to an escape room to a techno Festival the new Leisure pattern are not compatible with taking care of children at home and there is no
more proof of this than seeing where people decide to live because Have You Heard lots of young people saying that their dream is to go live in the mountain surrounded by cows well no they all want to go to Barcelona Madrid big cities where they can better exploit the new recreational economy this explains why housing prices in urban regions are skyrocketing while in rural parts of the country they are plummeting this in turn makes it even more difficult to raise children another reason that could explain the phenomenon is is the culture of singleness and fluid
relationships the rate of people of childbearing age who are single has skyrocketed to over 60% since 2008 there are many reasons from less social pressure to get married and start a family to more common geographical Mobility to fewer face-to-face encounters due to the rise of social media to Simply more people wanting to enjoy their 20s with more sporadic intimate encounters however this doesn't mean that young people don't want to be parents the feeling of family still exists what happens is that those who want to be parents delay the age at which they have their first
children by a lot you could say that they want to take advantage of their youth and start a family later in the past it was normal to be a firsttime mother at 20 to 25 years of age but now hospitals register more new mothers at 38 than 27 this is an unprecedented anomaly and Spain leads in the ranking of countries with the most 39-year-old women having children and yes I know what you're thinking is it really a problem to delay the age of Parenthood I mean if people want to have kids they can have them
at 25 or 40 but at the end of the day they will have them right not necessarily because after the age of 35 women's birth rates drop naturally unwanted miscarriages birth defects early menopause difficulty in fertilization many women who reach their mid-30s wanting to have two or three children end up having only one or none because their bodies have reached their natural limit to give you an idea almost 20% of women who have not had children at the age of 35 have not done so because they didn't want to but because they have had problems
related to their health and fertility in other words they run out of time delaying pregnancy is equivalent to involuntarily decreasing the birth rate in view of this the question is why is Spain the European country where the fewest children are born and therefore where the problem is most widespread what are the economic and political consequences of demographic collapse are their Solutions today on visual economic we tell you all about it [Music] the problem of no children being born in Spain is not only a problem because the population may disappear but also because politics will become
very dangerous until 2016 it was normal for the majority of Voters to be young people in order to win votes politicians had to govern with a long-term Vision promoting opportunities for new generations and investing in familyfriendly policies however since then things have changed now the most important group of Voters are the old group and the Spanish electoral system is designed to over represent rural areas which is precisely where the elderly live and why is that the reason is that each province no matter how few people live in them elects a minimum number of representatives in
the elections that is to say the less densely populated a territory is the more deputies it will elect in relation to its inhabitants for example Madrid only elects one Deputy for every 180,000 voters while in Teru one of the least densely populated provinces one Deputy is elected for every 40,000 voters this means that the vote of a person in ter Ru carries four times as much weight as that of a person from Madrid and let me ask you what kind of person do you think lives in Teru indeed older people and over time the difference
will become much more pronounced more and more young people will live in the cities and older people in areas like Teru as if this were not enough since small rural areas will elect two or three deputies only the parties with the most votes will be elected that is to say in Madrid 37 deputies are elected there is room for dozens of parties however in rural areas where only two or three representatives are elected those deputies will belong to the parties with the most votes the other options small parties that could represent the young minority in
rural areas would be left out the result the elderly not only provide and will continue to provide more votes but their votes have and will have a much greater influence for this reason politicians don't need to worry about the longterm for example if the country goes massively into debt that debt will be paid by the younger generation but the elderly will not suffer the consequences and that explains what we are seeing in Spain from an electoral point of view it is much more beneficial for Pedro Sanchez to pay high pensions and win votes from retirees
besides saying that you're helping the elderly always sounds like a great political speech and pay attention this is not speculation this is really happening retires are living better and better they are the population group with the lowest poverty rate they are the only group group that has increased their purchasing power between 2008 and 2022 and with the housing market it's a very similar story at least eight out of 10 people over 65 own a home so they do not pay a mortgage or rent nor will they have children to support meanwhile only three out of
10 people under the age of 35 own a home what's more the cost of housing is now almost double what it was 40 years ago in other words back in the day today's retirees paid a lot less for their homes while young people right now are drowning in expensive rents rental properties whose landlords by the way are often retirees who are renting second homes in other words retirees are the only group living better and better despite not working and receiving their income via taxes levied on young people and the question that many of you may
be asking is what does this have to do with fertility this is a graph showing the amount of Public Aid to Children and Families in Europe Spain is the country that helps parents the least financially it contributes even less than Greece the money is no longer dedicated to supporting families to have children it's dedicated to raising pensions to financing free public transportation for retirees and even for subsidizing vacations and no I am not exaggerating Spanish pensioners receive Aid that many can only dream of millions of senior citizens both Spaniards and foreigners living in Spain are
eligible for subsidized travel costing as little as €15 for short breaks and € 455 for longer vacations in Spain there is no money for young people with children children but there is money for subsidized trips for pensioners what do you expect we've already told you that young people do not give votes now knowing this let me ask you another question can Spain really expect its young people to have children if it leaves them without money it seems quite complicated and it's true that a large part of the reason for fewer children being born is cultural
change but let's not fool ourselves the economy continues to play an important role nearly 35% of young women up to the age of 35 who have not had children say the reason was economic or work life balance and at the end of the day it makes sense with taxes and housing prices higher than ever being a mother is equivalent to falling on the edge of poverty or directly into it proof of this is that child poverty risk rates in Spain are among the highest in Europe and this only feeds back into the social trend of
young people not wanting children in other words we're talking about a vicious circle Society is aging because children are not being born politicians stop spending money to promote the birth rate because Young people do not provide votes and this only causes the population demographic to be even more aged the result Spain is the country with the lowest birth rate in Europe be that as it may and apart from politics and taxes what consequences could aging have on the Spanish economy well there are quite a few but let's look at them in order the first economic
problem of Aging will be the Public Accounts the Social Security deficit is skyrocketing which means that the pension system has run out of steam so social contributions do not contribute enough money to the system to pay all the pensioners and the government is already going into debt and using money that should be going to education or roads to sustain the system the worst is yet to come when the Baby Boomers reach retirement age a small base of workers will have to support all their Elders on top of that an aging population will mean higher health
care and care costs practically 80% of a person's healthc care costs over the course of his or her lifetime are incurred in old age age so with an aging population these costs will Skyrocket the outcome a brutal tax burden that further impoverishes young people infernal Hospital waiting lists and in the worst case scenario the bankruptcy of public finances apart from the accounts another problem will be infrastructure many provinces will find it difficult to provide basic public services such as universities or hospitals which require certain minimum population size is to operate with reasonable efficiency for example
in the province of Lyon in 2020 2,278 people were born and let's imagine that 60% of them will be ready for University in 2038 this tells us that the University of leyon will have 1,367 incoming students in 2038 or in other words it will be almost impossible to keep a quality University open at a reasonable cost for so few people well the same will happen with trains with with fiber optic cables with hospitals so let me ask you are you familiar with the problem of the empty Spain well pay attention because the demographic drop will
cause the first regions to depopulate to be the rural ones we talked about a point where in many places there will not even be enough residents for there to be a doctor a teacher or an electrician among them companies will also have no young people to hire many functional businesses will close for lack of Replacements and the price of housing in depopulated provinces will plummet in other words since nobody will want to live in them they will end up abandoned or if they are lucky enough to avoid that it could mean a massive loss of
patrimony for their owners lifetime savings will go down the drain another problem that many allude to is that of the great replacement that is the fear that immigrant populations will eventually replace the locals which in turn could lead to Fresh political problems an example of this is the possibility that the Muslim population with strong religious convictions could push for political parties that would sooner or later pass legislation based on Islamic law however others argue that immigration would be positive that it would alleviate the problem of Public Accounts and could be the way to avoid demographic
collapse the question is who is right neither one side nor the other in the first place immigrants are no guarantee of saving the Public Accounts the reason is that immigrants to Spain normally have a low income profile that is they don't contribute much to taxes but they will also have to receive a pension and public public Healthcare in the future in Denmark they have calculated this in detail and indeed bringing in immigrants costs them dearly besides that immigrants and particularly second generation immigrants tend to assimilate the birth patterns of the local population or to put
it another way that immigration in the best case scenario would only delay the demographic winter not stop it and it's unlikely that there would be a great replacement because they would also collapse demographically you don't believe me you don't have to all countries that is all cultures are facing at greater or lesser speed the same problem fertility rates will see dramatic decline with 97% of countries unable to sustain populations everyone is alarmed about global warming but at the rate we're going with our population GDP is likely to collapse sooner or later without young people working
there is no production and without production the economy also collapses and without production emissions also plummet we could reach a point where there aren't even enough people to run the ships that link the world's port s yet for some reason politicians are ignoring this problem what is the reason we certainly don't know maybe it's not as easy to Market as climate change but we are in an unprecedented historical time never before has the population been so large we have never gone through a period of sustained population loss and no matter how much we speculate we
may not see the real consequences until it's too late the question is are we in time to avoid it well in a future video we'll talk about possible solutions until then the questions are over to you what would you do to avoid the demographic winter is it an issue that worries you what do you think will be its worst consequence you can leave us your answers down in the comments if you like this video give us a like subscribe so you don't miss any of the upcoming ones and we'll see you in the next one
all the best see you soon
