2023-08-16 05:15:11
Thousands of young Spaniards are convinced that becoming independent from the family home is impossible. Latest report of the Emancipation Observatory of the Youth Council of Spain, from the second half of 2022, places the average age for leaving home above thirty for the first time: 30.3 years, almost four more than the European average. The percentage of those who live outside the family home remains at 15.9% of young people, a ratio that has increased since the beginning of 2021, but that remains almost three points below that of before the pandemic and that does not reach half the EU average (31.9%). The problem is not with the young, it is with society as a whole. The need to solve it too.
Economic crisis, pandemic and war have conditioned the expectations of young people in the last 15 years, frustrating their vital horizons and the hope that their efforts will bring them a better life. Pursuing higher education, one of the factors that for decades represented the educational social elevator, no longer guarantees being able to emancipate the generation that has had the best opportunities to train. Only 22.9% of those who have completed university studies or higher level vocational training have been able to leave the parental home. And having a job does not guarantee being able to access a home on your own, whether purchased or rented.
Few challenges are as strategic for a developed country as improving its future by improving the future of its youth. Stronger political action on three fronts is unavoidable: employment, purchasing power and housing. Although the youth unemployment rate has fallen in recent years —it is still above 27%, almost double the European average—, they are the ones who continue to suffer the most unemployment, above the other age groups. One in five employed people under 30 is poor or at risk of social exclusion. And to be able to rent a home alone, a young person with a job must allocate 83.7% of her net salary. The prospect of paying a mortgage is a dream for many.
We must be alert to the derivatives that this impoverishment entails not only for those who suffer from it, but for the whole of society. The confidence of young people in the political system stands at 41%; 57% mistrust the parties, according to another survey of the Youth Council, data that prompts reflection in times of growing skepticism about democracy. The priority of young people is to create their own life project, have better working conditions and deepen mental health measures. It is obvious that this last objective is the inseparable heir of all this personal precariousness. It is difficult to find other more necessary State policies: they will determine what this country will be like in the coming decades.
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