2023-05-21 08:30:24
spainlike the rest of Western societies, faces the imminent work retirement of the generation of ‘baby boom‘. A demographic transition that promises to rebuild the economic and political map. And it is that if 20 years ago in Spain there were so many under 30 years as older than 65, currently for each one of the first there are two of the second, according to data from the INE. Meeting the needs of this new and growing majority without mortgaging the opportunities of the ‘millenials’ and successors threatens to strain the political debate of the coming decades.
Cinema tickets at two euros for people over 65 on Tuesdays or discounts for young people who leave Interrail this summer are the last two measures that the Government has announced in recent weeks, specifically segmented for the two demographic poles. Added to an intense battery of commitments in terms of living place o scholarships amounting to billions of euros. Only in guarantees to those under 35 years of age to buy a home does the Executive estimate putting on the table €2.5 billion.
“My intuition is that if the elections are tighter than everand it seems that they are, someone has read that mobilizing these young people, however few they may be, is essential and can tip the balance”, points out the professor of political science at the Carlos III University Pablo Simon. 37.6 million people are called to the polls this coming May 28, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). And for every adult under 30 years of age and entitled to vote, there are more than two over 65 years of age. In other words, young people are less and historically less constant when it comes to going to the polls.
Despite the fact that most of the new measures announced by the Government are specifically focused on young people, the bulk of the new resources mobilized during this legislature have benefited the elderly. With the revaluation of pensions in the lead. Between 2020 and 2023, for every euro of increased spending that has been allocated to items that mainly benefit the youngest or involve future investments, two have been allocated to those over 65 years of age.
The tension between the short and long term
By means of an approximation carried out by comparing the items of expenditure of the last four General State Budgets, the increase in investment – not the accumulated investment – allocated to the portfolios of ‘pensions‘ y ‘public debt‘ fold (61,791 million) the increase in spending in ‘investigation and R+D+I’, ‘social services’, ‘promotion of employment’‘unemployment benefits‘‘education‘ and ‘housing promotion’ (26,962 million). Items, the latter, that either mainly benefit the youngest or represent a present expense to improve the economy in the future.
“What is good for young people is not a discount on the Interrail, but those policies that improve productivity and look at the long term. And that costs money and there needs to be a public debate about how we distribute it. Those of us who are of an age should worry when it comes to voting not only for our own, but also for young people”, points out the professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and deputy director of Fedea, Jose Ignacio Conde-Ruiz.
That proportion in the increase in public spending of 2 a 1 during the legislature as a whole, it shoots up especially during the last year to a 10 a 1. Driven, mainly, by the revaluation of all pensions by 8.5% -from the maximum, which has risen to 3,058.81 euros per month, to the non-contributory minimum, at 484.61 euros per month-, the same as the CPI. What from one year to the next has required the State to allocate 19,547 million euros more to the pension item, up to a total of 190,687 million euros per year. To put it in perspective, the total budgeted State investment for housing – which is currently at historical records – is 3,477 million euros.
family dependents
“It is a mistake to read the revaluation of pensions exclusively as an expense for the elderly. Because every euro that pensions raise is distributed within the family and dedicated to internal consumption, which benefits the economy”, they defend from CCOO .
“In Spain the basic unit of redistribution is the family and that has equity effects. That’s why this lack of spending [en los jóvenes] It is not so noticeable, because it is the home that makes up for it. Not all the young or old are equally vulnerable”, points out Simón. This political scientist points out that another approach to assess the intergenerational distribution of public spending is its redistributive capacity. That is, do we spend more where there is more poverty or not?
“There’s the bad news. In Spain we have a record in child poverty y youth. The former do not vote and the latter are few. If you compare the profiles of poor households, while poverty levels are 10 points below the average among households with two spouses over the age of 65, in single-parent households with dependent children there poverty skyrockets to more than 30 points higher”, points out the professor of political science at UC3M.
Wages, pending subject
The experts consulted for this report decline that this demographic tension should be read as a intergenerational war, according to which the prosperity of some is at the cost of the dearth of others. But a new scenario demands new dialectics. For the UB professor Montserrat Guillén A key variable in the coming years is not so much how spending is distributed generationally – “It is important not to coerce the room for maneuver of future generations,” he points out – but rather how the wages that the young people receive. And if Spain will be able to converge or not with the European locomotives.
“The competition between countries to attract young workers is going to increase and you have to create the conditions to avoid escapes,” says Guillén. “The sharp drop in the birth rate is closely related to the perception and reality of the precariousness that many young people face,” agrees the Esade economics professor Pedro Aznar. The latest data from the INE reveal that 10% fewer babies are born in Spain than in 2019, before the pandemic.
At the moment the labor market is not going in that direction, if not the opposite. Spaniards charge, on average, a 31% less than their eurozone counterparts, when before the outbreak of the housing bubblein 2008, the difference was 23%, according to the latest data published by Eurostat. His proposal goes through, among others, wage agreements between employers and unions for more years to come, with a higher degree of compliance between the parties and that allow not only not to lose purchasing power, but to gain it.
“Spain has not begun to age yet. Young people will increasingly be numerically irrelevant to win elections, but they can also vote with your feet”, warns the deputy director of Fedea.
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