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Portugal needs 75,000 immigrants a year

refugeeraftA new study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation has concluded that the country needs a positive migratory balance in order to maintain the working population and keep it paying into the social security fund which, in turn, will be paying pensions to an increasing number of retirees.

The study ‘Migration and Demographic Sustainability’ was coordinated by João Peixoto, Daniela Craveiro, Jorge Malheiros and Isabel Tiago de Oliveira and represents the first joined-up thinking on impacts across various interrelated sectors of demographics, economics, employment and social security receipts.

A net rise in immigration is said to be decisive in order to balance the rise in retirees and to halt a substantial overall decrease in the Portuguese population.

Based on 2014 data from the National Institute of Statistics, the study had a go at predicting how many immigrants will be needed to keep the population at 2015 levels and to keep the social security fund topped up.

Without immigration, the resident population of Portugal is expected to reduce from the current 10.4 million to around 7.8 million by 2060.

In order to maintain the current population, we need a net 2.2 million people between 2015 and 2060, but if we look at people of working age (15-64) the number is more ambitious as 3.4 million more immigrants than migrants will be needed.

On average, a migrant surplus of 75,000 people per year would be required to prevent the size of the working age population from falling - this is for the next 45 years, each and every year.

This is also why migration can’t be "the only strategy to compensate for aging and the resulting problems."

The authors conclude that it is totally unrealistic to reduce the overall age profile of the Portuguese population based solely on attracting immigrants. To do this, Portugal would need to increase the working population by 590,000 immigrants by 2060.

The study also shows that the category of workers which will be scarcer as of 2020 is the one for highly qualified workers with higher education.

This is a looming problem that successive governments have failed to address.

The current Prime Minister, António Costa, already has said he would accept 10,000 refugees, later doubling this figure, but with but a trickle of people arriving from the holding camps of Greece and Italy, the net result has been insignificant - less than 1,000 as 40% of the refugees accepted by Portugal already have left the country to join family and to find work where there is work, in northern Europe.

The demographic shift is not unique to Portugal with the only country in the European Union reporting a birth rate sufficient to replace its own population being France.

Portugal’s government and the report’s authors, focus on paying pensioners out of the social security fund, which anyway is predicted to dwindle as there will be fewer people paying in.

There are other sources of revenue that the government can use to support its growing band of pensioners. If Portugal remains a country full of low-grade and low-paid jobs, then pensions must drop in value or other areas of government spending must be cut.