The Financial Times reported today that Portugal in the near future will have "the lowest proportion of children" of any European population.
The description of a ‘perfect demographic storm’ was backed up by data confirming the country’s continuing low birth rate and the wave of emigration caused by the recession, both serving to transform Portugal into a society of single child families with an increasingly proportion of retirees to taxpayers.
Portugal has the lowest fertility rate in the European Union and has lost an estimated 198,000 inhabitants to economic emigration in the past four years, a level not seen since the ‘60s. Portugal’s Centre for Emigration estimates that 285,000 people have left but whatever the figure, for a country with just over 10 million inhabitants the loss is unsustainable.
With deaths exceeding births, the "demographic storm" is happening unless the country repopulates and young couples start breeding furiously.
"If nothing changes, the worst case scenario from the National Statistics Institute shows the population of Portugal will drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million in 2060, while the proportion of people over 65 is adding a pensions burden that will need an economic miracle to support."
The FT reports that "even in the most optimistic forecast from the Institute, Portugal will lose 2 million people in the next 45 years."
In a little more than a generation, estimates Eurostat, Portugal will have few children and plenty of elderly.
Is the government planning ahead for these demographic and economic certainties or is it passing the demographic buck to future governments to deal with?
Former businessman turned Minister for the Economy Pires de Lima said in June this year that "A recovery in the Portuguese economy will have to incorporate public policies to promote immigration and some ambitious demographic goals, far beyond simply attracting more qualified workers or entrepreneurs."
Pires de Lima gets it, but current legislation is superficial, poorly thought out, piecemeal and ineffective with the government continuing to rely on some future economic miracle, unconcerned that the level of Troika debt the taxpayer now is saddled with is going to take decades of strong growth to pay off an will ensure Portugal remains a poor and highly taxed country.
Unless a raft of measures are put in place now to encourage returnees and promote unprotected sex between consenting adults, the life will drain out of Portugal.
Golden Visas or small tax adjustments will not solve the underlying problem, Portugal needs an influx of economically and fertile people but there are no jobs to attract them.
The workers returning from Angola in recent weeks have done so in desperation but there are still fewer construction jobs in Portugal than Africa and even the construction union boss said these returning men would be better off leaving Portugal again to seek work as there is none here.
