In the last ten years, Portugal’s population steadily has followed a path that will lead to its own destruction from within.
The demographics are as simple as they are concerning with the steadily increasing pressure from a seemingly unstoppable pincer movement of more retirees living longer lives while the youth of the nation has decided to move elsewhere to raise families.
Despite a recent increase in the number of births, the population is not replacing itself. This is a common problem across the EU with the notable exception of France where inspired, family-friendly taxation legislation is having the desired effect of each couple creating on average, more than two 'replacement' children.
Between 2005 and 2015 the number of Portugal’s seniors increased by more than 316,000, with the number of under-15s dropping by 208,000.
According to the latest data from Portugal’s National Institute of Statistics, its clear to see that there are fewer and fewer people of working age and paying taxes, and more and more retirees requiring State pensions.
In 2005, for every 100 young people living in Portugal there were 109 pensioners; last year this had increased to 147.
Both the death rate and the birth rate have risen but there are still more deaths than births.
The average number of children per woman rose to 1.3 in 2015, in 2014 it was 1.23 but the increase in the death rate contributed to a fall in the overall population to 10.34 million at the end of last year.
Net migration, the difference between the numbers entering the country and those leaving, remained negative last year with a net deficit of at least 10,480 people, lower than at the height of the recession but showing no signs of reversal.
It’s not all home comfort and drinks on the terrace for Portugal’s elderly either as the number living alone and categorised as ‘vulnerable and isolated’ has tripled in five years.
In operation "Senior Census 2016," the GNR identified 43,322 elderly people living alone, in poor conditions or in poor condition. The majority (28,691) are elderly women.
The GNR initiative has highlighted many who need care and support from social services, such as they are, particularly social support, general monitoring, healthcare and food.
The GNR will continue to check up on the elderly identified as ‘at risk,’ especially those with disabilities with over 3,000 in the Algarve needing attention but this is jus one part of the equation: the country needs babies, and lots of them.
Opinion piece from Mr John Clare
1 The world is finite. The amount of people it can carry is also finite. The maximum number of persons the planet can support is limited by the amount of fresh water that can be used in the growing of food. That limit is dangerously close. Because of this you can’t keep increasing the population to cope with the increase in the population. Eventually you kill the source of your survival chain.
2 Please note: In the year 1900 in the USA 95% of the population worked in agriculture and produced enough food stuffs to export to the rest of the world. In the year 2000 only 5% of the population produced several times the amount of the food stuff produced by 95% of the population a hundred years earlier. As time has passed improvements in technology have meant that machines can work harder and faster than men. In short, machines can produce wealth better than men can, so why do you need more babies?
3 With this metric firmly in place we are seeing the rise of the robot, and eventually will see the rise of the android. On the other side of the coin we see countries like Greece and Spain where half the population under age thirty is unemployed. What’s the point of producing more babies to produce more unemployed? You dont solve the problem, you make it worse.
4 The existing economic system works on the basis of increasing consumption to keep the factories busy. The populations of the wealthiest countries are downsizing. I certainly dont need to buy much at all: clothes, food, energy. I certainly dont need things. I’ve got it all. Most of us who’ve seen our kids leave home are in the same boat. First, the factories produce goods for the home market, then they export, then they reach a high water mark, because other countries have caught up, and because folks reach a certain level of comfort and their needs drop drastically. This means there is need for a different economic concept. The old one is dead. The production of goods is not going to go on increasing. It will gradually slacken, and maybe even contract. In any event, most of the production can now be achieved using machines. They dont need pension schemes, social security or health care.
5 What is the greatest cost to societies? Those three matters just mentioned. So what’s the answer to a funding problem? Less babies and more machines.
6 The most successful countries in this century will be those with high technological expertise and small, high wealth populations. That rules out most of Europe. Population levels need to drop drastically to cope with the future. The opposite of what so many people are advocating.
Portugal is not heading for a demographic crunch. In the first place it won’t be a crunch, it will be a gradual sandpapering to death. It has already started, and the way out is to invest heavily in robotics, and get the population down as fast as possible. Nature has its way of working correctly despite man’s efforts to thwart the process. The existing system ceases to work at its optimum level, and then starts to break down. This makes people poorer, so they adjust their breeding habits. Quite right too.
Government’s job (big joke) is to assist in the transition. Fat chance. As Sir James Dyson recently pointed out, EU regulations are preventing the best brains from outside Europe from working in the zone, instead, they make it easy for a dustman from Bratislava to work as a waiter in Bath. Not sure how that helps the unemployed in Bath. It merely moves the problem from one place to another. The biggest advances in robotics and similar disciplines take place outside the EU. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the EU is such an economic basket case, and yet another argument for Britain leaving.
Dr John Clare, 2016
