Dicembre 2016 e ditoriale

Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster

When Spanish business consultant Alejandro Macarrón started crunch-

ing the numbers behind Spain’s changing demographics, he couldn’t

believe what he was seeing. “I was astonished,” said Macarrón. “We

have provinces in Spain where for every baby born, more than two

people die. And the ratio is moving closer to one to three.” 

Spain has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU, with an average

of 1.27 children born for every woman of childbearing age, compared

to the EU average of 1.55. Its crippling economic crisis has seen a net

exodus of people from the country, as hundreds of thousands of

Spaniards and migrants leave in the hope of finding jobs abroad. The

result is that, since 2012, Spain’s population has been shrinking.

Record numbers of economic migrants and asylum-seekers are seek-

ing to enter the European Union this summer and are risking their lives

in the attempt. The paradox is that as police and security forces battle

to keep them at bay, a demographic crisis is unfolding across the con-

tinent. Europe desperately needs more young people to run its health

services, populate its rural areas and look after its elderly because,

increasingly, its societies are no longer self-sustaining.

In Portugal, the population has been shrinking since 2010. For many

analysts, the question now is how low can it go, with projections by

the National Statistics Institute suggesting Portugal’s population could

drop from 10.5 million to 6.3 million by 2060. According to Prime

Minister Pedro Passos Coelho:“We’ve got really serious problems.” 

In Italy the retired population is soaring, with the proportion of over-

65s set to rise from 2.7% last year to 18.8% in 2050. Germany has the

lowest birthrate in the world: 8.2 per 1,000 population between 2008

and 2013, according to a recent study by the Hamburg-based world

economy institute, the HWWI.

The UK’s population reached 64.6 million by mid-2014, a growth of

491,000 over the previous year, according to the Office for National

Statistics. On average, Britain’s population grew at a faster rate over

the last decade than it has done over the last 50 years.

Macarrón is astonished at the reluctance of Spanish authorities to ad-

dress what he calls a direct threat to economic growth as well as pen-

sions, healthcare and social services. He and a few friends took it upon

themselves to begin tackling the issue, starting the non-profit group

Demographic Renaissance in 2013, with the aim of raising awareness

of the crisis.

“Most people think we’re only talking about something that will be a

problem in 50 years, but we’re already seeing part of the problem,”

he said. “If current numbers hold, every new generation of Spaniards

will be 40% smaller than the previous one.”

A political knock-on effect is the overwhelming political power of the

grey vote. Macarrón points to the crippling austerity measure put in

place during the economic crisis: “During the same time frame, ex-

penditures on pensions rose by more than 40%. We’re moving closer

to being a gerontocratic society – it’s a government of the old.”

The region of Galicia is one of the few in Spain that has addressed the

issue. The population of this north- western region has been shrinking,

leaving it home to nearly half [of] Spain’s abandoned villages. More

than 1,500 settlements – once home to schools, businesses and filled

with children – now sit abandoned,overgrown with weeds and bushes. 

In 2012, the regional government launched a multi-pronged initiative

to address the falling fertility rate, with plans to roll out measures such

as home and transport subsidies for families and radio advertise-

ments urging women to have more children. But it is still estimated

that Galicia’s population could shrink by 1 million residents in the next

40 years, a loss of just under one third of the region’s population. 

For southern Europe, migration within the EU has become a grave

problem. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese have left, hoping to

find better opportunities abroad. Coelho has said the next 10 to 15

years would be decisive in reversing the trend. If no action is taken,

he said last year, “these issues will only be solved by a miracle.” [...]

(702 words)

Abridged from: The Guardian, 23 August 2015

Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/

23/baby-crisis-europe-brink-depopulation-disaster

Accessed on 1 February 2016.

TRACCIA MINISTERIALE

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Nuova Secondaria - n. 4 2016 - Anno XXXIV - ISSN 1828-4582

Lingue straniere

Inglese - Attualità

Elisabetta Saleri

Introduction

This year the State Exam for Liceo Linguistico has fol-

lowed the same format as last year’s: the language, cho-

sen by the Ministry of Education, was the first language

studied at school, and students had to carry out the activ-

ities related to a text they would select between the four

proposed, which belonged respectively to the fields of cur-

rent affairs, history-social studies, literature and arts. For

each text, the candidates were asked to answer ten com-

prehension questions and to write an essay of about 300

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