No wonder property prices are up

https://spanishnewstoday.com/foreign...0246174-a.html

More serious is the fact that Spain has one of the lowest European demographic replacement rates, and that from a Catholic country!
Spain is heading for a catastrophe in the next few decades.
There won't be enough government income to pay for all the care that the increasing elderly will need.

It is among the lowest (at 1.12 live births per woman according to the EU's 2023 data), but that's not saying much when the average for the whole of Europe is 1.38 and the highest are Bulgaria at 1.81 and France at 1.66. .. The rate needs to be at least 2.1 to maintain a steady population (I have seen figures as high as 2.3 being required). So the whole of Europe has a birth rate too low to maintain the population.

The "problem" (if that is the right word - personally I struggle to accept that word when there are over 8bn of us on earth) is not unique to Europe as other countries have the same issue - notably Japan and South Korea have declining populations due to the low birth rates in those countries.

The whole world has an ageing population thanks to medical breakthroughs over the last fifty or so years.
The problem these days is that people are living longer with dementia and Alzheimer's instead of dropping dead like they did before, and this costs the taxpayer money.

Unless retirement ages are raised (for all but on a scale of job difficulty in my view) and/ortaxes are raised to nearly eye-watering levels, the whole thing will possibly collapse.
I have friends a couple of years older than I, and they will retire at 66, while I, for no fault of my own, have to wait till 67.
And my son I expect will have to work till 70 before getting an OAP (if thats still a thing in 39 years' time).

Now I wonder at what age “any” EU member official & “any’ UK elected (or otherwise) official would be entitled to take their pension ?
Fancy it will be at least a decade “before” any worker, in any industry’ those so called officials whose benifits any worker could only dream about ?

This! The system of retirement pensions was broken when it was created, at least in the UK and US that I know of (but I suspect is more or less the same across the industrialized world). The problem is that when the pensionable age was set in the UK at "65", life expectancy was 67, and unfortunately there was no mechanism set at that time (inception of the state pension, or "social security" in the US) to increase the retirement age as life expectancy increased. So even though I won't get a state pension/ SS until i am 67, at the current life expectancy I will be retired for over 10 years, and given my occupation, family medical history, and general current good health, it could easily be twice as long, when the system was set up when the average man only received a pension for two years, .... and given the distribution curve of "age at death", I would guess that at least 25% died before reaching retirement.

Not only does retirement age need to be increased, it should have been done on a gradual basis, say one month per year, now and into the future, until the retirement age reaches at least 70.

The system is broken but I still think this is the issue that needs addressing most.

The way things are going economically over the last years/decade+ I cannot see this improving though. Too much corporate power, zero-hours contracts or fake self-employment just to work for one company, etc. Plus I don't think this can be achieved without massive perks provided for families with 3+ kids. Some think 2 is enough but in the grand scheme of things... it isn't! So either we reshape the system so that it massively benefits such families or we'll never go higher than the figure required...

Pulaski - "The problem is that when the pensionable age was set in the UK at "65", life expectancy was 67....." Just having a quick look at some statistics, which do vary, but when the modern contributory State pension was introduced in 1925 and the qualification age being 65, the life expectancy for males was about 58 years. But considering you'd be paying in for decades it could be 1965 when you claimed it and then the life expectancy was about 71.

I was going off a number in the late 30's, I don't remember why now, but I am guilty of not rechecking dates and number before making the post you quoted. That said, there are multiple ways to analyse the data - actual life expectancy for 60 year olds at the time the pension was introduced, or life expectancy for someone new into the workforce when the pension was introduced, or someone of median age or ..... the possibilities are endless, but the problem remains that the original framwork for funding and pay state pensions (with almost identical issues with the US's "social security" pensions) did not include a way to, on an ongoing basis, adjust the retirement age to reflect changes in life expectancy. That said I doubt anyone in the 1920's, before the discovery of antibiotics (in 1928) and the development of numerous vaccines, among many other medical advancements, could possibly have anticipated that 100 years later that average life expectancy would be pushing 80 years old!
When there are over 8bn of us on the planet, I don't consider that a low birth rate is something that is broken and needs to be fixed.

Let's revisit the issue when global population is down to 1bn (one billion) and still falling.

I would look at this on a national/regional scale. Population issues in other parts of the world should have no bearing on local policies to increase birth rates and sustain population levels.

On a side note I wonder what Japan is going to do as I believe they are facing a crisis with low birth rates and an ageing population. It'll be interesting to see what measures they'll take and whether they'll include anything to shift the work-life balance.

Japan has been the poster child for falling birth rates for 30 years, but there are other countries that have similar issues, notably, in the news at the moment, Russia. But across various countries, Japan, Russia, Korea, that I know of, none of the reforms, including parental leave, improved childcare, tax benefits, and even straight-up cash subsidies, have had more than a marginal impact on the birthrate, and none of the three countries listed succeed in reversing the downward trend.

So three things occur to me, [1] that the primary solution is going to be some combination of moving people to where their labour is required and moving the work to where there is surplus labour.

[2] continued automation/ mechanisation, reducing the need for labour is also part of the solution.

[3] Like it or not, countries are going to need to adjust their economy when the reality is that their country is going to experience a decline in population, especially if, for whatever reason, they are not willing to accept more immigrants.

In consideration of point [3] it is already known to a high degree of certainty that the population of Russia will fall to around 105 million by 2100 (down from 140 million today), and that China's population will fall to not much more than 500 million by the same year, and at least the Chinese government knows this. The Russian government is still apparently in denial. 🙄

If you wish to broaden the discussion to the rest of the world I suggest that you start a thread in TIO or The Lounge.

Rosemary