Features

A growing need for fresh blood

Forecasts suggest Catalonia will need migrants to grow and compensate for its increasingly ageing population

Estimates from Catalonia's statistics office, Idescat, suggest that in the short-term the country's population will begin to shrink due to an going fall in the birth rate. In fact, it is estimated that due to the ageing of the population, by 2020, there will be more deaths than births, making the arrival of people from abroad a necessity in order to maintain population growth.

“Migration to Catalonia is, has been and will be extremely important. It is one of the key elements in the Catalan demographic dynamic,” says the head of Idescat's Població i Territori section, Mireia Farré (see interview on page 24).

Between births at the base of the population pyramid and deaths at the top, the space in between can only realistically be filled out by migration: “The population arriving to this country are of working and fertile age. The flow of arrivals has a dual positive effect on demographic growth because, on the one hand, new workers come and, on the other, when these people have children, it raises the birth rate. In all, it is very important for the growth of the Catalan population,” adds Farré.

Three scenarios

Idescat has put forward three basic hypotheses for how the population might evolve over the next few years. One is a medium estimate based on a scenario in which a degree of economic recovery leads to a positive migratory balance of some 30,000 new arrivals every year. Then there is a higher-end estimate that foresees some 50,000 new arrivals a year, and a conservative scenario in which the economic crisis continues and so the number of new arrivals from abroad is not enough to do more than replace those people leaving the country.

The first of these three hypothetical scenarios is the one that Idescat considers most likely, according to the current demographic situation, and as such is the scenario used as the point of reference for its forecasts. However, according to Mireia Farré, the last of these three hypotheses is the most interesting, “because it allows us to answer the question of what Catalonia's population would be like without any immigration,” she says, adding: “The main idea is that without immigration the population will shrink, and above all will get smaller among people of working age.”

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