The aging population and its effects on economics in the Balearic Islands

Abstract

[eng] During the last decade, aging populations are getting to worrying points in some regions, especially in developed countries. One of these countries which has been very affected by an aging population is Spain, as it has had a very big birth rate problem, as it is one of the countries in tu EU with the lowest rate. This fact sums up with another one, which is life expectancy (increased vastly in the last decades in Spain), which leads to disaster, as they are two phenomenons that, succeeded at the same time, take us to an unsustainable economy. In this project we will focus on the Spanish region of the Balearic Island. The archipelago has surprisingly good ratios, in terms of aging population, compared to many other regions in Spain, however this doesn’t take away the fact that Baleares is in a critical point, as all it’s fellow Spanish regions. The main sources come from the same points as the general Spanish issues: low birth rate, high life expectancy and also immigration, which leads to an increase in the middle sector of population pyramids, which are already too big to sustain due to the baby boom generation. All these problems are just add ons to issues that create, as said, unsustainability in terms of economic systems. Our main results on the analysis conclude what we’ve just said; an aging population is unsustainable, especially in Spain, and as we will see, this might have a negative effect on some macroeconomic factors such as employment and unemployment, GDP, etc.