Descends the number of students in Primary, another effect of the decrease in the birth rate
The birth rate has declined continuously in recent years. The difficulty to find a job and to form a home and the extension of student life to perfect oneself is causing fewer and fewer children to be seen in the parks. A situation that also begins to be noticed inside the classrooms as revealed by the data of the Ministry of Education.
The most basic levels of schooling are noticing the lack of children in the new generations in the form of decreasing enrollment in stages such as Primary. In fact, the current course is the first since 2005 that records a decline instead of a promotion. One more sign that in Spain the number of births each year continues to decline.
2,932,160 enrolled
Data from the Ministry of Education number 2,932,160 enrolled in Primary those of the 2017-2018 academic year, approximately 8,000 fewer than in 2016-17, which closed with 2,940,226 students. A situation that breaks with the rise that has been experienced since the 2005-2006 school year, with 2,483,364 at that time. In percentages, the Government figures in a 0.3% drop in enrollment in this stage.
A percentage that if a priori may seem low, evidence the drop in birth rates in recent years. According to the report United Nations Fund for Population Activities, in the world the population over 65 years old is located in the 8%, but in the case of Spain the figure rises to 19%. Considering other data related to the younger sectors, the number of individuals of 14 years globally supposes 26%, in the case of our country it is 15% Spanish. Again, there are differences when pooling the number of births, 2.5 babies on average in the global environment, 1.4 if our numbers are observed.
In fact, this situation is leading Spain to a stagnation of the population. The data collected in the period between 2010 and 2016, difference between births and deaths was 0%. This means that this country has not gained inhabitants during the last six years. In fact there have even been stretches in which more deaths have been collected than births.
Data for hope
This context could change in the coming years as in 2016, for the first time since 2011, more births than deaths were recorded. In this last course, a increase of 21.9%. An increase that responds mainly to the increase in immigration and not to the increase in the birth rate. It has also helped this situation that the number of people who left the country dropped by 4%. Thanks to this, the migratory balance of this nation has been positive, reaching 89,126 individuals.
The latest data from INE The inhabitants of Spain are located in 46.5 million people. A slight increase of 0.19% of the population of this country. Although we must also bear in mind that these figures only have an account for those citizens who, when arriving abroad, inform the consular offices and embassies of Spain of this new situation.
But there is still work to be done. The data of the Institute of Family Policy, IPF, explain that the current birth rate in Spain does not guarantee the generational change since for this to occur the birth rate must be at least 2.1 and within our borders is 1.32. This places our country in the tail of Europe in terms of birth rate since the IPF indicates that we occupy the penultimate place along with Portugal.
The IPF data explain that in order for the generational relief in Spain 260,000 more births would have to take place at the end of the year, which means that there should be 719 more births than there are today.
Damián Montero
