Publications

Birth rates in Colombia have dropped to 1.6 children per woman, accelerating aging. This pressures pension and healthcare systems. Encouraging births without improving labor and care conditions is ineffective. Public policy must adjust with reforms to ensure sustainability and well-being.

Despite the high GDP growth rate of the Spanish economy (3.1% forecast for 2024) and a buoyant employment outlook (2.4% year-on-year growth in Social Security affiliation in December), the pension system has not yet managed to reduce its high structural deficit.

This presentation, delivered on the 10th anniversary of the BBVA Pension Institute in Portugal, analyzes the economic forecasts for Portugal and Spain, and the challenge of long-term aging of their population, as one of the challenges facing public systems pensions in Europe.

Despite higher recent GDP growth, the productivity of the Spanish economy has been falling behind that of the EU, making convergence in per capita income difficult. The projections of the Ageing Report 2024 do not foresee any improvement in the outlook.

Spain must continue to offer an attractive society to ensure migratory flows that will transform the demographic structure. Immigration, like productivity growth, helps to spread the increase in pension spending due to the retirement of baby boomers over more decades, though it does not eliminate it.

The 2021-2023 pension reform has resulted in a system that will be more generous, but less contributory and self-sufficient, as social security contributions are not able to finance the higher expenditure on pensions.

Authorizing a new withdrawal (the seventh) of pension funds is a bad idea: it benefits high-income members, will induce higher rates and will leave millions without any support to cope with old age.

A few months ago, the OECD warned that the recent pension reform was unlikely to prove sufficient to fully balance the system. Rather, it said it would increase expenditure more than income, thereby requiring the government to take further steps.