Elisa Chuliá Rodrigo (Valencia, 1965) is a professor of Sociology at UNED and a researcher at Funcas. She is one of the researchers who has dedicated the most time to analyzing issues such as the control of the media and public opinion in non-democratic regimes, social change in Spanish families and their contribution to social well-being and the aging of the population and the sustainability of pensions.-What does the challenge of aging in Spain pose to us?-Aging in itself is not a problem, the question is to find out what the causes and consequences of this aging are to assess the demographic phenomenon. Because if the causes are related to the increase in life expectancy, that is, in principle, good news. A different question is whether aging is due to the unwanted reduction in birth rates. There we do have a problem. We observe a fairly intense drop in fertility. Among Spanish women, very low levels have been reached, below what is called the replacement rate, which would be the level that would allow the population to be kept stable. Related News report Si Yascha Mounk: «The European economic malaise should be taken more seriously » John Müller Mounk is one of the most famous political scientists in the world and his vision of the European Union is accurate: “It works too well for it to fail, but too badly for it to prosper” – What challenges does it pose for pensions? – For me The fundamental problem with pensions is that there has not been enough political courage to explain the problem and reach solutions by consensus. Currently, at 65 years of age, women have a life expectancy of about 23 years, and men more than 19. These years must be financed through pensions. It is true that the retirement age is already 67 years old, but in any case there are many years in which pensions must be paid, and these pensions continue to be financed through a contributory pay-as-you-go system, that is, they have to be paid primarily by employers. and workers.- The idea is circulating that this is not a continent for young people. Do you share it? – Only to a certain extent. It is true that young people have many difficulties in emancipating themselves from the family home, but it is also true that we cannot compare their situation within the home with that of 30 or 40 years ago. For those of us who belong to the ‘baby boom’ generation, the situation at home was much more restrictive, because the rules that prevailed required more discipline and limited behavior more. In summary, it is true that young people are in a worse position to emancipate themselves, to develop their own family projects, they take a long time to reach a level of income that allows them to do so, but it is also true that, in return, they have managed, with the exceptions that must always be considered, family accommodation and relatively high comfort compared to previous generations. -The fact that they take time to emancipate themselves is a factor that affects the drop in fertility. -Without a doubt. Many factors are influencing the drop in fertility, and one is that young people take longer to leave the family home. There is talk of structural causes: difficulties in finding well-paid jobs, rising rents… There are definitely structural problems, but we must not forget that, in parallel, the culture has been changing. That is to say, young people of different sexes relate today in a very different way than they did 30 or 40 years ago, and the way they relate to their parents has also changed a lot. There is a very curious fact in the 2018 Fertility Survey: when women who do not have children or have taken longer to have them than they wanted were asked about the fundamental cause, many – more than I imagined – said that They had not found a stable partner. Of course, to develop that vital project of having children, it is advisable to have a stable and solvent partner, that is, a partner that you can trust not only because they will take care of your children, but because they will provide the means to provide for them. It seems that finding a stable partner has become a very difficult task today, perhaps because one is more demanding… And when one is found, it is often no longer institutionalized through marriage. Nowadays more than 50% of children are born to an unmarried mother.- We are moving towards a profile like that of Latin America of births outside of marriage.- It is an incredible increase, although it is true that weddings, already with children born, They have also increased a lot. That is to say, many couples prefer to have children, perhaps see how they handle raising them, and then consolidate their relationship through marriage. In any case, the decline of marriage as an institution is extraordinary. The reasons are surely varied. Of course, there are fewer and fewer financial incentives for marriage in the form of bonuses or improved benefits. But I often hear that marriage implies, in a certain way, a strong commitment to what we usually call the in-laws, and that is no longer wanted so much. – In some way this has to do with the question of whether Europe is a continent for young people or not. Not only do we make it more difficult for them to become independent, rent a house or have a family, but the economy itself loses dynamism because there are fewer entrepreneurs. – It is true that we have a social protection system inherited from times in which the demographics were completely different and which was very oriented towards the elderly. In Spain, the State supports the family little, things as they are. Support older individuals more. There are two things that the Spanish welfare system does very well: protect the elderly and the sick. We can really say that the pension system is generous, because a pension system that offers average replacement rates of around 70% is a generous system. The average retirement pension is close to 1,500 euros, a figure that many young people with a university degree take quite a few years to collect, and that many workers do not reach. It doesn’t seem very reasonable. – Did the pension reform seem right to you? – I have written about this, defining the reform as a lost opportunity. There is a message that must be transmitted to the population: look, we have a good pension system, but we are going to have significant problems to continue financing it, for the simple reason that the number of pensioners increases year after year in proportion to the population. of working age, and unfortunately we are not more productive. The growth of pension spending must be contained. Respect for fiscal rules also obliges us to do so. It cannot increase ad libitum.The kings in Paiporta “In a difficult situation they have shown courage and compassion, two virtues that I value very much” – There are many votes at stake and those who have the upper hand are the elders who are sometimes more concerned about climate change and the future of the planet.- Well, the elderly are concerned about the future of pensions and they vote based on their interests; They are surely the most practical voters of the entire electorate. Yes, of theirs. But they don’t care that their pensions are paid with public debt, which is the taxes of their grandchildren. Many do not even understand how a pay-as-you-go system works. We have verified this in surveys. Many people in Spain continue to believe that an average pensioner earns much less than what they have contributed in their working life, when this is not true. It has been calculated that around the eleventh year, everything that has been paid to Social Security has already been recovered, updated, of course. That this has not been transferred to the population is incomprehensible. And to think that immigrants are going to solve the pension problem is, in my opinion, to underestimate that they also generate the right to pensions and logically they are going to claim it when the time comes. How will we finance it then? – Has it touched on one of the critical issues, immigration? – Immigration policy is so crucial for the demographics of a country that it is not explained how, with a wave of migration as powerful as Spain has had since 25 years ago, so little was said in the parliamentary space and in the public sphere about this issue. Because immigration has implications for the labor market, the housing market, education, the social protection system, and everything that matters about public policies. And it turns out that there has not been a sufficiently broad debate in society about this policy. -What do you think of the Democratic Action Plan that the government has presented? -It has a part that seems sensible to me, which is the review of some legislation, such as the Official Secrets Law. -What happens is that all this occurs in the context of a problem that the President of the Government and his wife have with Justice. Seen from the perspective of honor, they are two characters that jurisprudence has always considered well protected and where the doctrine was that it is better for their honor to suffer than for freedom of expression to suffer. – Yes, when these two rights come into conflict, we must assess which prevails. Being a matter in which public money may be affected, it is logical that freedom of information prevails. The motivation for this program of democratic regeneration raises understandable suspicions. There is also one thing that I see clearly: a program with such ambition and scope should be agreed upon with the main opposition party, whoever is in the government or in the opposition. – It is also contradictory because we are going to review sentences for crimes. when an amnesty law has just been approved that forgave conduct that is not exemplary. -Yes, when the sensations of inconsistency between speech and action, and of political opportunism spread, political unrest takes root and two very perverse consequences for any democracy: disaffection and polarization.-Are sanitary cordons useful? My impression is that it reinforces the extremists. I couldn’t say if that reinforces them that much. What I do believe is that the imposition of a cordon sanitaire should depend on the behavior of the parties; and if it is imposed, be coherent and apply it without prejudice to whether the ideology is right-wing or left-wing.-Families are not homogeneous. How is the cordon sanitaire transferred to a family lunch? – There is little talk about politics at the table, let alone the polls. Catalan colleagues and friends have repeatedly told me that political topics are deliberately avoided at family gatherings to ‘have the party in peace’. It doesn’t just happen in Catalonia, of course. Politics and confrontation have become equivalent terms for many people and that, for me, is a disgrace in a democracy. -What is your opinion of the State’s response to the crisis caused by DANA? -Although there has been a lot of talk about these days about a leadership crisis, I believe that we have also witnessed a tragic episode of State overflow. The so-called social states have expanded so much, they have so much spending committed at the beginning of each year, that they inevitably tend to neglect what in my opinion should be one of their main functions: protecting citizens from contingencies, always being prepared to react. quickly and effectively in the face of any disaster, whether natural or geopolitical. -What did you think of the performance of the Kings in Paiporta? -In a very difficult circumstance, they have shown courage and compassion, two virtues that I value very much.
#Elisa #Chuliá #disgrace #confrontation #politics #synonymous
