To maintain quality of life standards What has currently been achieved, the Basque Country and its productive and social fabric are facing a great productivity challenge that is a direct consequence of what I call the “demographic quagmire” that I explain in a simple way below.
Since 1980, the population in the Basque Country has changed little in global terms. It has gone from 2,141,353 people in 1980 to 2,174,033 in 2010 (32,680 more people; 1.5% total increase). However, as a consequence of a very low fertility rate (1.20 in 2006) and the progressive increase in life expectancy at birth (84.3 years for women and 77.2 for men), the structure of the population It has been radically transformed and has gone from a typical population pyramid with a broad base of people in the lowest age cohorts, to one in which these have drastically decreased and the core cohorts (people of working age) have increased and the older ones (see graph).
Currently, and even in the short, medium term, this population structure does not present great tensions, but the changes that can be intuited for the coming decades present a bleak panorama: the Basque population pyramid in 2050 (see graph) shows a drastic drop in the number of people of working age (256,960 fewer people since 2010) and a very notable increase in the potentially inactive and, in particular, those aged 65 and over, which increased by 77.8%.
; a GDP per capita 22%. And all this with social costs, especially health costs, substantially higher due to the notorious aging of the population that will occur .
In order to get out of the demographic quagmire we are in, it will be necessary to put on the table policies that make it possible to extend the active life of people, together with others that make the labor market more attractive to increase the relatively low rate of activity that characterizes us. But in addition to all this, if we really want to advance and maintain the level of well-being achieved, there is no other choice but to radically increase the productivity of our companies; we need companies that provide more value per person employed.
And this means producing more with what we have, taking better advantage of the available human and technical resources in which there is surely still a certain margin, but above all it means being a hub of talent and innovation so that our companies apply the most advanced technology. available, develop new products and incorporate new ways of doing things and business models that open up new market niches in which greater added value is generated.
We have to invest more in R+D+I because innovation is the only way that can offer us a new future. It is not a question of investing to get out of the crisis, but of putting all the meat on the grill despite the crisis, because once it passes, which will happen, we will continue to have the same and imperative need to innovate and maybe it's too late.
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