Like much of Southern Europe, Spain faces low birth rates, meaning this demographic growth is almost entirely driven by immigration While immigration helps offset the aging population and supports the state pension system, it also puts severe pressure on housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare in major urban hubs like Madrid and Barcelona
I walk past several construction sites here in eastern Spain, and one of the things that stand out the most is how few people they have working on them at any given time. Even the ones with prefabs progress extremely slowly, and it's not like there's an extraordinary amount of lots being developed, a lot of the good ones had already been exhausted in the 00s bubble.
Maybe lack of workers pre-regularization (less young locals nowadays, with higher rates of college education and higher employment rates), maybe a case of trying to time the market without having politicians roasting their ear about why they sit on finished inventory.
I paid for my studies working construction up until 2008, right before the big crash, so I had still contact with lots of people from that world and it was basically wiped out. Almost everyone working construction when the bubble burst lost their jobs and the ones with decades of experiences and massive contacts networks managed to scrape by, the ones with workers fired everyone and everyone not firmly established in the sector o starting just moved to some other field and by the time construction recovered they already had many years in the new field so they did not want to change and the old ones that remained are already retired or near retirement.
Basically the 2008 bubble burst wiped the generational learning chain of the construction trade and now that we need the people we just cannot make them appear of thin air.
Yes, we are heavily relying in latin america, which is not that bad taking into account we share the same language and like 90% cultural stuff (thanks to horny ancestors), but still nowhere enough of them because those skills are on-demand everywhere.
Even if you offered 10x salary the amount of people you have that can teach is limited because the work needs to continue. There are several big construction sites around my building and most of them only have workers once or twice a week because there is just not enough people.
A coworker of mine his family is in the serious construction business and one of the biggest issues they have is other companies coming and offering more salary to their workers directly on site to take them even when they already pay above market rate the situation is THAT bad.
This is why is important for governments to subsidy fields during crisis to ensure the generational teaching chain does not break because it takes several decades to rebuild.
Dude have you been in a construction site in Spain in the middle of summer. The job is brutal. Immigrants are willing to drive 14h of uber daily before laying bricks under 40C degree sun
As I understand it, residential real estate had a lot of red tape and is a minefield for buyers.
That’s a problem, because you need new build buyers to get those affordable old buildings.
Foreigners are often forewarned not to buy from a building that is still in its development phase, as the process isn’t predictable and reliable.
In Finland, you would hardly ever expect to run into such major problems buying a new build. The stuff gets built, the problems are more minor, so the market works. There are willing buyers which means there are developers willing to start projects.
Well, wouldnt that depend on the immigration-adjusted population growth? If its within the range of where the population would be assuming Spain had a 2.1-ish birthrate then it wouldn't be putting "severe" pressure on housing affordability. Just normal pressure
2.1 would be more or less steady state, meanwhile Spain was at 40M in 2000, and 50M now, +25%.
And the aggravating factor is that the average household size is shrinking too, which means that a given number of people on average needs way more units of housing compared to the past.
An averaged growth rate of 1% a year is certainly doable. The issue with housing prices is not primarily the result of population, it's the result of a lack of adequate new builds and the lack of maintenance on the existing supply. Many houses (especially in the countryside) are simply not up to par with current living expectations and yet are still too expensive or too remote from economic activity to be affordable.
The answer to this would be a state directed infrastructure buildout which emphasized affordability and which regulated and restricted housing speculation, particularly from those outside the country. There are many millionaires from around the EU who choose to have a "summer home" or non-primary residence in Spain.
This is the solution to pretty much every housing crisis in every single country. Thére is no way private enterprise is going to solve the housing crisis for middle income earners.
In Spain it's primarily inflicted by the neoliberal market reforms which have dominated many European economies since the 90's.
From the perspective of individual capitalists, building cheap and affordable housing is not as profitable as developing the same land for other purposes. The incentives within the housing market direct developers towards more "luxury" or "high income" housing while leaving poorer areas and the countryside to rot.
My 2 cents, I'm building a house in Spain at the moment for my family, right now.
Building to even the most basic regulations/standards costs around €1000 per m², that's not including land, builders profit, the paperwork (architects, geo survey, topography all plus 21% IVA) and taxes. The taxes and bureaucratic costs (which are just renamed taxes) are seemingly endless.
My project, about 12% of the total cost, is just tax. I'm paying ibi (property tax) on the land too, then I'm paying a huge amount of tax to build the house, which then increases the ibi on the property as a whole. So I'm paying tax, to pay more tax. 🤷
The time waiting for building permission is insane too. Then when it's finished you have to self certify with the architect that it's finished to get electricity and water etc connected because the townhall literally won't visit/inspect. You get default licence of first occupation by law after 6 months because the townhall won't bother coming...they changed the law because of so many finished houses just waiting for permission to be lived in. Banks need this paperwork to approve mortgages to buyers....
Spain's problem is tax and the pointless Kafkaesque bureaucracy,, that applies to everything not just construction.
Also, we're building a A/0 house so it's basically passive, there are no government incentives to do so. On paper there are some but when you dig into it, it's basically impossible to claim the rebates. So much for them wanting sustainable housing due to the impending climate apocalypse. 🤷
So if you say it costs 1300 per m² to build something with land etc, then a developer has to make a margin to bother investing in it, let's be optimistic and say 40% (because they have corp tax to pay too) that's €1820 m², then the government wants 10% iva on new property when it's bought, that's €2002 per m². The most basic bare bones, not expensive land/area at the minimum costs buyers that.
Average salary in Spain is like 28k or something awful, 60m² apartment x 2002 = 120k. Bank won't lend more than 80%, so they need 25k cash saved up, then a mortgage of about 700 a month. Net salary on 28k is about 1750 a month. They still can't technically afford it.
In reality the cost of M² is much higher, the developer has to slap on much higher margin because they have to service debt for the many years it takes to actually build and certify anything to be able to sell it and land to build on, where there are jobs, isn't cheap. Lending to developers is risky, so it's a loaded high % rate from private capital/institution, which gets passed on to the buyers.
That's basically why I think there is no affordable housing in Spain being built.
If the government themselves decided to build affordable housing, it still wouldn't be cheaper than the figures above because: "government effeciency" and no doubt, most of the money allocated for the project would be stolen along the way by everyone from national to local politicians. So nothing would be built anyway.
I read somewhere that the largest land owners in Spain are the townhalls themselves, I know in my area they own huge tracts of land doing nothing, so they already have the space, they just like tax too much to use it themselves.
Here's a crazy one, I had to pay 21% IVA on my land, plus 1.2% because "reasons", plus legal fees etc. You can't mortgage land in Spain.. so that's all cash. There's a big hurdle right away.
I paid 21% IVA because I bought it from a company, on the whole amount. Not the profit they made on the land like IVA on used car sales, the whole amount... IVA is value added tax, where was the value added in mud, it was mud when they bought it and it was the same mud when I bought it. Actually it's oak trees but that's immaterial. They got €66.6k in tax, before anything was built or even applied for! Plus 26% on the profit the seller made on the land too!!
The church in Spain also.owns a lot of land ,and they don't know how to handle it,given to them by little old.ladies that pass away and leave it in their will .the church generally have no idea how to manage or a clue what to do with it .
That's actually true ,in the UK my family gave money to the.church for the roof repairs and living cost of the priest .my family had.a building company, they asked the local church about some land and offered a fair price to buy it,to.do housing with social.housing included .the deal was sent higher up the sticky pole and it was sold to a developer for the same price but a profit share and no social housing .that says a lot about how the church think
Thank you for your insightful comment! Much of what it says lines up with my experience as well.
The way regulations function are so often to create artificial barriers to cheaper housing to drive up costs rather than to actually ensure higher quality end results. This benefits and incentivizes larger developers to prioritize only luxury or "high income" construction like I was saying before. The few rebates and incentives officially offered by governments are often Byzantine and arbitrarily difficult to actually get.
I disagree with you that government built housing necessarily will always result in inefficiencies and corruption, though. This is a matter of political will- if a government takes up the task seriously then it can work like it has in many other countries or even in European countries in the past. We have to be willing to change the system here because it clearly isn't working as it currently is.
Generally I just don't see any other way out. There needs to be a political reckoning with the corruption in government but there also needs to be an economic reckoning with the raw fact that organising basic necessities like housing off of the profit motive fails to lead to acceptable results for millions of people and it's just going to continue to get worse until an outside force makes that change. All of this will continue to get worse as climate change, economic shocks from wars, and other political instability make everything more difficult. I don't see any other force which can make this change other than the government.
I've actually seen a government affordable housing scheme work well, obviously not in Spain though.
The government eminent domained some land that wasn't really doing much anyway, then they built multiple blocks of nice apartments. They then sold the apartments either 50/50 or outright but only to citizens, not immigrants, only to be lived in, they couldn't be sublet and they couldn't be sold for I think 10 years but once again then only to citizens and they couldn't own more than one. It kept the housing stock away from speculators/investors. The 50/50 was buy half and pay token rent on the other.
The apartments were even sold with a profit so the government made money on it.
They came without kitchens and bathrooms which kept the costs down and did a deal with the local banks to agree to better mortgage terms to allow for the finishing for the new owners. The kitchens and bathrooms etc were purchased locally, so creating economic churn too.
By keeping it ownership not social housing, it creates community, so even years later, the blocks are still nice, the communal areas aren't all destroyed etc. The movement of people into these apartments freed up a lot of the older social housing which went to the unemployed etc.
Housing is also a vehicle for mortgage fueled speculation. They are valuable, because they are prime collateral for loan origination. Many banks have unholy alliances with realtors. Housing is expensive, because that is in the intrest of realtors and banks who are the ones that determine the prices in the short term. In short: housing is expensive, because housing is expensive.
Creative accounting is the blight of the humankind.
The math works on paper, but the real-world housing friction is about timing a infant born locally doesn't enter the rental or homebuying market for 20-25 years, giving the construction sector decades to adjust supply. An adult immigrant enters the housing market on Day 1. That immediate demand-supply lag is what creates the sever price and rent pressure in major metro areas
Nobody's building houses looking at the birthrates now and thinking that in 20 years we best have a home ready for those kids.
It might be an issue if there's a sudden influx of people but 1% a year doesn't seem that much.
Kids take 20 years to need a home but they also need 20 years to be productive members of society. Immigration actually outsources raising kids to other countries and the host country just gets a capable worker without having to pay squat for raising that person.
There's a bunch of negatives and positive aspects to migration, it's a really complex topic with a ton of intertwined variables.
Also since Covid and the rise in work from home, people who can afford it are seeking apartments with an extra room for an office that that may not otherwise have sought out.
That's a great point, I've never considered it that way before.
I think perhaps in the past immigrants were more likely to part of the construction sector and so it was less of an issue.
But construction as a trade and immigrant demographics have changed considerably over the last 20 years. While construction still does have a healthy level of immigrants in the workforce it's noticeably to a lesser degree, although that is anecdotal for my area and I don't know what it is like in Spain.
Housing in SK is super expensive because 50% the country lives in the Seoul Metropolitan area. When half the country wants to live in the same place, that skyrockets demand there. And most of the other half wants to live a different city. Rent is over 1/4 cheaper in a city like Andong. Although they don’t build as many homes as someone like Japan to keep prices lower.
Yep. The issue driving housing crisis in developed nations is concentration of jobs.
Concentrating economy in a single place makes makes economy more efficient. But then young people move from smaller places where construction of new housing is cheaper into overpopulated places where construction of new housing is more expensive.
Supply and demand, everyone wants to move to the cities. If you are willing to move to a small rural town you can get a place to stay for practically free. But who wants to live there? And can you get a remote job or regular job there. This is playing out everywhere. Lack of affordability _in the cities_
I don't think there's a good solution to this. People are naturally going to congregate to the hub that provides the most opportunity, excitement, life.
It takes more like a year before a baby moves out of their parents room and into their own room. Housing strain is measured by rooms occupied and not by properties. It's not like immigrants are buying houses and leaving lots of empty rooms.
Upon further examination, it seems there are two concepts in play:
Housing strain as you reference is rooms occupied per person.
Housing stress is the cost of housing per person.
I was addressing housing stress, as it seems a more objective indicator in the context of an economics discussion.
I imagine most people are similarly more concerned with the cost of housing in a discussion of this nature, though I appreciate that others may approach it from the strain perspective.
An interesting and informative discussion! Glad to read any further response, if you so desire.
Housing stress increases too with natural births. People upsize when they have kids. A couple renting a studio will need a 3 bed house when they have 2 kids.
And even if that weren't true , we have been stuck in a housing crises for so many decades that saying "this puts off the problem till later is not a solution. The same number of houses will need to be built when the kids are of of age.
Not to mention that immigrant communities are infamous for extremely efficient housing use compared to natives. Many live 5-10 adults to a house and when they buy property , they rent out all spare rooms to others that need them rather than sit on giant houses for decades like natives when the kids move out. They are entitled to do this but Im merely pointing out the effects on the housing market.
This is exactly my point. There is no shortage of land. We also know how to build houses. Supply is constrained by governments who have made it impossible to get housing built. If they just gave a universal right to landowners to build what they want on their land we would have no issue.
And to say it's impossible is not true. People just arent even trying. They will protest against housing but believe that the whole problem is caused by "greedy landlords " who are out to get them. When was the last time you saw a housing protest where people were demanding less regulation on construction?
Immigration is not the primary cause of housing affordability, practically every study shows that income inequality is the primary driver of housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare failures in liberal democracies.
Can you please show me a study that says it’s down to income inequality and not supply struggling to keep up with demand?
Japan has issues with income inequality yet housing is much less of an issue there and the costs take up a much smaller part of someone’ pay-check. They have very liberal zoning laws that allow for quicker expansion and building modifications.
Except immigrants also build things, consume things, start businesses, employ people, and pay taxes. When immigrants are studied it's at worst a wash compared to native-born citizens depending on immigrants' exact demographics, but often immigration is a net positive in purely economic terms. The pie grows, so to speak.
The idea the immigrants cause housing unaffordability is misleading at best. They do tend to cluster in urban centers which can cause temporary upward pressure, but they also spur housing construction by the same measure, meaning an increase in rent/purchase prices is mostly temporary in real-dollar terms. Good examples of places that don't handle this new construction well in response to in-migration would be places like Los Angeles, London, or Barcelona.
Yeah it’s not complicated. Any valuable labor (educated/skilled) is good for an economy. The friction lies when less skilled native borne population has to compete in a more crowded labor pool and becomes disenfranchised.
The pie gets bigger, but their slice gets smaller and it’s a loss for them. Reducing legal immigration is just protectionism for lower skilled labor, while being a net loss for society.
Except I'm not even really convinced that's true either. An overview of economic studies tends to show that immigrants mostly aren't even competing with native-born labor, at least in the US. Immigrants tend to be less skilled, meaning they compete for low-wage or undesirable work that firms have trouble filling with native workers. The literature shows that the effect of immigration is at worse nearly neutral, and positive in aggregate.
On top of that, native language ability is a skill in of itself that gives native workers a market advantage in certain jobs that tend to be more desirable.
From my knowledge I would disagree. Sure, “nobody wants to pick their own strawberries” - and even the kitchen dishwashing job is unlikely to be desired by native borne labor… but theory dictates that it depresses wages on the lower end of the scale. Even after accounting for the net effect of higher demand, employees just have less negotiating power with employers.
On the higher end, there are some jobs that have a very low supply so importing that labor is favorable. Like imagine there’s only 1 person or like 20 people in the world who can do a job (there are jobs like that I’ve heard of) and the output is incomparable to other labor output. Having those people be in your labor force would be a net positive for your economy. In extreme cases like Project Manhattan or the Space Race you’re talking about getting that talent at any cost.
You're not entirely wrong there is an effect, but this is also a common trap in economics - it's called the "Lump of Labor Fallacy". The problem with applying the logic of simple competition like you would with commodity prices is that labor is not a commodity. Labor is unique in that it represents both a cost to firms and income to consumers - a productive worker may compete for wages, yes, but that same laborer also adds their consumption to the economy, boosting aggregate demand. What economists try to measure is how much one effect cancels out the other.
If you add supply to a market, prices will naturally be pushed down absent any change in demand (in this case prices are wages), however we know that aggregate demand boosts demand for the goods and services that firms provide, causing an increase in demand for workers. This effect isn't even across industries, but what I'm saying when I posted my prior link is that the effect has been studied, and economists are in broad agreement that the effect of immigration is actually to boost aggregate demand enough to more than offset any losses from competition. It's counterintuitive, but it's a measured effect.
>economists are in broad agreement that the effect of immigration is actually to boost aggregate demand enough to more than offset any losses from competition.
This is one of those peak retard takes that is only true when labour demand exceeds supply. A situation that has never been true in the vast majority of western developed countries since 2008.
When supply of labour exceeds demand, wages are suppressed, and aggregate consumption does not grow enough to offset this. Because, you know, wages are suppressed.
There are also key factors in the inelasticity of key goods that cannot simply be increased. Housing is the big one; you cannot build houses fast enough to keep up with a 1% annual population increase. For reference, this would be the equivalent of every woman having an average of 3.1 children base upon UK figures in a zero migration scenario.
Ignore the downvotes mate, you're cooking. Speak to any of these bozos long enough and you'll find them just being racist I'm sad to report. Unfortunately, their poison-tongue rhetoric gives them away 9/10 times. You'll never have one of these guys saying: "I think migration is great, it adds culture and interesting diversity as well as filling holes in our labor market. However I think we're doing about 30% too much because of X, Y, Z". It's usually some dressed up version of "DER TAKING OUR YERBS", and at this point its boring.
I find hard to believe that the average Moroccans who moved to Spain are somehow more of a net positive on average than the average Spaniard, which is what many have to claim to say that they are as important as they want them to be. People say the same thing in the USA. Over 1/3 of the entire country is a net negative contributor tax wise in the USA, yet somehow 90% of the people from poorer places like Mexico magically don’t burden the system like someone already here. Even though that would be literally impossible.
It’s pretty simple, a significant proportion of any native population is a net fiscal drain either as children (consuming public education) or retirees (consuming pensions and state-funded healthcare). Most immigrants (especially from lower-income states like Morocco to Spain or Mexico to the US) come during their prime working years. Receiving states get labor and tax contributions (from payroll, sales, but also consumption taxes) without financing childhood education and usually before they reach pension age. In Spain, it’s estimated that non-European immigrants generate a net annual tax contribution 75% higher than native Spaniards, simply due to their younger age structure. Studies also show that regularization of immigrants in Spain has generated annual net tax gains with no increase in public cost, which again subsidizes pensions among the aging native Spanish population. Studies have consistently shown similar effects for immigrants to the US, even from undocumented or otherwise lower-income immigrants (because they are barred from entitlement programs so continuous fiscal contributions through payroll and consumption taxes offset any consumption of federal services).
See:
Elias, Ferran, Joan Monras, and Javier Vázquez-Grenno. “Understanding the effects of granting work permits to undocumented immigrants.” Journal of Labor Economics 43, no. 3 (2025): 763-802.
Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael. “The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain.” Working paper, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2020.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2017.
Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Boustan. Streets of gold: America's untold story of immigrant success. Princeton University Press, 2022.
You can’t take the most favorable number from one of those categories and treat it as the fiscal effect of immigration as a whole.
The problem is that you’re treating a short term fiscal advantage as if it proves immigrants are a net fiscal benefit over their entire lives. It doesn’t.
The National Academies report you cited actually makes this pretty clear. It found that first generation immigrants were, on average, more costly to government than native born Americans, particularly at the state and local level. One of the main reasons was education spending on their children. The second generation, on the other hand, was strongly fiscally positive.So saying that America gets workers without having to pay for their childhood education only tells half the story. The government may not have paid to educate the immigrant, but it does pay to educate their children. Those costs have to be included if you’re comparing the fiscal impact of immigrant and native households.The Spanish 75% figure also needs context. That estimate is largely explained by the fact that non European immigrants are younger. A population concentrated around working age will obviously look better in an annual fiscal calculation than a native population containing millions of retirees. But immigrants do not remain 30 years old forever. They eventually retire, collect pensions and consume more healthcare. A one year snapshot cannot tell you whether someone is a net contributor over their lifetime.The regularization study has a similar problem when used to make this argument. It shows that giving legal work permits to undocumented immigrants who were already living in Spain increased formal employment and tax contributions without producing a comparable immediate increase in spending. That is evidence that regularization can improve government finances. It is not evidence that the fiscal effect of admitting an additional immigrant is necessarily positive. Those are different questions with different counterfactuals.The same distinction matters in the US. Undocumented immigrants being excluded from many federal benefits does not mean they create no public expenditure. State and local governments still finance schools, infrastructure, emergency services and other public services, including services used by US citizen children in mixed status families. This is one reason the National Academies found a much less favorable fiscal picture at the state and local level than at the federal level.None of this means immigration is economically bad. Working age immigration can clearly help an aging country by increasing the number of workers and taxpayers. But that is a much narrower claim than saying immigrants are generally net fiscal contributors because they arrive during their working years.
Your own sources actually show why the distinction matters. The fiscal result changes depending on whether you are looking at one year or an entire lifetime, the first generation or the second, federal or local government, and individual immigrants or households including their children.
What's so interesting is that this argument is REALLY obvious. Like extremely so. It's not counter intuitive at all. What's also interesting is that OP here draws the conclusion otherwise on the basis of zero evidence besides belief. I wonder what their underlying beliefs are...?
The selection bias does feel weird, and it is true that prior to stricter border controls, immigrant demographics tended to be younger. Whether this is because of aging demographics in the country of origin, or because more people have been forced to live in the US permanently to avoid multiplying difficult border crossings (and bringing extended family such as parents), is harder to say. In any case, a big reason the people moving are net taxpayers is because they tend to self-select for people looking for better jobs (i.e. the young and able-bodied). It's the same reason why high-opportunity cities tend to be younger than low-opportunity rural communities, even when looking only at internal migrants.
In any case immigration is counterintuitive in pretty much every facet. It's not like putting someone up at your house uninvited.
It is evidently not true here in Canada either. There was a very noticeable demographic shift in Canada when we brought in a massive amount of immigrants, the vast majority of whom were Indian/South Asian but you almost never see these demographics on a construction site. Most of them work in fast food and retail jobs.
Housing is interesting when considered as a commodity in part because there are long lead times. This can cause big fluctuations in price in the short run because it takes time for developers to notice a change in price, build, and ultimately put new units on the market. There are methods to speed this process up, and it's very boom and bust, but if new construction is made easy near where people want to live (jobs, services, amenities), it does keep shelter costs more affordable. For example, Austin, TX famously made housing construction easier, and it quite quickly and measurably drove down rents.
Construction needs labor and investment to build. Immigrants tend to add to the labor pool of potential construction workers while also spurring the economy to grow from increased aggregate demand (immigrants are also consumers). So, immigrants not only quite literally build homes, they also contribute to the overall economic growth which spurs on construction in the first place.
The places that have the biggest issues managing this growth are those places which are hostile to new construction. In the US, a good example of this would be Los Angeles, or in the UK, London (or really anywhere in the UK or Ireland that experiences population growth - their planning systems are atrocious).
I've never seen studies such as the ones you reference take into account the social welfare and education related expenses that these immigrants' children require.
Spain's population was approximately 25.6 million. This number had dropped from roughly 32.7 million in 1936 due to the devastating toll of the Spanish Civil War, which ended in 1939
So they should put up with immigration, god forbid the ponzi scheme gets hurt.
Except they don't offset the pension problem at all and actually will make it worse in the future because they also generate rights for themselves by working here.
I've been hearing that "immigration will pay for our pensions" since the 90's and it is not true at all. The pension problem in Spain is not solvable by importing low skilled worker, and whoever tells you it is, is lying or just an anumeric ignorant.
So what’s the time frame where people who support thing thing thinks the burden placed on the system decreases and turns into a positive to support the older population that is already 50+.
There will be the immigration burden + the elderly burden at the same time and will be a negative multiplier for the government who only forced through immigration to continue expansion.
This influx of immigration is a temporary band aide on a worldwide phenomenon that is called the aging populace and to keep the economy apace to support said aging population.
Only Japan and maybe South Korea are against immigration. IMO, the sooner you can get over the hump of the aging populace, the better. Throwing more wood into the fire isn't going to speed things up, its only going to prolong the issue that I just mentioned.
Hence why, IMO, Japan will come out ahead in the next few decades.
Spanish home prices actually peaked just before the 2008 financial crisis, and have been on a slow recovery since then. Now the economy is doing better again, so home prices are rising fast.
That’s a fair point regarding the macro recovery post-2008, but the key difference today is localized rental pressure vs broad asset price inflationn While nominal home prices may just be approaching 2007 peak levels, rental yields and housing costs in major hubs like Madridk and Barcelona relative to average wages have stretched local affordability severely—driven significantly by rapid population inflows concentrating in urban centers rather than new housing supply keeping up
The housing affordability thing is mostly driven by a lack of control and the ring surrounding Madrid being deserted.
Barcelona is just tiny, there isn't any space left to build but people keep moving there for some reason.
The test can be blamed to the government being funky with budgets. There is no reason the presidential budget needs to be taken from things like education.
This is true. Spain overall has lots of empty space though (we have one of the most extreme population density splits in Europe).
After a generation, we might see the interior resettled, especially if Spain is able to become an energy powerhouse of Europe while using immigration of high skilled workers from Latin America as a benefit.
> While immigration helps offset the aging population and supports the state pension system, it also puts severe pressure on housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare in major urban hubs like Madrid and Barcelona
How does it affect housing affordability if the population is still shrinking ? Are immigrants not counted? Spain lost 2 million people. Are we not building any houses?
I'm not sure housing affordability is due to immigration. How would it be different if it were due to high birth rates? The housing crisis comes from somewhere else... Profits for the rich.
And condemns the future of the country, because most of the immigrants that come to Spain are not high skilled workers (especially because high skill workers will want to be paid appropriately, which is not gonna happen in Spain and it is one of the reasons that so many young high skilled spaniards are leaving the country too)
But, hey, let's do all we can for the old people of today that already have and have had comfortable lives, since they are the majority of the voting population, governments are prioritizing them
Similar things are happening across a lot countries in the 1st world, the decades to come are looking bleaker by the day in so many regards, because combine this with the awful job market, with the ever and quicker rising temperatures, with the rising of cost of living and even of leisure while wages are not following at the same pace...
It’s pretty simple, a significant proportion of any native population is a net fiscal drain either as children (consuming public education) or retirees (consuming pensions and state-funded healthcare). Most immigrants (especially from lower-income states like Morocco to Spain or Mexico to the US) come during their prime working years. Receiving states get labor and tax contributions (from payroll, sales, but also consumption taxes) without financing childhood education and usually before they reach pension age. In Spain, it’s estimated that non-European immigrants generate a net annual tax contribution 75% higher than native Spaniards, simply due to their younger age structure. Studies also show that regularization of immigrants in Spain has generated annual net tax gains with no increase in public cost, which again subsidizes pensions among the aging native Spanish population. Studies have consistently shown similar effects for immigrants to the US, even from undocumented or otherwise lower-income immigrants (because they are barred from entitlement programs so continuous fiscal contributions through payroll and consumption taxes offset any consumption of federal services).
See:
Elias, Ferran, Joan Monras, and Javier Vázquez-Grenno. “Understanding the effects of granting work permits to undocumented immigrants.” Journal of Labor Economics 43, no. 3 (2025): 763-802.
Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael. “The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain.” Working paper, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2020.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2017.
Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Boustan. Streets of gold: America's untold story of immigrant success. Princeton University Press, 2022.
This post, when not as a response to another, appears to be a total tangent.
Low skill low wage earners individually tend to be a net drain on taxes, at least in the US, even after accounting for zero childhood expenses. Those childhood expenses are just paying for a classroom with one teacher for every 20 students or so, plus their share of the consumption of infrastructure: roads, water, regulatory bodies, etc. That's nothing compared to doctors visits and healthcare for heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, and all the other ailments that are common at old age, especially for manual laborers working in poorly regulated industries with exposure to toxic chemicals, etc.
Maybe it's different in Spain, or maybe they're not accounting for the decrease in expenses from the immigrants who eventually leave for their home country, which accounts for some 75 percent of the immigrants in the US.
Of course that's just tax spending, and when it comes to productivity it's actually been measured that they are a net benefit to the economy but that's a much more complex calculation.
But that's why legal migrant labor should be the thing that everyone wants if taxes and productivity are the only concern (which is rarely the case but then you need to actually make the case for the other stuff). They come here eager to earn wages that are many multiples higher than their annual earnings back at home, but then they leave to actually enjoy those earnings after only a short stint of migrant employment. Their enjoyment back at home then creates new economic opportunities in their home country which reduces the incentive for further migration. It's a win win win, compared to extractive economic slavery which is absolutely a lose for the slave and arguably a lose for society which becomes very rigid, simple and regressive.
As for those low skill low wage earning immigrants who stay, at least in the US those people tend to be a net drain on taxes individually even after accounting for zero childhood tax expenditure, but surprisingly their children tend to do much better so that after a generation or so their family become net contributors. I assume this is because it takes someone quite extraordinary to make the move to become an economic migrant, compared to the burnouts who are usually at the low end of the income scale.
But all of this is an aside to the question of if it is an issue if populations are declining and what the cause and character is of the decline.
Edit: my post is a tangent too and primarily served as a personal distraction... I kept talking about the US instead of reading about Spain, and now that I've finally relieved my bowels, i kind of feel bad about making such a moronic post... But hey, most of the readers here are American and they have a lot of misconceptions about immigration...
I made this comment when everyone else on the post was basically only bringing up immigration. Anyway to address the idea that low-skill immigrants are a net tax drain because of old age healthcare costs, this isn’t really borne out. In the US, first-gen immigrants with lower educational attainment can often represent a net fiscal deficit at the state and local levels but it’s not because of healthcare, it’s the municipal cost of k-12 public education for their kids. And undocumented immigrants and recent permanent residents do subsidize federal healthcare and pension systems because of the barriers they have in accessing federal entitlements including Medicare and (non-emergency) Medicaid, so they have much lower rates of claims on end-of-life benefits.
On one level, you’re not wrong that temporary/circular migration seems to optimize the fiscal benefit for a host country, but we must remember time horizons. That offers an immediate and short term fiscal benefit per capita, but won’t address structural issues of population aging and collapsing worker-to-retiree dependency ratios in advanced industrialized states. As you already identified, we can see why permanent settlement matters with a longer time horizon, to tap into second-gen dividends since they show greater edu attainment, wage earnings, and tax contributions than both parents and baseline native population levels. Ultimately as existing populations age out of workforces, permanent immigrants (and their subsequent higher birth rates) will naturally permanently expand the base of the tax pyramid, which is critical. Permanent immigrants will also be building human capital, starting businesses, and reinvesting earnings into the domestic economy through asset ownership and capital goods consumption at higher rates than temporary/circular migrants who have higher rates of capital flight by nature of their status.
Another aspect is the firm side, because temporary visa programs tend to operate on closed (employer-sponsored) systems that tie workers’ status to a single firm, those workers can’t negotiate wages or transition to competing employers as efficiently, which creates other kinds of labor market distortions and gives the firm a kind of monopsony power. We have data showing that reliance on continuous temporary migration tends to trap labor forces in low-productivity equilibria, with permanent residency immigrants typically climb the job ladder quickly and get the legal stability to get more training, start companies, and so on, which matters for advanced productivity in the long term. I also think that in a world of exit options, if a state can’t offer desirable and globally competitive permanent pathways to people, it will struggle to attract them, which has never been more important for states with aging populations. Also i dont know where you came up with the figure that 75% of immigrants in the US leave for their countries of origin eventually, most analyses would estimate 30-35% as the right number at the high end.
Considering that birth rates have been falling steadily in the majority of the world's countries for the last 50-70 years and that if the trend continues, even the countries from where the current immigrants are coming from won't be able to maintain their own population in about 30-50 years time. There will come a time when even those countries will have a problem of population shortage.
Considering also that each subsequent generation of immigrants' descendants will tend to get closer and closer to having the same birth rates as the average population, it quickly becomes obvious that immigration is an unsustainable temporary fix to a set of (so far) permanent problems.
What I don't get, is the focus on immigration illegal or not, but for instance in this case, Spain is reaching 50mill in population due to immigrants.
No one is reporting that Morocco is now having a decline population and is bad for their already struggling economy. Besides immigrants is a deflating and depressing factor for wages in a country, why would you support that?
Even worse when people are jubilant about bringing in "doctors, nurses, etc." from poor countries... These places don't have many resources already, and we are stealing their professional class formed at high costs.
I know the joke about "doctors and engineers". But there are actually doctors and engineers coming to Canada and the US. Canada has (or at least had) a strict point system aimed at poaching the educated class of poor countries, which was praised by everyone.
I mean it makes perfect sense to want well educated people, as the poster above mentioned. Also makes perfect sense for someone who is educated to want to move themselves to a country where they can prosper.
The DDR had a quite practical solution to the issue of emigration. Barbed wire, a tall wall, minefields and guards with automatic rifles + an authoritarian police state that employs a significant portion of the population as informants. That will stop the doctors from trying to find a better life.
It is just a form of neo-neo-colonialism. But we are still early to see the consequences. In 50-100 years we will look back here like we look at 19th-20th century colonialism.
If I get a penny everytime I hear this, I would have been rich. The fact is, most immigrants aren't well educated, those that holds a medicin degree aren't from another non EU country aren't good enough to work in the EU healthcare system.
That's not entirely true; we get nurses from third-world countries in Canada, plenty of them. I think some doctors, engineers, and other professionals as well, but they do have hoops to jump through.
But it's even worse if we steal their professionals and then have them drive Ubers.
It doesn’t mean nurses and other professionals are trained up to your country’s standards. In india there are universities there you get diploma just for attending.
Ofc they have real doctors and nurses, my point is, that their education isn't on par with the ones in the EU countries or in my case Denmark.
All those doctors we have poached from India, they all need to take extra education and courses, they are ready for the Danish health system after 2-3 years of extra education.
The thing is, we need doctors in some specific fields and the government aren't paying enough to attract doctors to those fields. We are praising capitalism, but we don't want to pay extra for services.
It's like we want welfare but don't want to pay taxes.
Exactly. Even within the US there are THOUSANDS of people who move out of the south to northern states for better work and wages whose lives in that region don’t look too much different than their counterparts in Central America.
What? I'm referring to the fact that these countries are poor partially because of history, e.g. colonialism and the like. Obviously their living conditions are poor in some cases, but to fully blame them seems ignorant at best.
These countries are relatively poor because getting 50 million people to set aside their familial and tribal instincts to work together to build a top-level economy is incredibly hard. Most of the time it fails, and you end up with the same logical end point: mass corruption at all levels. That's not a knock on them; it's just difficult to do and goes against the default setting of human nature (i.e., care for those related to you). It's a high-wire act that only a few outlier societies have managed to accomplish.
Generally a declining population ends up worse for young people (counterintuitive I know) but what happens is population shrinks in most places and everything becomes concentrated in urban centers because that’s where job opportunities are in a shrinking market, this creates massive competition for jobs and raises prices in those centers. South Korea is a strong case study in this.
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everything becomes concentrated in urban centers because that’s where job opportunities are
How is this different than the current approach of mass immigration?
In the end when the government controls basically everything the outcome is dictated by their spending - which is in urban areas to support immigrants and further government programs. Rural areas aren’t healthy regardless.
It’s different because of the necessity. As a population expands, more urban centers pop up and create opportunities in a more spread out geographical area, helping people in those areas. If those urban areas are shrinking those people must move inward and compete against each other.
For clarity this is regarding “opportunities for young people in a shrinking population” as you argued before
For this generation, it’s because the past set the rules to their favor, and it won’t change until enough die off to no longer be the majority voting base
Seems like if that’s the approach you take then you won’t ever been able to change because some generation will always be in the middle.
I think we are seeing in real time the devastation created by choosing security for people in their 70s over opportunities for people in their 20s.
If you have hope and opportunity in your 20s you start families and businesses. If you have security in your 70s you just sit around and vote for more security. Still gonna die, just with a little more comfort.
We would have to define standard of living to start with, and I think GDP has reached the end of its usefulness.
But yes, I suspect most people would accept reduced GDP growth for home ownership, career opportunities, stronger communities, and a greater sense of control over their lives and country.
A lot of disgruntlement comes from the steps that the government takes to force immigration, GDP goes up on a national level; opportunities decrease on the individual level.
The West universally agrees our parents had better lives; but all the economic indicators show they had lower quality of life. Are they wrong or is the measurement?
People don’t need new homes; they need empty homes they can move into. Government entering the market and procuring housing for an ever increasing migrant population means native population is now competing in the marketplace with the government who can literally produce money. They are going to lose that bidding process.
Lots of sociological studies about the decrease in societal trust when immigration is increased. When diversity programs allot opportunity based upon group identification - social trust in institutions plummets.
Would you say integration is current going well?
And I get it - if someone is against immigration it means they are racist but that means there is a minimum requirement for constant immigration to not be racist- so would be interested to know what that requirement is.
I can’t speak for spain but american became the most successful and powerful country in the world due to the success of immigration so yes.
So your suggestion is to have young people accept fewer social benefits, no promotions, worse economy all so scared racists don’t have to see brown people?
How? A shrinking population due to declining birth rates also means an aging population. This means that the old will vastly outnumber the young, and in a democracy this will basically spell doom for the young. Unless you abandon democracy, a shrinking population will be terrible for the young.
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This means that the old will vastly outnumber the young, and in a democracy this will basically spell doom for the young. Unless you abandon democracy, a shrinking population will be terrible for the young.
Did they put the current immigration policy to a vote? For all the talk of democracy Western governments are more than capable of cutting benefits for the elderly if they deem it appropriate.
They never deem it appropriate, because you will lose the next election badly if you ever do. Basically it can only happen through acute escalation. You can only do it when IMF tells you to do it and even then you will have to appear to fight back.
No one claims that a decline in population is good, but the fact is a decline in population will affect assets and the rich don't want fewer asking for their hard assets, because that means deflating value.
The truth is, the last 20-30 years of globalisation has brought the lives of other people on the other side of the planet closer to you. You have realised, that there are other ways to live a life, and so far the "I" has become more important than the "WE and US", now merging this trend with an affordability crisis and hogging of wealth by the rich, refusing to play the monoply game by the rules, with the help of central banks, there are only a few options to reverse this, but it depends on what hardship we choose, there are no easy way out of this.
I experience it first hand, the Union couldn't do anything because on the paper we actually have our wages increased with 1-2% every year, while that is true, however the company changed our bonus system from 100% to 5-15% main us run faster for a lower salary.
My previous job's pay was based on a very low minimum guaranteed pay plus bonus on how much kg of meat you can move through the production line. So while the minimum baseline has increased 1-2% each year, the bonuses had decrease up to 90% per unit.
As long as the company are raising the base salary, the union can't do much.
What I'm trying to say is, we as a workforce couldn't press our company not to change the values of our bonuses, they simply replace those that opposed or are very unhappy with the new lower pay with a new guy from Poland or Romania. The point is, mass importing workers will affect and deflate wages in a country.
Increasing supply of labor puts downward pressure on wages?
I mean, the economic logic seems sound.
I understand many disagree - arguing that the net benefit of migration outweighs any downward effect on wage-bargaining power by creating broader economic growth.
I can see both sides.
To use a hyperbolic hypothetical - if Spain literally doubled its population overnight by importing 50 million working-age immigrants, could you actually argue in good faith this wouldn’t massively depress wages?
It's to a large extent driven by migration from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. The population growth is indeed not driven by local births, but in terms of language and culture, they are as close they can be to being Spanish without being Spanish.
And Spain does need workers to keep its system afloat (the shrinking number of young workers while the growing number of elderly people come with a lot of costs in healthcare and pensions).
I'm aware of all that and Spain's situation isn't unique. Countries all over the world is facing similar difficulties. My point is, it's not viable to keep poaching high skilled workers from other countries to upkeep your society, and it's also not viable to mass import low skilled workers to keep wages down on jobs that no one wants because of the low pay.
I'm from Denmark, one of the first countries to bring in workers from Poland for our factories. Over the span of ten years, I saw wages remain stagnant, and my pay for the same work and hours actually ended up lower than when I first started.
Even that seems old fashioned now. Nowadays all the rage is expatriating educated language speaking workforce to cheaper cost of living countries for remote work.
I think a big part of the problem is the countries that attract immigrants have strong welfare systems. I’m not saying immigrants go to these countries to leech of the system, most do not, but those countries tend to have a higher quality of life, making them attractive to immigrants. The countries they’re leaving don’t have the same welfare system, so a declining population doesn’t hurt as much because they don’t need to think of ways to pay for the aging population
I do agree, that immigrants seeks a better future whether it's within their own borders or in another country. The thing is, no country has automatically become a "good" country to live in, someone's grandparents have fought for those rights with their blood and tears. If Moroccans wants same welfare, start fighting for it, nothing comes for free.
so a declining population doesn’t hurt as much because they don’t need to think of ways to pay for the aging population
If that said country don't have social benefits, then there's no pension for the elderly anyway.
A big part of this problem from my point of view is, everyone wants a good life, they just don't want to take the responsibility to make that happen. If you ask the younger people, they will say that life sucks now, if you ask their parents, I guess that life also sucked when their were young.
I recently purchased a new build in Barcelona and had a chance to speak to the builder. They said they were exiting the Barcelona market because the building regulations and town hall are too difficult to deal with. It's been nearly three years since the construction finished and the land registry still isn't fully updated. They plan to continue to build in Madrid though. Food for thought.
Tends to happen when you are not only on the edge of the African continent but also have a whole continent who speaks the same language as you or a close relative of said language but still same religion. Of course even Spain aint immune to shitty housing situation
We spaniards have less kids because economy and housing prices, so we import people Who with less is having 2-3 kids with a lot of help because inmigrants. And because we have to pay those benefits we have even less kids while the inmigrants keep having lots. It's a bad situation for any european country.
This isn’t sustainable. Spain doesn’t have major industries to support all these people who will need jobs and who will also require medical services. This is just short term thinking.
Just want to point out that the in the recent regularization ALL applicants needed, among many other requirements) to prove that they were ALREADY living in Spain for at least a year I think, and that they were gainfully employed or had some means of sufficient income to support themselves. So no impact on job availability or housing. As to medical services, public transport, and other public services, I believe there will be a catch up phase where things are overcrowded. I hope there is planning around this going on. I know in my medium sized provincial capital city they are rolling out new tram cars that will almost double rider capacity, so perhaps it’s not as shortsighted as you believe
Good for them. But eventually Spain won't have any Spaniards left, and then it will no longer be Spain now will it? Instead of logically having more kids this is what we do smh. Their excuses for not having kids are pretty lame they have more social safety nets for their own people than most of the world.
Europeans receive far more time (paid) off work when having a kid. They're pickier about a lot of things and yet the birth rate among people born in Europe is still lower than counterparts in the US. All those social safety nets didn't do a damn thing for their birth rates.
It's becoming obvious is that when women (opposite to men) life standards increase they want less children. Couples are still forming families at the rates of before modernity (for now), just that they have way less children per couple, 1/2 instead of the 4/5 of before
I think the problem is more that women life standard has increased since they actively joined the working population (which wasnt that long ago, in Spain for example my grandma didn' "actively work", even tho she did because she took care of all the children which is no small feat).
And basically, life has switched to the minimum cost of living starting with 2 salaries, and not just one; especially housing (a single person will still have to pay 80-90% of the cost of a tiny house that a couple could get)
So now, since everyone has to live to work, and that barely even allows you to have the minimum covered, people are obviously not going to have children, since they cannot be used for free/cheap labor like in poor countries
Depends what you mean by "pull through" because unless we have some massive societal change there's no way we are going back to women having 3 kids on average, not in the west at least.
>What they don't want is to sacrifice their careers, do all the housework, pay half(or most) bills, AND be expected to do the majority of child rearing
This doesn't seem to tell the whole story, far too simplistic and narrow (and often not true)
Yeah it is complex. In general, women don't rely on men anymore. So they get to choose when and with whom they have kids with. They're looking at the current deal and saying nah
Plus the whole cost of living crisis, housing crisis, political instability, etc
> It's becoming obvious is that when women (opposite to men) life standards increase they want less children.
Enjoy it while it lasts I guess. I'm not in the business of going extinct nor am I in the business of radically changing my country (by inviting people from every crevice of earth) to make up for it. Some big event will eventually come along and change it.
> Couples are still forming families at the rates of before modernity
I'm not convinced this is true. Because if you were to ask "what percentage of men have 1 or more children by the age of 44?" you would get a lower value than in the past 70 years at minimum. Women on the other hand are not at their lowest historical rate.
Which means that instead of a guy getting to have his 1st child there is instead some other guy being given his 3rd child by his 3rd wife etc. The Nick Cannons of the world are kind of making up for the increasing percentage of guys who aren't being picked at all. After the relationship predictably fails (because it was purely built on short sighted lust for him in the first place) those guys somehow find yet another woman who gives him yet another kid.
Don't you see it yourself though? I called you racist. Why? You consider yourself a "minority", that means you are making distinctions on this level. Can't you see we're all just people though? You may have a different phenotype (look a certain way), and have a different tradition than other humans, but that's it.
Moreover, both of those things change all the time. The gene pool is influenced all the time, the cultural mixing is happening continuously. Arguably, when Spain occupied my home country of The Netherlands we probably did a big old gene and culture exchange, changing both countries. Did that make Spain less "Spanish"? Clearly, a countries identity is a moving target.
EDIT: Finally: if this "Spanish" culture you are referring to is going to go extinct, why does it deserve to continue? That's like keeping a shitty football team in the superliga cause we like its logo. It has to adapt.
Yeah I want to keep my people going and you can't shame me out of doing so. We brought a lot of good things to the world that didn't exist previously, period.
Do you give this same lecture to all groups who recognize their minority status or just the white guys like me?
Okay, but you must recognize that by not addressing anything I said I will leave this conversation with the impression you are just sticking both fingers in each ear going "lalalala".
> Yeah I want to keep my people going and you can't shame me out of doing so. We brought a lot of good things to the world that didn't exist previously, period.
I'm not trying to shame you, I'm just pointing out that your worldview is racist and self-defeating and challenging it. You have a choice in life, and embracing love not hate won't make it worse, can you see that? And yes lots of inventions were by majority white traditions, and like anything that helps society that's really great. On the other hand, algebra was invented by the Arabs, how would you feel if they used the same argument?
To me what you say reads that "Spain" is defined as something formed only by the native Spanish people. Apparently that system of Spain, and many other European countries, kills itself. Addressing by this "fixing" birth-rates can be a consideration: by placing incentives etc. within society to have more children. However, it's a long-term solution and we don't really know how to do it properly. Hence you will always keep immigration, at least on the short-term.
The REAL issue in this case, and you say it yourself: why must Spain be defined by Spanish people? America had this solved: the identity was one of a mixing pot. Now, America has embraced something else, which will ultimately prove self-destructive in my view. That said, why can't the Spanish identity be redefined with a similar narrative?
Tactical, high-skill or shortage-skill immigration is completely net-positive in terms of economics. You can attack the cultural issues that arise by essentially doing what the USA did: pro immigrant propaganda, sustainable amounts of immigration, and a strong focus on "integration" into some shared narrative. Then, Spanish people don't have to change their life choices by having more kids, you get a better economy, and you solve this issue of declining birthrates on the short-term. Honestly I am a bit surprised that countries are not taking this a bit more seriously: form a fucking committee or whatever and think about it! It's obvious that racism and xenophobia of the masses are a trade-off you have to deal with...
To be fair on the American experience, it has gone through multiple waves of multi-culturalism and xenophobia. Immigrants were sought and welcomed, then forbidden and expelled, repeatedly over the decades. Each wave of xenophobia was followed by decades of opening and welcoming with the pendulum moving further and further in that direction each time.
Currently, an administration elected by 49.8% of the population and currently liked by 35% of the population, is incompetently attempting simple draconian changes to swing major policies toward expelling as many people as possible and preventing others from entering. The same draconian unsuccessful attempts are being made at trade, national security, federal budget cuts, etc.
There are most definitely Americans who like and want this direction. But I would not say that America, as a whole or even as a majority, has embraced it. I do agree that if it continues to be pursued and supported in its current form, it will significantly degrade or even fundamentally destroy the country.
I suspect the vast majority of Americans want managed immigration - programs that encourage and even pursue needed skills, programs that invite guest workers for key trades/industries, and programs that support valuable immigration while rejecting complete "open door" policies of amnesty for all, multi-generation immigration, etc. The balance is ensuring current citizens have opportunities for training and education, and are not simply undercut by allowing foreign workers to fill positions for lower pay. Fundamentally, that is no different than the discussion currently taking place in Canada, or the UK, or Spain, or Germany or most other countries.
To your main point - I agree that every country will need to accept the concept of a melting pot, maybe with an expectation of core commonalities (e.g. language tests, civics tests, etc.). If they refuse (as South Korea and Japan seem committed to do), then they will need to re-engineer their economies to prosper with a decreasing population. Given the cost and development and environmental benefits, that does seem worth at least as much if not more effort than the time being spent on trying to get people to have more kids.
>But I would not say that America, as a whole or even as a majority, has embraced it.
And I completely agree. While its fun (as a European) to treat Americans as a loud monolith spouting bullshit, I know many kind Americans with a very different point of view.
>I suspect the vast majority of Americans want managed immigration
I also agree, if you can ask them whilst they are lucid and intellectually honest (not specific to Americans neither for the record so sorry if this comes across offensive).
My thesis is perhaps a bit hetrodox, but personally I believe that the advent of a new unregulated media form, i.e. the internet and specifically social media has melted the brains of the populace against their self interest, leading to extreme and misguided views on topics e.g. immigration. I know many reasonable people who have turned extremely right wing because of videos of "migrant overrun cities" and "small boats". In my point of view, this is simply extreme-right rage bait, painting dangers that are largely overstated. The algorithms promote it accordingly to maximize engagement, or for other reasons depending on how conspiratorial you lean (I don't at all, for the record).
As such it is also my dream that the EU puts very strict controls on algorithms and the like as I really believe this contributes very little to life. We and our economies can survive without Instagram and TikTok infinite scroll.
>To your main point - I agree that every country will need to accept the concept of a melting pot, maybe with an expectation of core commonalities.
I completely agree, if you are an "evil genius" I feel like brain draining the shit out of the global south should be your secret plan. The universities there are catching up, especially if you manage to convince the best students to move hemispheres. Creating predictable pathways towards integration and eventual citizenship WILL motivate these people, which is an anecdotal understanding I have gained as I have many friends in this situation.
> Addressing by this "fixing" birth-rates can be a consideration: by placing incentives etc. within society to have more children
Like what incentives? Raising womens income causes the opposite impact actually. Educating people also decreases rates. Giving paid time off work makes no difference as shown by the Europeans failure to raise rates.
> The REAL issue in this case, and you say it yourself: why must Spain be defined by Spanish people? America had this solved: the identity was one of a mixing pot.
I never said that I think it's perfectly okay. We didn't make up the term melting pot, the french did. But the french were not even credited with popularizing it. If you look into the guy who did you might understand why I can't even say his name and why I don't trust his push to popularize it.
Back when we originally embraced it there were no social benefits to suck dry. We didn't even have an income tax. Now they take money from me and give it to them.
Only European nations are expected to do this. If I move to another country they're not gonna refer to me as Moroccan, Spaniard, Nigerian etc.
>Only European nations are expected to do this. If I move to another country they're not gonna refer to me as Moroccan, Spaniard, Nigerian etc.
Oh cut the crap man, lots of countries outside of Europe have a way more inclusive identity than you think. I'm part Ethiopian and in Ethiopia there's still old communities of people of Armenian/Greek/Italian descent who have been there for generations, they are 100% seen and treated as just Ethiopians cause they're born there and speak the language. You forget that European nation-state homogeneity is a actually an exception on a global level, the vast majority of countries in the world are multiethnic, multiconfessional and multilingual. Europeans are the ones that have exclusive national identites as a default.
Oh, the old communities, eh? Probably took hundreds of years to finally be seen that way.
> they are 100% seen and treated as just Ethiopians
I'd love proof of that. I don't buy it for a second.
> You forget that European nation-state homogeneity is a actually an exception on a global level, the vast majority of countries in the world are multiethnic, multiconfessional and multilingual.
Like which ones? Name the countries. Don't just give vague answers.
> are the ones that have exclusive national identites as a default.
Googles response: "In daily life, 'Indian' is treated as an ethnic identity. If someone does not look South Asian, local society will almost never default to calling them Indian. White people who have spent their entire lives in India, speak fluent Hindi or regional languages, and hold Indian passports still get treated as tourists or outsiders in daily interactions.
In Ethiopia, the daily social reality for a white person is even more starkly defined than it is in India. If you are white in Ethiopia, you are universally referred to as a Ferenj (or Ferenji). The legal and social structures make it virtually impossible for a white person to be considered Ethiopian by locals in everyday reality. Even if a white person is born in Ethiopia, speaks fluent Amharic, eats injera every day, and wears traditional Habesha clothes, society will still view them as a Ferenj who mastered the culture, never as a native Ethiopian.
Unlike Western nations, Ethiopia does not view itself as an immigrant nation. The Ethiopian Nationality Law does not allow dual citizenship. If a foreigner wants to become an Ethiopian citizen, they must completely renounce their original passport. Ethiopia fiercely protects its national identity, even ethnically Ethiopian people who move abroad and get foreign passports lose their citizenship.
Being born on Ethiopian soil does not make you a citizen unless at least one of your parents is ethnically Ethiopian."
Well thats exactly my point. You can't really do anything but immigration. Thats why you have to embrace it. Sure that may not be ideal in your eyes, but it's quite clear you have no choice to some extent. Might as well do it correctly.
> Only European nations are expected to do this.
You might be surprised to find I'm NOT a fan of immigration out of some goodness of my heart. I think it's just good cultural and economic policy to embrace immigration in a sustainable way. Its just that every European country sucks at doing integration.
> Well thats exactly my point. You can't really do anything but immigration. Thats why you have to embrace it. Sure that may not be ideal in your eyes, but it's quite clear you have no choice to some extent. Might as well do it correctly.
I rather go through a depression, seriously. If anything it'll rebalance things in my favor.
> Its just that every European country sucks at doing integration.
Compared to what other countries? Most of them are more racially/ethinically homogenous than European nations. What countries would accept me with open arms and completely ignore the fact that I'm white? None that I can think of.
> I rather go through a depression, seriously. If anything it'll rebalance things in my favor.
But why? Where does this feeling come from? Have you made friends with immigrants before? Do you or a loved one have some bad experience? One thing I always ask people with this sentiment is: are you basing yourself on right-wing rage-bait from tiktok or from any of your actual lived experiences? I'm saying this living in a huge city with zero bad experiences with migrants of any kind, so I just don't relate. I've seen plenty of ragebait though.
> Compared to what other countries? Most of them are more racially/ethinically homogenous than European nations.
I'm only aware of the details in my home country. How the immigration is done matters a huge deal. For example, Indonesians, our ex-colony, are considered in a very different way than people from Turkey, who we isolated in what are essentially slums with the idea that it was temporary. It's easy to see how the latter can lead to more issues, thus more xenophobia.
I meant the birth rates mostly. Putting men back at the top rather than where we're heading now. Men (especially in the west) have been getting trashed as of recent for no good reason. We built some of the safest societies on the planet yet western men are getting less and less out of life on this current path (and I want a life where I don't have to hear people saying that men aren't necessary). Because a person who says that is just spoiled relative to everyone else in the world. Getting treated shittier and shitter (while simultaneously importing foreign men), and then you wonder why I want a big reset?
I laugh at any term ending in phobia. I know some of you may like to use those token words to shame me into doing something but it's not gonna work.
Well, I think your world view is clear to me. I am not trying to shame you, I once thought similarly when I was younger. Look the argument is played out, im left wing you’ve got some clear culturally right wing ideas.
In some ways I think you’ve proven my point: its clear you have failed to mention any tangible reason other than typical right wing ragebait narratives adjacent to incel culture and general xenophobia. These ideas only exist online however. Have you considered what in your personal life, excluding the online world, is making you dissatisfied? If you want to share I am happy to hear about it
Reddit is what ruined the confidence I once had in myself. I was a very sociable person at one point and then I left many friends behind and became recluse after reading the many opinions of women on here. Now I'm more dysmorphic than ever before. I'm not even joking I wish I never found the place. I never hated myself as much as after coming here. If there is one site I regret ever finding it is genuinely this website. I now kind of view this website as womens journal in some ways......a journal that I never should have read. A user can anonymously say all the bad things they've always wanted to say about men (and they take full advantage of that). It enlightened me as to womens inner thoughts and all I can say is wow. My impression of women was 10x better before finding this site. After visiting here I look back and I'm shocked at the confidence I once had. Here is where I learned how undeserving I am. Can't unsee it now though.
I understand what you're saying. I have also struggled with a sort of "germophobia" induced by what you can read online, cost me years of my life. What is a lived experience of mine however is that people in the real world are far kinder and more reasonable than people online. Online everything is black and white, the real world is far more interesting and empathetic.
Ultimately the way out of this is simple: block reddit on your phone, on your browser, etc. and start touching grass even if you hate every minute. I know it's a meme but it's really true. Just try, you'll see. Whatever is not fulfilling you, you will not find it on reddit or elsewhere online. Therapists also help, if you can afford.
> Their excuses for not having kids are pretty lame they have more social safety nets for their own people than most of the world. Europeans receive far more time (paid) off work when having a kid. They're pickier about a lot of things and yet the birth rate among people born in Europe is still lower than counterparts in the US
A good point, but it is missing a key factor.
The issue is cost of housing and rent. This is why Europeans are not having kids. The entire world is dumping their capital in European properties, and pretty much every EU government since the early 2000's has failed to hit a single annual housing target.
Housing is too expensive and it consumes all of our income. The cost also means people are entering the housing market much later in life which has a knock on effect on birth rates. Having children in rented accommodation is financial self-destruction. You will never be able to save a deposit.
The US has cheap housing in parts. South Asia has the joint family system to overcome housing costs. East Asia has both a joint family system and cheap housing. East Asia shares the same problems as the West.
Population decline is a global phenomenon and there are only a handful of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa who are above replacement. We are entering a period of global population contraction. Global declines in population are always due to environmental causes - war, famine, disease and extreme weather. We are in an asset drought - global assets are all overvalued and this is crushing the middle income earners who can't afford housing.
Europeans taking the risk to have children they cannot afford is a behavioral response to environmental factors. If you look at demographics who are having children you will find a correlation between birth rates and social welfare receipts. This is not a racial, or cultural trend - this is a trend in all demographic groups. Middle income earners are excluded from social housing, child support (depending on the country), and jobseekers allowance.
It is amazing that when humans have free, widespread access to birth control and sex education, they have fewer children. Almost like many couples don't want many, or even any children.
When humans are free to have the relationships they desire, without extreme social pressures and laws, many choose same sex marriages without children, many choose never to get into a long-term legal relationship until much later in life, after prime child-bearing years, and many finally feel comfortable to simply not have children because they don't want them.
And when humans have access to intellectually stimulating lives with widespread free or low cost access to interesting communities, sports, education, arts, etc. they are far less interested in growing a family at home. Their personal growth is along whatever lines they want, rather than simply having kids.
The more safe and secure and comfortable a society is, the LESS likely they are to have multiple children. Many couples have one, some have two. But few if any have three or more. And so the average will not reach the replacement rate of 2.1.
Spain's situation is precisely because they have done a better job of creating a safe, stable, comfortable society. Lower birth rates are the natural outcome of that.
The solution is not to undo all these great advancements. We've designed the economy around even-growing populations. A flat or reducing population is a great, great thing in many, many ways. The adaptation should be to re-design the economy, not re-create the factors that forced people into having more children or bribe them to do so.
> The more safe and secure and comfortable a society is, the LESS likely they are to have multiple children. Many couples have one, some have two.
No the reality is that an increasing percentage of men get to have precisely 0 kids (whereas certain lucky men have women after him even when he has kids from past relationships) and in exchange is worked like a dog.
You live in some fictional world where the same percentage of men gets to have at least one kid and that's not reality. Hypergamy is the reality and it's not working out for me.
You're putting what you want at the forefront no different than I. A lot of what you describe is precisely what I view as the problem. I don't know why I would want those things. It serves the guys who are physically desirable in some way, it doesn't at all serve me. I'm the one left holding the bag if anything. He has the fun and I receive the bill for it. Costs 100K to send them to k-12, and another 100k to send then through college. All for kids she had with some other guy. I should be able to opt out of having to pay for that shit. Collecting income tax especially at such a high rate is a major betrayal of what this country was founded on.
Or you can have a strong culture that makes Spaniards out of immigrants.
In Denmark we have our problems with immigration too, but I am pretty proud we have a culture and society that has taken a lot of immigrants, and made them Danish. Thinking you have to be born spanish to be spanish is part of the problem
Immigrants are 16-17% of our population and we currently have the strongest economy, lowest public debt, free education + stipend, high quality infrastructure and strong growth
Attracting immigrants and turning them into productive Danes with our overwhelming power of hygge is the secret sauce to this success story
There are problems, but they can be solved, and are marginal compared to the successes
And these non-western and western immigrants typically have even bigger ethnic and language barriers than spanish speaking immigrants from south america have in Spain
The Danish 'jewelry law' was a populist implementation by the then right wing government. I was made use of 17 times in total
The thing about paying money is also not true. For one they are not citizens, so its not about renouncing citizenship. It's about giving refugees from places like Syria a financial incentive to return to their home countries with the means to actually rebuild and start something
And now I can return to talking about how much better Denmark is than the US. We have a maternal mortality rate that is nearly six times lower. Can you imagine that? We have a poverty rate that is three times less. We live nearly 4 years longer on average. Far fewer of us die from violent deaths. Oh and we have a political system that actually works
In the US apparently 40% or more of you actually believe in angels. No wonder the country is fucked
I mean, the US has a literal white supremacist movement in power right now, with masked goons kidnapping people of the streets because they look 'brown'
I'm not sure anyone should be taking advice about integration or good governance from an American these days
Maybe restore your democracy and reduce your inequality, then you might have something valuable to share
Cueta for the win, just a couple of more rounds of that and they'll blow past 50 million in no time, then race is on for France and United Kingdom to breach 70 million. Too bad for Italy though population decline is a weird sensation.
All the people that entered Ceuta this week have returned to Morocco (except those that died, but Morocco doesn't care about their citizens lives when orchestrating political pressure moves).
Morocco refused to get back non-Moroccan nationals, Ceuta is a hub for international illegal migration thanks to Spain's constant regularization programs
The whole bulk of immigration in Spain is from Latin America, followed by Europeans, and it also has more Chinese citizens than France. It's not the top destination for francophone people from Africa naturally.
We have less kids because we have a demoralized and castrated af population who cant even have a future for themselves plus the herd of elephants in the room.lasagna spaghetti 140 characters.
VacanyeraYT | a day ago
Like much of Southern Europe, Spain faces low birth rates, meaning this demographic growth is almost entirely driven by immigration While immigration helps offset the aging population and supports the state pension system, it also puts severe pressure on housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare in major urban hubs like Madrid and Barcelona
TheVenetianMask | a day ago
I walk past several construction sites here in eastern Spain, and one of the things that stand out the most is how few people they have working on them at any given time. Even the ones with prefabs progress extremely slowly, and it's not like there's an extraordinary amount of lots being developed, a lot of the good ones had already been exhausted in the 00s bubble.
Maybe lack of workers pre-regularization (less young locals nowadays, with higher rates of college education and higher employment rates), maybe a case of trying to time the market without having politicians roasting their ear about why they sit on finished inventory.
anortef | a day ago
I paid for my studies working construction up until 2008, right before the big crash, so I had still contact with lots of people from that world and it was basically wiped out. Almost everyone working construction when the bubble burst lost their jobs and the ones with decades of experiences and massive contacts networks managed to scrape by, the ones with workers fired everyone and everyone not firmly established in the sector o starting just moved to some other field and by the time construction recovered they already had many years in the new field so they did not want to change and the old ones that remained are already retired or near retirement.
Basically the 2008 bubble burst wiped the generational learning chain of the construction trade and now that we need the people we just cannot make them appear of thin air.
Complete-Painter-307 | 18 hours ago
The same happened in Portugal, the loss of know-how is the most concerning.
a_library_socialist | 18 hours ago
Are they being imported from overseas maybe? In the US, construction shifted to be almost all immigrant. Which had a bad effect for unionization.
anortef | 18 hours ago
Yes, we are heavily relying in latin america, which is not that bad taking into account we share the same language and like 90% cultural stuff (thanks to horny ancestors), but still nowhere enough of them because those skills are on-demand everywhere.
Midnaight_1 | 16 hours ago
Horny ancestors aka brutal colonization
anortef | 15 hours ago
brutal AND horny colonization
a_library_socialist | 17 hours ago
Si, y creo que es porque Espana tiene un gran futuro - el futuro es China y Latin America.
El_frog1 | 11 hours ago
They literally would only need to pay a decent salary for many people to show up eager to learn. We all know that’s not the case.
anortef | 10 hours ago
Learn from who?
El_frog1 | 6 hours ago
Are the companies completely undermanned? Zero people working there? Yeah they’re not…
It’s a salary problem. As most things theses days
anortef | an hour ago
Even if you offered 10x salary the amount of people you have that can teach is limited because the work needs to continue. There are several big construction sites around my building and most of them only have workers once or twice a week because there is just not enough people.
A coworker of mine his family is in the serious construction business and one of the biggest issues they have is other companies coming and offering more salary to their workers directly on site to take them even when they already pay above market rate the situation is THAT bad.
This is why is important for governments to subsidy fields during crisis to ensure the generational teaching chain does not break because it takes several decades to rebuild.
Popular-Office-9932 | 6 hours ago
Dude have you been in a construction site in Spain in the middle of summer. The job is brutal. Immigrants are willing to drive 14h of uber daily before laying bricks under 40C degree sun
Ardent_Scholar | 22 hours ago
As I understand it, residential real estate had a lot of red tape and is a minefield for buyers.
That’s a problem, because you need new build buyers to get those affordable old buildings.
Foreigners are often forewarned not to buy from a building that is still in its development phase, as the process isn’t predictable and reliable.
In Finland, you would hardly ever expect to run into such major problems buying a new build. The stuff gets built, the problems are more minor, so the market works. There are willing buyers which means there are developers willing to start projects.
Historical-Theory-49 | 16 hours ago
Because there is ton of land in Finland to choose from. No where near the complexity of spain´s real estate market.
Ardent_Scholar | 11 hours ago
Most of the land is not land where jobs or amenities are close by. Developers only develop where people want to live.
YourBestDream4752 | 22 hours ago
Same as in Greece - I walked past a dozen construction sites every day in Rhodes and I only saw 1 worker. Not 1 worker each, 1 worker total.
Intelligent-Ad2336 | 19 hours ago
Genuine question, why not bring in more workers from Latin America to fill this gap then?
Basically all of the new housing supply in the US and Canada is being built by Mexicans.
Full-Blood1318 | 15 hours ago
Inmigrants don't work construction in Spain?
Low_Technician7346 | 22 hours ago
What's funny is that here in Belgium I know shady companies that use Spanish workers for home construction work !
Cicero912 | a day ago
Well, wouldnt that depend on the immigration-adjusted population growth? If its within the range of where the population would be assuming Spain had a 2.1-ish birthrate then it wouldn't be putting "severe" pressure on housing affordability. Just normal pressure
Vaphell | a day ago
2.1 would be more or less steady state, meanwhile Spain was at 40M in 2000, and 50M now, +25%.
And the aggravating factor is that the average household size is shrinking too, which means that a given number of people on average needs way more units of housing compared to the past.
Paul_Gambino | a day ago
An averaged growth rate of 1% a year is certainly doable. The issue with housing prices is not primarily the result of population, it's the result of a lack of adequate new builds and the lack of maintenance on the existing supply. Many houses (especially in the countryside) are simply not up to par with current living expectations and yet are still too expensive or too remote from economic activity to be affordable.
The answer to this would be a state directed infrastructure buildout which emphasized affordability and which regulated and restricted housing speculation, particularly from those outside the country. There are many millionaires from around the EU who choose to have a "summer home" or non-primary residence in Spain.
Historical-Theory-49 | 16 hours ago
This is the solution to pretty much every housing crisis in every single country. Thére is no way private enterprise is going to solve the housing crisis for middle income earners.
foreheadteeth | a day ago
I thought the "housing affordability" problems in developed economies was entirely self-inflicted...
Paul_Gambino | a day ago
In Spain it's primarily inflicted by the neoliberal market reforms which have dominated many European economies since the 90's.
From the perspective of individual capitalists, building cheap and affordable housing is not as profitable as developing the same land for other purposes. The incentives within the housing market direct developers towards more "luxury" or "high income" housing while leaving poorer areas and the countryside to rot.
polloasado81 | 23 hours ago
My 2 cents, I'm building a house in Spain at the moment for my family, right now.
Building to even the most basic regulations/standards costs around €1000 per m², that's not including land, builders profit, the paperwork (architects, geo survey, topography all plus 21% IVA) and taxes. The taxes and bureaucratic costs (which are just renamed taxes) are seemingly endless.
My project, about 12% of the total cost, is just tax. I'm paying ibi (property tax) on the land too, then I'm paying a huge amount of tax to build the house, which then increases the ibi on the property as a whole. So I'm paying tax, to pay more tax. 🤷
The time waiting for building permission is insane too. Then when it's finished you have to self certify with the architect that it's finished to get electricity and water etc connected because the townhall literally won't visit/inspect. You get default licence of first occupation by law after 6 months because the townhall won't bother coming...they changed the law because of so many finished houses just waiting for permission to be lived in. Banks need this paperwork to approve mortgages to buyers....
Spain's problem is tax and the pointless Kafkaesque bureaucracy,, that applies to everything not just construction.
Also, we're building a A/0 house so it's basically passive, there are no government incentives to do so. On paper there are some but when you dig into it, it's basically impossible to claim the rebates. So much for them wanting sustainable housing due to the impending climate apocalypse. 🤷
So if you say it costs 1300 per m² to build something with land etc, then a developer has to make a margin to bother investing in it, let's be optimistic and say 40% (because they have corp tax to pay too) that's €1820 m², then the government wants 10% iva on new property when it's bought, that's €2002 per m². The most basic bare bones, not expensive land/area at the minimum costs buyers that.
Average salary in Spain is like 28k or something awful, 60m² apartment x 2002 = 120k. Bank won't lend more than 80%, so they need 25k cash saved up, then a mortgage of about 700 a month. Net salary on 28k is about 1750 a month. They still can't technically afford it.
In reality the cost of M² is much higher, the developer has to slap on much higher margin because they have to service debt for the many years it takes to actually build and certify anything to be able to sell it and land to build on, where there are jobs, isn't cheap. Lending to developers is risky, so it's a loaded high % rate from private capital/institution, which gets passed on to the buyers.
That's basically why I think there is no affordable housing in Spain being built.
If the government themselves decided to build affordable housing, it still wouldn't be cheaper than the figures above because: "government effeciency" and no doubt, most of the money allocated for the project would be stolen along the way by everyone from national to local politicians. So nothing would be built anyway.
I read somewhere that the largest land owners in Spain are the townhalls themselves, I know in my area they own huge tracts of land doing nothing, so they already have the space, they just like tax too much to use it themselves.
Here's a crazy one, I had to pay 21% IVA on my land, plus 1.2% because "reasons", plus legal fees etc. You can't mortgage land in Spain.. so that's all cash. There's a big hurdle right away. I paid 21% IVA because I bought it from a company, on the whole amount. Not the profit they made on the land like IVA on used car sales, the whole amount... IVA is value added tax, where was the value added in mud, it was mud when they bought it and it was the same mud when I bought it. Actually it's oak trees but that's immaterial. They got €66.6k in tax, before anything was built or even applied for! Plus 26% on the profit the seller made on the land too!!
Thanks for coming to my ted talk 😅
ignaciopatrick100 | 22 hours ago
The church in Spain also.owns a lot of land ,and they don't know how to handle it,given to them by little old.ladies that pass away and leave it in their will .the church generally have no idea how to manage or a clue what to do with it .
polloasado81 | 17 hours ago
I think the catholic church is the biggest landowner in the world. They aren't giving it away or selling cheap, to help anyone.
ignaciopatrick100 | 17 hours ago
That's actually true ,in the UK my family gave money to the.church for the roof repairs and living cost of the priest .my family had.a building company, they asked the local church about some land and offered a fair price to buy it,to.do housing with social.housing included .the deal was sent higher up the sticky pole and it was sold to a developer for the same price but a profit share and no social housing .that says a lot about how the church think
Paul_Gambino | 21 hours ago
Thank you for your insightful comment! Much of what it says lines up with my experience as well.
The way regulations function are so often to create artificial barriers to cheaper housing to drive up costs rather than to actually ensure higher quality end results. This benefits and incentivizes larger developers to prioritize only luxury or "high income" construction like I was saying before. The few rebates and incentives officially offered by governments are often Byzantine and arbitrarily difficult to actually get.
I disagree with you that government built housing necessarily will always result in inefficiencies and corruption, though. This is a matter of political will- if a government takes up the task seriously then it can work like it has in many other countries or even in European countries in the past. We have to be willing to change the system here because it clearly isn't working as it currently is.
Generally I just don't see any other way out. There needs to be a political reckoning with the corruption in government but there also needs to be an economic reckoning with the raw fact that organising basic necessities like housing off of the profit motive fails to lead to acceptable results for millions of people and it's just going to continue to get worse until an outside force makes that change. All of this will continue to get worse as climate change, economic shocks from wars, and other political instability make everything more difficult. I don't see any other force which can make this change other than the government.
polloasado81 | 17 hours ago
I've actually seen a government affordable housing scheme work well, obviously not in Spain though.
The government eminent domained some land that wasn't really doing much anyway, then they built multiple blocks of nice apartments. They then sold the apartments either 50/50 or outright but only to citizens, not immigrants, only to be lived in, they couldn't be sublet and they couldn't be sold for I think 10 years but once again then only to citizens and they couldn't own more than one. It kept the housing stock away from speculators/investors. The 50/50 was buy half and pay token rent on the other. The apartments were even sold with a profit so the government made money on it. They came without kitchens and bathrooms which kept the costs down and did a deal with the local banks to agree to better mortgage terms to allow for the finishing for the new owners. The kitchens and bathrooms etc were purchased locally, so creating economic churn too.
By keeping it ownership not social housing, it creates community, so even years later, the blocks are still nice, the communal areas aren't all destroyed etc. The movement of people into these apartments freed up a lot of the older social housing which went to the unemployed etc.
Emotional_Goal9525 | 23 hours ago
Housing is also a vehicle for mortgage fueled speculation. They are valuable, because they are prime collateral for loan origination. Many banks have unholy alliances with realtors. Housing is expensive, because that is in the intrest of realtors and banks who are the ones that determine the prices in the short term. In short: housing is expensive, because housing is expensive.
Creative accounting is the blight of the humankind.
VacanyeraYT | a day ago
The math works on paper, but the real-world housing friction is about timing a infant born locally doesn't enter the rental or homebuying market for 20-25 years, giving the construction sector decades to adjust supply. An adult immigrant enters the housing market on Day 1. That immediate demand-supply lag is what creates the sever price and rent pressure in major metro areas
FindingRelevantInfo | a day ago
Nobody's building houses looking at the birthrates now and thinking that in 20 years we best have a home ready for those kids.
It might be an issue if there's a sudden influx of people but 1% a year doesn't seem that much.
Kids take 20 years to need a home but they also need 20 years to be productive members of society. Immigration actually outsources raising kids to other countries and the host country just gets a capable worker without having to pay squat for raising that person.
There's a bunch of negatives and positive aspects to migration, it's a really complex topic with a ton of intertwined variables.
spanishpointspecial | 23 hours ago
Also since Covid and the rise in work from home, people who can afford it are seeking apartments with an extra room for an office that that may not otherwise have sought out.
Kazang | a day ago
That's a great point, I've never considered it that way before.
I think perhaps in the past immigrants were more likely to part of the construction sector and so it was less of an issue.
But construction as a trade and immigrant demographics have changed considerably over the last 20 years. While construction still does have a healthy level of immigrants in the workforce it's noticeably to a lesser degree, although that is anecdotal for my area and I don't know what it is like in Spain.
grumpyfucker123 | 21 hours ago
It's also because everyone wants to live in the same 10 cities, we've got loads of empty housing in places people dont want to live.
Clair_Osbcurious | 22 hours ago
The population distribution has changed. Lots of smaller towns and villages are empty now. Madrid and Barcelona are way overcrowded.
prime_alki | a day ago
This is a joke, South Korea has no immigration yet their housing is severely worse than any western
Salsashark1419 | a day ago
Housing in SK is super expensive because 50% the country lives in the Seoul Metropolitan area. When half the country wants to live in the same place, that skyrockets demand there. And most of the other half wants to live a different city. Rent is over 1/4 cheaper in a city like Andong. Although they don’t build as many homes as someone like Japan to keep prices lower.
PunkPirate56364 | a day ago
Yep. The issue driving housing crisis in developed nations is concentration of jobs.
Concentrating economy in a single place makes makes economy more efficient. But then young people move from smaller places where construction of new housing is cheaper into overpopulated places where construction of new housing is more expensive.
I believe SK is the most extreme example of this.
v12vanquish | 2 hours ago
Two things can be true at once
Ok-Animal-6880 | a day ago
Their housing affordability should benefit from their population decreasing.
prime_alki | a day ago
It isn’t already so why? There’s virtual no immigration. Only rural areas will die while cities with jobs will ever get more expensive.
Bman4k1 | a day ago
Supply and demand, everyone wants to move to the cities. If you are willing to move to a small rural town you can get a place to stay for practically free. But who wants to live there? And can you get a remote job or regular job there. This is playing out everywhere. Lack of affordability _in the cities_
LessInThought | a day ago
I don't think there's a good solution to this. People are naturally going to congregate to the hub that provides the most opportunity, excitement, life.
Lhadar31 | a day ago
They should make tax free for rural people
AK_Panda | 22 hours ago
Nah, it's even worse with declining populations.
Scrandon | a day ago
Did somebody say immigration is the only cause of housing unaffordability?
Odd-Opportunity-6550 | a day ago
Wouldn't the strain be literally the same if they had normal birth rates ?
Don't blame the broken housing policies on immigrants. This is all done by design.
Prestigious_Load1699 | 23 hours ago
It would take a native-born Spaniard 18 years before needing housing, right?
Importing working-age migrants puts immediate pressure on the housing market.
Odd-Opportunity-6550 | 21 hours ago
Um no ?
It takes more like a year before a baby moves out of their parents room and into their own room. Housing strain is measured by rooms occupied and not by properties. It's not like immigrants are buying houses and leaving lots of empty rooms.
Prestigious_Load1699 | 20 hours ago
Upon further examination, it seems there are two concepts in play:
Housing strain as you reference is rooms occupied per person.
Housing stress is the cost of housing per person.
I was addressing housing stress, as it seems a more objective indicator in the context of an economics discussion.
I imagine most people are similarly more concerned with the cost of housing in a discussion of this nature, though I appreciate that others may approach it from the strain perspective.
An interesting and informative discussion! Glad to read any further response, if you so desire.
Odd-Opportunity-6550 | 20 hours ago
Housing stress increases too with natural births. People upsize when they have kids. A couple renting a studio will need a 3 bed house when they have 2 kids.
And even if that weren't true , we have been stuck in a housing crises for so many decades that saying "this puts off the problem till later is not a solution. The same number of houses will need to be built when the kids are of of age.
Odd-Opportunity-6550 | 20 hours ago
Not to mention that immigrant communities are infamous for extremely efficient housing use compared to natives. Many live 5-10 adults to a house and when they buy property , they rent out all spare rooms to others that need them rather than sit on giant houses for decades like natives when the kids move out. They are entitled to do this but Im merely pointing out the effects on the housing market.
Prestigious_Load1699 | 20 hours ago
This is a great point, and well taken.
Maintaining a large house with empty rooms is indeed quite inefficient.
For my part, the root problem continues to be limited supply, and it seems an intractable problem for much of the developed world.
Odd-Opportunity-6550 | 20 hours ago
This is exactly my point. There is no shortage of land. We also know how to build houses. Supply is constrained by governments who have made it impossible to get housing built. If they just gave a universal right to landowners to build what they want on their land we would have no issue.
And to say it's impossible is not true. People just arent even trying. They will protest against housing but believe that the whole problem is caused by "greedy landlords " who are out to get them. When was the last time you saw a housing protest where people were demanding less regulation on construction?
Prestigious_Load1699 | 19 hours ago
That might be the first protest I ever attend.
The regulatory imposition is indeed highly problematic.
MoosilaukeFlyer | a day ago
Immigration is not the primary cause of housing affordability, practically every study shows that income inequality is the primary driver of housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare failures in liberal democracies.
McZootyFace | a day ago
Can you please show me a study that says it’s down to income inequality and not supply struggling to keep up with demand?
Japan has issues with income inequality yet housing is much less of an issue there and the costs take up a much smaller part of someone’ pay-check. They have very liberal zoning laws that allow for quicker expansion and building modifications.
Full_Jellyfish_1862 | a day ago
He didnt say it was
Anon_Arsonist | a day ago
Except immigrants also build things, consume things, start businesses, employ people, and pay taxes. When immigrants are studied it's at worst a wash compared to native-born citizens depending on immigrants' exact demographics, but often immigration is a net positive in purely economic terms. The pie grows, so to speak.
The idea the immigrants cause housing unaffordability is misleading at best. They do tend to cluster in urban centers which can cause temporary upward pressure, but they also spur housing construction by the same measure, meaning an increase in rent/purchase prices is mostly temporary in real-dollar terms. Good examples of places that don't handle this new construction well in response to in-migration would be places like Los Angeles, London, or Barcelona.
UsernameNSomeNumbers | a day ago
Yeah it’s not complicated. Any valuable labor (educated/skilled) is good for an economy. The friction lies when less skilled native borne population has to compete in a more crowded labor pool and becomes disenfranchised.
The pie gets bigger, but their slice gets smaller and it’s a loss for them. Reducing legal immigration is just protectionism for lower skilled labor, while being a net loss for society.
Anon_Arsonist | a day ago
Except I'm not even really convinced that's true either. An overview of economic studies tends to show that immigrants mostly aren't even competing with native-born labor, at least in the US. Immigrants tend to be less skilled, meaning they compete for low-wage or undesirable work that firms have trouble filling with native workers. The literature shows that the effect of immigration is at worse nearly neutral, and positive in aggregate.
Nytshaed | a day ago
On top of that, native language ability is a skill in of itself that gives native workers a market advantage in certain jobs that tend to be more desirable.
OrangeJr36 | a day ago
Spain has been prioritizing immigrants from their former empire, language is more of a problem for immigrants ("expats") from the UK and US.
UsernameNSomeNumbers | a day ago
From my knowledge I would disagree. Sure, “nobody wants to pick their own strawberries” - and even the kitchen dishwashing job is unlikely to be desired by native borne labor… but theory dictates that it depresses wages on the lower end of the scale. Even after accounting for the net effect of higher demand, employees just have less negotiating power with employers.
On the higher end, there are some jobs that have a very low supply so importing that labor is favorable. Like imagine there’s only 1 person or like 20 people in the world who can do a job (there are jobs like that I’ve heard of) and the output is incomparable to other labor output. Having those people be in your labor force would be a net positive for your economy. In extreme cases like Project Manhattan or the Space Race you’re talking about getting that talent at any cost.
Anon_Arsonist | a day ago
You're not entirely wrong there is an effect, but this is also a common trap in economics - it's called the "Lump of Labor Fallacy". The problem with applying the logic of simple competition like you would with commodity prices is that labor is not a commodity. Labor is unique in that it represents both a cost to firms and income to consumers - a productive worker may compete for wages, yes, but that same laborer also adds their consumption to the economy, boosting aggregate demand. What economists try to measure is how much one effect cancels out the other.
If you add supply to a market, prices will naturally be pushed down absent any change in demand (in this case prices are wages), however we know that aggregate demand boosts demand for the goods and services that firms provide, causing an increase in demand for workers. This effect isn't even across industries, but what I'm saying when I posted my prior link is that the effect has been studied, and economists are in broad agreement that the effect of immigration is actually to boost aggregate demand enough to more than offset any losses from competition. It's counterintuitive, but it's a measured effect.
Keroscee | 21 hours ago
>economists are in broad agreement that the effect of immigration is actually to boost aggregate demand enough to more than offset any losses from competition.
This is one of those peak retard takes that is only true when labour demand exceeds supply. A situation that has never been true in the vast majority of western developed countries since 2008.
When supply of labour exceeds demand, wages are suppressed, and aggregate consumption does not grow enough to offset this. Because, you know, wages are suppressed.
Theres also the fact that many migrants are coming in with or without key skills. Those without will only compete for low skill jobs, further suppressing wages and not significantly contributing to aggregate demand, simply because their wages are already low. There is plenty of data to show that the net effect is negative on the economy as a whole when these low skill workers make up the majority of your intake.
There are also key factors in the inelasticity of key goods that cannot simply be increased. Housing is the big one; you cannot build houses fast enough to keep up with a 1% annual population increase. For reference, this would be the equivalent of every woman having an average of 3.1 children base upon UK figures in a zero migration scenario.
Ill-Professional180 | 16 hours ago
Ignore the downvotes mate, you're cooking. Speak to any of these bozos long enough and you'll find them just being racist I'm sad to report. Unfortunately, their poison-tongue rhetoric gives them away 9/10 times. You'll never have one of these guys saying: "I think migration is great, it adds culture and interesting diversity as well as filling holes in our labor market. However I think we're doing about 30% too much because of X, Y, Z". It's usually some dressed up version of "DER TAKING OUR YERBS", and at this point its boring.
Salsashark1419 | a day ago
I find hard to believe that the average Moroccans who moved to Spain are somehow more of a net positive on average than the average Spaniard, which is what many have to claim to say that they are as important as they want them to be. People say the same thing in the USA. Over 1/3 of the entire country is a net negative contributor tax wise in the USA, yet somehow 90% of the people from poorer places like Mexico magically don’t burden the system like someone already here. Even though that would be literally impossible.
ThrowawayGiggity1234 | a day ago
It’s pretty simple, a significant proportion of any native population is a net fiscal drain either as children (consuming public education) or retirees (consuming pensions and state-funded healthcare). Most immigrants (especially from lower-income states like Morocco to Spain or Mexico to the US) come during their prime working years. Receiving states get labor and tax contributions (from payroll, sales, but also consumption taxes) without financing childhood education and usually before they reach pension age. In Spain, it’s estimated that non-European immigrants generate a net annual tax contribution 75% higher than native Spaniards, simply due to their younger age structure. Studies also show that regularization of immigrants in Spain has generated annual net tax gains with no increase in public cost, which again subsidizes pensions among the aging native Spanish population. Studies have consistently shown similar effects for immigrants to the US, even from undocumented or otherwise lower-income immigrants (because they are barred from entitlement programs so continuous fiscal contributions through payroll and consumption taxes offset any consumption of federal services).
See:
Elias, Ferran, Joan Monras, and Javier Vázquez-Grenno. “Understanding the effects of granting work permits to undocumented immigrants.” Journal of Labor Economics 43, no. 3 (2025): 763-802.
Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael. “The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain.” Working paper, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2020.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2017.
Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Boustan. Streets of gold: America's untold story of immigrant success. Princeton University Press, 2022.
LittleTension8765 | 10 hours ago
You can’t take the most favorable number from one of those categories and treat it as the fiscal effect of immigration as a whole.
The problem is that you’re treating a short term fiscal advantage as if it proves immigrants are a net fiscal benefit over their entire lives. It doesn’t.
The National Academies report you cited actually makes this pretty clear. It found that first generation immigrants were, on average, more costly to government than native born Americans, particularly at the state and local level. One of the main reasons was education spending on their children. The second generation, on the other hand, was strongly fiscally positive.So saying that America gets workers without having to pay for their childhood education only tells half the story. The government may not have paid to educate the immigrant, but it does pay to educate their children. Those costs have to be included if you’re comparing the fiscal impact of immigrant and native households.The Spanish 75% figure also needs context. That estimate is largely explained by the fact that non European immigrants are younger. A population concentrated around working age will obviously look better in an annual fiscal calculation than a native population containing millions of retirees. But immigrants do not remain 30 years old forever. They eventually retire, collect pensions and consume more healthcare. A one year snapshot cannot tell you whether someone is a net contributor over their lifetime.The regularization study has a similar problem when used to make this argument. It shows that giving legal work permits to undocumented immigrants who were already living in Spain increased formal employment and tax contributions without producing a comparable immediate increase in spending. That is evidence that regularization can improve government finances. It is not evidence that the fiscal effect of admitting an additional immigrant is necessarily positive. Those are different questions with different counterfactuals.The same distinction matters in the US. Undocumented immigrants being excluded from many federal benefits does not mean they create no public expenditure. State and local governments still finance schools, infrastructure, emergency services and other public services, including services used by US citizen children in mixed status families. This is one reason the National Academies found a much less favorable fiscal picture at the state and local level than at the federal level.None of this means immigration is economically bad. Working age immigration can clearly help an aging country by increasing the number of workers and taxpayers. But that is a much narrower claim than saying immigrants are generally net fiscal contributors because they arrive during their working years.
Your own sources actually show why the distinction matters. The fiscal result changes depending on whether you are looking at one year or an entire lifetime, the first generation or the second, federal or local government, and individual immigrants or households including their children.
Ill-Professional180 | 16 hours ago
What's so interesting is that this argument is REALLY obvious. Like extremely so. It's not counter intuitive at all. What's also interesting is that OP here draws the conclusion otherwise on the basis of zero evidence besides belief. I wonder what their underlying beliefs are...?
progbuck | a day ago
Sorry that reality is hard for you to believe.
Anon_Arsonist | a day ago
The selection bias does feel weird, and it is true that prior to stricter border controls, immigrant demographics tended to be younger. Whether this is because of aging demographics in the country of origin, or because more people have been forced to live in the US permanently to avoid multiplying difficult border crossings (and bringing extended family such as parents), is harder to say. In any case, a big reason the people moving are net taxpayers is because they tend to self-select for people looking for better jobs (i.e. the young and able-bodied). It's the same reason why high-opportunity cities tend to be younger than low-opportunity rural communities, even when looking only at internal migrants.
In any case immigration is counterintuitive in pretty much every facet. It's not like putting someone up at your house uninvited.
Virtual-Alps-2888 | a day ago
Where did u get the idea that immigration spur housing construction? Europe is a very good example of how this is not happening.
gomerqc | 21 hours ago
It is evidently not true here in Canada either. There was a very noticeable demographic shift in Canada when we brought in a massive amount of immigrants, the vast majority of whom were Indian/South Asian but you almost never see these demographics on a construction site. Most of them work in fast food and retail jobs.
Anon_Arsonist | a day ago
Housing is interesting when considered as a commodity in part because there are long lead times. This can cause big fluctuations in price in the short run because it takes time for developers to notice a change in price, build, and ultimately put new units on the market. There are methods to speed this process up, and it's very boom and bust, but if new construction is made easy near where people want to live (jobs, services, amenities), it does keep shelter costs more affordable. For example, Austin, TX famously made housing construction easier, and it quite quickly and measurably drove down rents.
Construction needs labor and investment to build. Immigrants tend to add to the labor pool of potential construction workers while also spurring the economy to grow from increased aggregate demand (immigrants are also consumers). So, immigrants not only quite literally build homes, they also contribute to the overall economic growth which spurs on construction in the first place.
The places that have the biggest issues managing this growth are those places which are hostile to new construction. In the US, a good example of this would be Los Angeles, or in the UK, London (or really anywhere in the UK or Ireland that experiences population growth - their planning systems are atrocious).
SeaSpaniard | 19 hours ago
It's not misleading at best. It's another factor. It adds up to demand.
I don't get why so much moral panic about acknowledging that immigration can have negative effects too. Always this knee jerk reactions.
LittleTension8765 | 10 hours ago
Well off and/or educated immigrants do that, but poor immigrants consumer much than they give.
JitteryJoes1986 | a day ago
> The idea the immigrants cause housing unaffordability is misleading at best
False. Any pressure on housing causes prices to go up. Stop being disingenuous.
ForMoreYears | a day ago
It's called supply and demand, not just demand. You're kinda missing one half of the equation here bud.
Prestigious_Load1699 | a day ago
My understanding is that Spain has increased immigration significantly.
Has housing supply increased alongside?
CFLuke | 9 hours ago
Not when practically every new home is built by immigrants
Seran-Ast | 22 hours ago
HAHAHAHAHAHAH NO
SleepyHobo | a day ago
I've never seen studies such as the ones you reference take into account the social welfare and education related expenses that these immigrants' children require.
FckXFckMusk | a day ago
Spain's population was approximately 25.6 million. This number had dropped from roughly 32.7 million in 1936 due to the devastating toll of the Spanish Civil War, which ended in 1939
So they should put up with immigration, god forbid the ponzi scheme gets hurt.
tekno45 | a day ago
But if you had the same population born in spain, you'd have all this plus retirements to take care of.
Prestigious_Load1699 | 23 hours ago
Couldn’t native-born Spaniards live with their family?
An option presumably not afforded to migrants?
tekno45 | 12 hours ago
immigrants frequently create their own communities and help those in it with housing.
Why couldn't migrants live with family thats already migrated?
Penglolz | 21 hours ago
Immigrants also retire….
SeaSpaniard | 19 hours ago
Immigrants now contribute to Social Security, but they will be pensioners eventually.
JoshuasBacklog | 20 hours ago
Support the pension system? my balls. They are not supporting nothing related with Spain
MostOriginalNickname | 17 hours ago
And safety
gatosaurio | 11 hours ago
Except they don't offset the pension problem at all and actually will make it worse in the future because they also generate rights for themselves by working here.
I've been hearing that "immigration will pay for our pensions" since the 90's and it is not true at all. The pension problem in Spain is not solvable by importing low skilled worker, and whoever tells you it is, is lying or just an anumeric ignorant.
vinny_twoshoes | a day ago
"housing shortages are caused by migrants" is an insane thing to say in a world with Airbnb and booking dot com.
Careless-Degree | a day ago
So what’s the time frame where people who support thing thing thinks the burden placed on the system decreases and turns into a positive to support the older population that is already 50+.
There will be the immigration burden + the elderly burden at the same time and will be a negative multiplier for the government who only forced through immigration to continue expansion.
Merkaartor | a day ago
It also hurts local culture. Catalan language is disappearing mostly due to immigration, since they rather learn spanish instead of catalan.
JitteryJoes1986 | a day ago
"Line must go UP!" is what I am hearing.
This influx of immigration is a temporary band aide on a worldwide phenomenon that is called the aging populace and to keep the economy apace to support said aging population.
Only Japan and maybe South Korea are against immigration. IMO, the sooner you can get over the hump of the aging populace, the better. Throwing more wood into the fire isn't going to speed things up, its only going to prolong the issue that I just mentioned.
Hence why, IMO, Japan will come out ahead in the next few decades.
veerKg_CSS_Geologist | a day ago
Spanish home prices actually peaked just before the 2008 financial crisis, and have been on a slow recovery since then. Now the economy is doing better again, so home prices are rising fast.
VacanyeraYT | a day ago
That’s a fair point regarding the macro recovery post-2008, but the key difference today is localized rental pressure vs broad asset price inflationn While nominal home prices may just be approaching 2007 peak levels, rental yields and housing costs in major hubs like Madridk and Barcelona relative to average wages have stretched local affordability severely—driven significantly by rapid population inflows concentrating in urban centers rather than new housing supply keeping up
lamancha | 21 hours ago
The housing affordability thing is mostly driven by a lack of control and the ring surrounding Madrid being deserted.
Barcelona is just tiny, there isn't any space left to build but people keep moving there for some reason.
The test can be blamed to the government being funky with budgets. There is no reason the presidential budget needs to be taken from things like education.
a_library_socialist | 18 hours ago
This is true. Spain overall has lots of empty space though (we have one of the most extreme population density splits in Europe).
After a generation, we might see the interior resettled, especially if Spain is able to become an energy powerhouse of Europe while using immigration of high skilled workers from Latin America as a benefit.
Full-Blood1318 | 15 hours ago
Italy population has been declining while Spain has been increasing due to immigration
FutureAd854 | 12 hours ago
If only there was a way to solve housing problems. Like building new ones
Key-Toe-6257 | 8 hours ago
> While immigration helps offset the aging population and supports the state pension system, it also puts severe pressure on housing affordability, infrastructure, and healthcare in major urban hubs like Madrid and Barcelona
Like normal growth.
Likeyfap | 8 hours ago
Housing affordability is in the state it is because of speculation and airbnb. Inmigration in this regard is almost neglectible
back_to_the_homeland | 7 hours ago
How does it affect housing affordability if the population is still shrinking ? Are immigrants not counted? Spain lost 2 million people. Are we not building any houses?
Glavurdan | an hour ago
AI comment
MrGabal | 19 hours ago
I'm not sure housing affordability is due to immigration. How would it be different if it were due to high birth rates? The housing crisis comes from somewhere else... Profits for the rich.
Etheon44 | 19 hours ago
And condemns the future of the country, because most of the immigrants that come to Spain are not high skilled workers (especially because high skill workers will want to be paid appropriately, which is not gonna happen in Spain and it is one of the reasons that so many young high skilled spaniards are leaving the country too)
But, hey, let's do all we can for the old people of today that already have and have had comfortable lives, since they are the majority of the voting population, governments are prioritizing them
Similar things are happening across a lot countries in the 1st world, the decades to come are looking bleaker by the day in so many regards, because combine this with the awful job market, with the ever and quicker rising temperatures, with the rising of cost of living and even of leisure while wages are not following at the same pace...
ThrowawayGiggity1234 | a day ago
It’s pretty simple, a significant proportion of any native population is a net fiscal drain either as children (consuming public education) or retirees (consuming pensions and state-funded healthcare). Most immigrants (especially from lower-income states like Morocco to Spain or Mexico to the US) come during their prime working years. Receiving states get labor and tax contributions (from payroll, sales, but also consumption taxes) without financing childhood education and usually before they reach pension age. In Spain, it’s estimated that non-European immigrants generate a net annual tax contribution 75% higher than native Spaniards, simply due to their younger age structure. Studies also show that regularization of immigrants in Spain has generated annual net tax gains with no increase in public cost, which again subsidizes pensions among the aging native Spanish population. Studies have consistently shown similar effects for immigrants to the US, even from undocumented or otherwise lower-income immigrants (because they are barred from entitlement programs so continuous fiscal contributions through payroll and consumption taxes offset any consumption of federal services).
See:
Elias, Ferran, Joan Monras, and Javier Vázquez-Grenno. “Understanding the effects of granting work permits to undocumented immigrants.” Journal of Labor Economics 43, no. 3 (2025): 763-802.
Gálvez Iniesta, Ismael. “The size, socio-economic composition and fiscal implications of the irregular immigration in Spain.” Working paper, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2020.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2017.
Abramitzky, Ran, and Leah Boustan. Streets of gold: America's untold story of immigrant success. Princeton University Press, 2022.
xinorez1 | a day ago
This post, when not as a response to another, appears to be a total tangent.
Low skill low wage earners individually tend to be a net drain on taxes, at least in the US, even after accounting for zero childhood expenses. Those childhood expenses are just paying for a classroom with one teacher for every 20 students or so, plus their share of the consumption of infrastructure: roads, water, regulatory bodies, etc. That's nothing compared to doctors visits and healthcare for heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, and all the other ailments that are common at old age, especially for manual laborers working in poorly regulated industries with exposure to toxic chemicals, etc.
Maybe it's different in Spain, or maybe they're not accounting for the decrease in expenses from the immigrants who eventually leave for their home country, which accounts for some 75 percent of the immigrants in the US.
Of course that's just tax spending, and when it comes to productivity it's actually been measured that they are a net benefit to the economy but that's a much more complex calculation.
But that's why legal migrant labor should be the thing that everyone wants if taxes and productivity are the only concern (which is rarely the case but then you need to actually make the case for the other stuff). They come here eager to earn wages that are many multiples higher than their annual earnings back at home, but then they leave to actually enjoy those earnings after only a short stint of migrant employment. Their enjoyment back at home then creates new economic opportunities in their home country which reduces the incentive for further migration. It's a win win win, compared to extractive economic slavery which is absolutely a lose for the slave and arguably a lose for society which becomes very rigid, simple and regressive.
As for those low skill low wage earning immigrants who stay, at least in the US those people tend to be a net drain on taxes individually even after accounting for zero childhood tax expenditure, but surprisingly their children tend to do much better so that after a generation or so their family become net contributors. I assume this is because it takes someone quite extraordinary to make the move to become an economic migrant, compared to the burnouts who are usually at the low end of the income scale.
But all of this is an aside to the question of if it is an issue if populations are declining and what the cause and character is of the decline.
Edit: my post is a tangent too and primarily served as a personal distraction... I kept talking about the US instead of reading about Spain, and now that I've finally relieved my bowels, i kind of feel bad about making such a moronic post... But hey, most of the readers here are American and they have a lot of misconceptions about immigration...
ThrowawayGiggity1234 | 22 hours ago
I made this comment when everyone else on the post was basically only bringing up immigration. Anyway to address the idea that low-skill immigrants are a net tax drain because of old age healthcare costs, this isn’t really borne out. In the US, first-gen immigrants with lower educational attainment can often represent a net fiscal deficit at the state and local levels but it’s not because of healthcare, it’s the municipal cost of k-12 public education for their kids. And undocumented immigrants and recent permanent residents do subsidize federal healthcare and pension systems because of the barriers they have in accessing federal entitlements including Medicare and (non-emergency) Medicaid, so they have much lower rates of claims on end-of-life benefits.
On one level, you’re not wrong that temporary/circular migration seems to optimize the fiscal benefit for a host country, but we must remember time horizons. That offers an immediate and short term fiscal benefit per capita, but won’t address structural issues of population aging and collapsing worker-to-retiree dependency ratios in advanced industrialized states. As you already identified, we can see why permanent settlement matters with a longer time horizon, to tap into second-gen dividends since they show greater edu attainment, wage earnings, and tax contributions than both parents and baseline native population levels. Ultimately as existing populations age out of workforces, permanent immigrants (and their subsequent higher birth rates) will naturally permanently expand the base of the tax pyramid, which is critical. Permanent immigrants will also be building human capital, starting businesses, and reinvesting earnings into the domestic economy through asset ownership and capital goods consumption at higher rates than temporary/circular migrants who have higher rates of capital flight by nature of their status.
Another aspect is the firm side, because temporary visa programs tend to operate on closed (employer-sponsored) systems that tie workers’ status to a single firm, those workers can’t negotiate wages or transition to competing employers as efficiently, which creates other kinds of labor market distortions and gives the firm a kind of monopsony power. We have data showing that reliance on continuous temporary migration tends to trap labor forces in low-productivity equilibria, with permanent residency immigrants typically climb the job ladder quickly and get the legal stability to get more training, start companies, and so on, which matters for advanced productivity in the long term. I also think that in a world of exit options, if a state can’t offer desirable and globally competitive permanent pathways to people, it will struggle to attract them, which has never been more important for states with aging populations. Also i dont know where you came up with the figure that 75% of immigrants in the US leave for their countries of origin eventually, most analyses would estimate 30-35% as the right number at the high end.
PeculiarMetaphor | 18 hours ago
Considering that birth rates have been falling steadily in the majority of the world's countries for the last 50-70 years and that if the trend continues, even the countries from where the current immigrants are coming from won't be able to maintain their own population in about 30-50 years time. There will come a time when even those countries will have a problem of population shortage.
Considering also that each subsequent generation of immigrants' descendants will tend to get closer and closer to having the same birth rates as the average population, it quickly becomes obvious that immigration is an unsustainable temporary fix to a set of (so far) permanent problems.
Soggy-Childhood-8110 | 18 hours ago
Modern day slavery
jonnyiw | 20 hours ago
Thank you for a detailed and thought reply. I will read the papers!
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
What I don't get, is the focus on immigration illegal or not, but for instance in this case, Spain is reaching 50mill in population due to immigrants.
No one is reporting that Morocco is now having a decline population and is bad for their already struggling economy. Besides immigrants is a deflating and depressing factor for wages in a country, why would you support that?
nodanator | a day ago
Even worse when people are jubilant about bringing in "doctors, nurses, etc." from poor countries... These places don't have many resources already, and we are stealing their professional class formed at high costs.
Anna-Politkovskaya | a day ago
I think you may have confused an ironic statement as genuine jubilation.
nodanator | a day ago
I know the joke about "doctors and engineers". But there are actually doctors and engineers coming to Canada and the US. Canada has (or at least had) a strict point system aimed at poaching the educated class of poor countries, which was praised by everyone.
Anna-Politkovskaya | a day ago
I mean it makes perfect sense to want well educated people, as the poster above mentioned. Also makes perfect sense for someone who is educated to want to move themselves to a country where they can prosper.
The DDR had a quite practical solution to the issue of emigration. Barbed wire, a tall wall, minefields and guards with automatic rifles + an authoritarian police state that employs a significant portion of the population as informants. That will stop the doctors from trying to find a better life.
nodanator | 23 hours ago
I mean, we could simply not recruit doctors and nurses from poor nations. No need for barb wires.
XMabbX | 21 hours ago
It is just a form of neo-neo-colonialism. But we are still early to see the consequences. In 50-100 years we will look back here like we look at 19th-20th century colonialism.
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
If I get a penny everytime I hear this, I would have been rich. The fact is, most immigrants aren't well educated, those that holds a medicin degree aren't from another non EU country aren't good enough to work in the EU healthcare system.
nodanator | a day ago
That's not entirely true; we get nurses from third-world countries in Canada, plenty of them. I think some doctors, engineers, and other professionals as well, but they do have hoops to jump through.
But it's even worse if we steal their professionals and then have them drive Ubers.
Alternative_Lab_8501 | a day ago
It doesn’t mean nurses and other professionals are trained up to your country’s standards. In india there are universities there you get diploma just for attending.
nodanator | a day ago
And yet they do have real nurses and doctors in India... I understand some are less than up to par, yes.
L4gsp1k3 | 19 hours ago
Ofc they have real doctors and nurses, my point is, that their education isn't on par with the ones in the EU countries or in my case Denmark.
All those doctors we have poached from India, they all need to take extra education and courses, they are ready for the Danish health system after 2-3 years of extra education.
The thing is, we need doctors in some specific fields and the government aren't paying enough to attract doctors to those fields. We are praising capitalism, but we don't want to pay extra for services.
It's like we want welfare but don't want to pay taxes.
Ayjayz | a day ago
Maybe those places should consider fixing the economic issues that cause this, them.
nodanator | a day ago
You're always going to have an economic gradient across countries. You'll never get a perfect balance. Even across Europe and North America.
Not_ur_gilf | 19 hours ago
Exactly. Even within the US there are THOUSANDS of people who move out of the south to northern states for better work and wages whose lives in that region don’t look too much different than their counterparts in Central America.
xinorez1 | a day ago
Royalists and extractive economies tend to keep people poor, yes
Ill-Professional180 | 16 hours ago
You're not seriously arguing that inequality between countries is due to them sucking at capitalism are you
Ayjayz | 16 hours ago
No they're so good at capitalism that everyone flees the incredible living conditions. That must be it
Ill-Professional180 | 16 hours ago
What? I'm referring to the fact that these countries are poor partially because of history, e.g. colonialism and the like. Obviously their living conditions are poor in some cases, but to fully blame them seems ignorant at best.
nodanator | 11 hours ago
These countries are relatively poor because getting 50 million people to set aside their familial and tribal instincts to work together to build a top-level economy is incredibly hard. Most of the time it fails, and you end up with the same logical end point: mass corruption at all levels. That's not a knock on them; it's just difficult to do and goes against the default setting of human nature (i.e., care for those related to you). It's a high-wire act that only a few outlier societies have managed to accomplish.
This-Wall-1331 | 15 hours ago
People immigrate for better living opportunities. If a country is upset that its own citizens are leaving, the solution is simple: pay them more.
nodanator | 11 hours ago
Poor countries can't ''pay them more'' since.... They are poor.
Jalapenoplanter | a day ago
Does anyone consider a declining population good?
radiant_0wl | a day ago
Environmentalist?
Careless-Degree | a day ago
A younger person in a smaller generation might see all sorts of opportunities in it.
Generalfrogspawn | a day ago
Generally a declining population ends up worse for young people (counterintuitive I know) but what happens is population shrinks in most places and everything becomes concentrated in urban centers because that’s where job opportunities are in a shrinking market, this creates massive competition for jobs and raises prices in those centers. South Korea is a strong case study in this.
Careless-Degree | a day ago
> everything becomes concentrated in urban centers because that’s where job opportunities are
How is this different than the current approach of mass immigration?
In the end when the government controls basically everything the outcome is dictated by their spending - which is in urban areas to support immigrants and further government programs. Rural areas aren’t healthy regardless.
Generalfrogspawn | a day ago
It’s different because of the necessity. As a population expands, more urban centers pop up and create opportunities in a more spread out geographical area, helping people in those areas. If those urban areas are shrinking those people must move inward and compete against each other.
For clarity this is regarding “opportunities for young people in a shrinking population” as you argued before
Jalapenoplanter | a day ago
Like the opportunity to pay much higher tax rates? The opportunity to not have any social safety net when they retire?
The opportunity to never move up at work become the older generation cannot retire because the younger, smaller working taxbase cannot support them
Careless-Degree | a day ago
Seems a lot easier to just tell the old people they don’t get infinite resources than increase taxes to an unmanageable rate.
It’s a choice- why continue to destroy the future for the past?
QueasyWorldliness920 | a day ago
For this generation, it’s because the past set the rules to their favor, and it won’t change until enough die off to no longer be the majority voting base
Careless-Degree | a day ago
Seems like if that’s the approach you take then you won’t ever been able to change because some generation will always be in the middle.
I think we are seeing in real time the devastation created by choosing security for people in their 70s over opportunities for people in their 20s.
If you have hope and opportunity in your 20s you start families and businesses. If you have security in your 70s you just sit around and vote for more security. Still gonna die, just with a little more comfort.
Jalapenoplanter | a day ago
I just want to make sure I am understanding your argument. You want everyone to accept a lower standard of living just to keep immigrants out?
Doesn’t that sound silly?
Careless-Degree | a day ago
We would have to define standard of living to start with, and I think GDP has reached the end of its usefulness.
But yes, I suspect most people would accept reduced GDP growth for home ownership, career opportunities, stronger communities, and a greater sense of control over their lives and country.
A lot of disgruntlement comes from the steps that the government takes to force immigration, GDP goes up on a national level; opportunities decrease on the individual level.
The West universally agrees our parents had better lives; but all the economic indicators show they had lower quality of life. Are they wrong or is the measurement?
Jalapenoplanter | a day ago
How does older people not retiring and a shrinking economy lead to more career opportunities?
When you say “strong communities” you just mean “only white people”. Please say what you mean. There is no need to be coward here.
New homes are not built in shrinking economies.
Careless-Degree | a day ago
People don’t need new homes; they need empty homes they can move into. Government entering the market and procuring housing for an ever increasing migrant population means native population is now competing in the marketplace with the government who can literally produce money. They are going to lose that bidding process.
Lots of sociological studies about the decrease in societal trust when immigration is increased. When diversity programs allot opportunity based upon group identification - social trust in institutions plummets.
Would you say integration is current going well?
And I get it - if someone is against immigration it means they are racist but that means there is a minimum requirement for constant immigration to not be racist- so would be interested to know what that requirement is.
Jalapenoplanter | a day ago
I can’t speak for spain but american became the most successful and powerful country in the world due to the success of immigration so yes.
So your suggestion is to have young people accept fewer social benefits, no promotions, worse economy all so scared racists don’t have to see brown people?
ElbowWavingOversight | a day ago
How? A shrinking population due to declining birth rates also means an aging population. This means that the old will vastly outnumber the young, and in a democracy this will basically spell doom for the young. Unless you abandon democracy, a shrinking population will be terrible for the young.
Careless-Degree | a day ago
> This means that the old will vastly outnumber the young, and in a democracy this will basically spell doom for the young. Unless you abandon democracy, a shrinking population will be terrible for the young.
Did they put the current immigration policy to a vote? For all the talk of democracy Western governments are more than capable of cutting benefits for the elderly if they deem it appropriate.
Emotional_Goal9525 | 22 hours ago
They never deem it appropriate, because you will lose the next election badly if you ever do. Basically it can only happen through acute escalation. You can only do it when IMF tells you to do it and even then you will have to appear to fight back.
Emotional_Goal9525 | 22 hours ago
Telling the largest most active voting block that they don't get what they want?
Might as well tell the Superman to go brush his teeth and go to bed.
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
No one claims that a decline in population is good, but the fact is a decline in population will affect assets and the rich don't want fewer asking for their hard assets, because that means deflating value.
The truth is, the last 20-30 years of globalisation has brought the lives of other people on the other side of the planet closer to you. You have realised, that there are other ways to live a life, and so far the "I" has become more important than the "WE and US", now merging this trend with an affordability crisis and hogging of wealth by the rich, refusing to play the monoply game by the rules, with the help of central banks, there are only a few options to reverse this, but it depends on what hardship we choose, there are no easy way out of this.
Complete-Painter-307 | 18 hours ago
People of degrowth philosophy
Lorpius_Prime | a day ago
> Besides immigrants is a deflating and depressing factor for wages in a country
Why do you believe that?
L4gsp1k3 | 19 hours ago
I experience it first hand, the Union couldn't do anything because on the paper we actually have our wages increased with 1-2% every year, while that is true, however the company changed our bonus system from 100% to 5-15% main us run faster for a lower salary.
My previous job's pay was based on a very low minimum guaranteed pay plus bonus on how much kg of meat you can move through the production line. So while the minimum baseline has increased 1-2% each year, the bonuses had decrease up to 90% per unit.
qqqeqe | 18 hours ago
L4gsp1k3 | 18 hours ago
As long as the company are raising the base salary, the union can't do much.
What I'm trying to say is, we as a workforce couldn't press our company not to change the values of our bonuses, they simply replace those that opposed or are very unhappy with the new lower pay with a new guy from Poland or Romania. The point is, mass importing workers will affect and deflate wages in a country.
This-Wall-1331 | 15 hours ago
Because countries with low immigration are famous for their high salaries /s
Just look at North Korea /s
Prestigious_Load1699 | 23 hours ago
Increasing supply of labor puts downward pressure on wages?
I mean, the economic logic seems sound.
I understand many disagree - arguing that the net benefit of migration outweighs any downward effect on wage-bargaining power by creating broader economic growth.
I can see both sides.
To use a hyperbolic hypothetical - if Spain literally doubled its population overnight by importing 50 million working-age immigrants, could you actually argue in good faith this wouldn’t massively depress wages?
Lorpius_Prime | 16 hours ago
What happens to demand for labor when population increases?
AddressFeisty9868 | 22 hours ago
It's to a large extent driven by migration from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. The population growth is indeed not driven by local births, but in terms of language and culture, they are as close they can be to being Spanish without being Spanish.
And Spain does need workers to keep its system afloat (the shrinking number of young workers while the growing number of elderly people come with a lot of costs in healthcare and pensions).
L4gsp1k3 | 19 hours ago
I'm aware of all that and Spain's situation isn't unique. Countries all over the world is facing similar difficulties. My point is, it's not viable to keep poaching high skilled workers from other countries to upkeep your society, and it's also not viable to mass import low skilled workers to keep wages down on jobs that no one wants because of the low pay.
bippos | a day ago
Most Spanish migrants are from South America and while people still don’t like migrants they like the South American ones more
Mitrafolk | a day ago
"Besides immigrants is a deflating and depressing factor for wages in a country"
It’s not quite like that—at least not in the medium to long term.
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
I'm from Denmark, one of the first countries to bring in workers from Poland for our factories. Over the span of ten years, I saw wages remain stagnant, and my pay for the same work and hours actually ended up lower than when I first started.
Mitrafolk | a day ago
How do you know that's the cause? Is it that obvious?
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
It is that obvious, if it weren't for those wage depressing factor, we could have at least kept our wage level.
Emotional_Goal9525 | 22 hours ago
Even that seems old fashioned now. Nowadays all the rage is expatriating educated language speaking workforce to cheaper cost of living countries for remote work.
Fired_Guy1982 | a day ago
I think a big part of the problem is the countries that attract immigrants have strong welfare systems. I’m not saying immigrants go to these countries to leech of the system, most do not, but those countries tend to have a higher quality of life, making them attractive to immigrants. The countries they’re leaving don’t have the same welfare system, so a declining population doesn’t hurt as much because they don’t need to think of ways to pay for the aging population
L4gsp1k3 | a day ago
I do agree, that immigrants seeks a better future whether it's within their own borders or in another country. The thing is, no country has automatically become a "good" country to live in, someone's grandparents have fought for those rights with their blood and tears. If Moroccans wants same welfare, start fighting for it, nothing comes for free.
If that said country don't have social benefits, then there's no pension for the elderly anyway.
A big part of this problem from my point of view is, everyone wants a good life, they just don't want to take the responsibility to make that happen. If you ask the younger people, they will say that life sucks now, if you ask their parents, I guess that life also sucked when their were young.
wyckoffh1 | 18 hours ago
Immigration does not suppress wages. This has been studied many times, and the results show that it is simply not the case.
L4gsp1k3 | 17 hours ago
So over supple doesn't affect demands. Whoever made that study is a little biased.
Ill-Professional180 | 16 hours ago
Or you applying supply and demand as the only tool to a very complicated socio economic case might be a little short sighted?
L4gsp1k3 | 12 hours ago
So you are saying supply and demand is not applicable in every situation?
komakohawk | 18 hours ago
I recently purchased a new build in Barcelona and had a chance to speak to the builder. They said they were exiting the Barcelona market because the building regulations and town hall are too difficult to deal with. It's been nearly three years since the construction finished and the land registry still isn't fully updated. They plan to continue to build in Madrid though. Food for thought.
bippos | a day ago
Tends to happen when you are not only on the edge of the African continent but also have a whole continent who speaks the same language as you or a close relative of said language but still same religion. Of course even Spain aint immune to shitty housing situation
xabierus | 18 hours ago
We spaniards have less kids because economy and housing prices, so we import people Who with less is having 2-3 kids with a lot of help because inmigrants. And because we have to pay those benefits we have even less kids while the inmigrants keep having lots. It's a bad situation for any european country.
Due_Masterpiece_3601 | 16 hours ago
This isn’t sustainable. Spain doesn’t have major industries to support all these people who will need jobs and who will also require medical services. This is just short term thinking.
Serious-Gur4016 | 15 hours ago
Just want to point out that the in the recent regularization ALL applicants needed, among many other requirements) to prove that they were ALREADY living in Spain for at least a year I think, and that they were gainfully employed or had some means of sufficient income to support themselves. So no impact on job availability or housing. As to medical services, public transport, and other public services, I believe there will be a catch up phase where things are overcrowded. I hope there is planning around this going on. I know in my medium sized provincial capital city they are rolling out new tram cars that will almost double rider capacity, so perhaps it’s not as shortsighted as you believe
ohuprik | 8 hours ago
Hahaahahhahaha.....Spain......"planning" you say.....hahahahahaahahahahahahahahaha
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 4 hours ago
Sure there is planning. Planning for how many next round of legalization will include.
Calm_Cockroach_5284 | 4 hours ago
you think this is the last "regularization"?
The US gave out an Amnesty under Ronald Reagan and the illegal migration problem was solved once and for all. ONCE AND FOR ALL.
Whaddduptho | a day ago
Good for them. But eventually Spain won't have any Spaniards left, and then it will no longer be Spain now will it? Instead of logically having more kids this is what we do smh. Their excuses for not having kids are pretty lame they have more social safety nets for their own people than most of the world.
Europeans receive far more time (paid) off work when having a kid. They're pickier about a lot of things and yet the birth rate among people born in Europe is still lower than counterparts in the US. All those social safety nets didn't do a damn thing for their birth rates.
kwere98 | a day ago
It's becoming obvious is that when women (opposite to men) life standards increase they want less children. Couples are still forming families at the rates of before modernity (for now), just that they have way less children per couple, 1/2 instead of the 4/5 of before
Etheon44 | 19 hours ago
I think the problem is more that women life standard has increased since they actively joined the working population (which wasnt that long ago, in Spain for example my grandma didn' "actively work", even tho she did because she took care of all the children which is no small feat).
And basically, life has switched to the minimum cost of living starting with 2 salaries, and not just one; especially housing (a single person will still have to pay 80-90% of the cost of a tiny house that a couple could get)
So now, since everyone has to live to work, and that barely even allows you to have the minimum covered, people are obviously not going to have children, since they cannot be used for free/cheap labor like in poor countries
Appropriate-Lab3053 | 20 hours ago
You would be surprised. Most women do want to become mothers!
What they don't want is to sacrifice their careers, do all the housework, pay half(or most) bills, AND be expected to do the majority of child rearing
We're in a kind of weird half way point currently but society will pull through imo
GoldBofingers | 19 hours ago
Depends what you mean by "pull through" because unless we have some massive societal change there's no way we are going back to women having 3 kids on average, not in the west at least.
Appropriate-Lab3053 | 19 hours ago
Yeah sorry I could have worded it better. I meant societal change as we adapt 😊 it may take another generation or so
TheJeniceri | 18 hours ago
>What they don't want is to sacrifice their careers, do all the housework, pay half(or most) bills, AND be expected to do the majority of child rearing
This doesn't seem to tell the whole story, far too simplistic and narrow (and often not true)
There's something bigger going on here.
Appropriate-Lab3053 | 17 hours ago
Yeah it is complex. In general, women don't rely on men anymore. So they get to choose when and with whom they have kids with. They're looking at the current deal and saying nah
Plus the whole cost of living crisis, housing crisis, political instability, etc
TheJeniceri | 17 hours ago
>So they get to choose when and with whom they have kids with
Social media has had a huge impact on this + hypergamy.
Whaddduptho | a day ago
> It's becoming obvious is that when women (opposite to men) life standards increase they want less children.
Enjoy it while it lasts I guess. I'm not in the business of going extinct nor am I in the business of radically changing my country (by inviting people from every crevice of earth) to make up for it. Some big event will eventually come along and change it.
> Couples are still forming families at the rates of before modernity
I'm not convinced this is true. Because if you were to ask "what percentage of men have 1 or more children by the age of 44?" you would get a lower value than in the past 70 years at minimum. Women on the other hand are not at their lowest historical rate.
Which means that instead of a guy getting to have his 1st child there is instead some other guy being given his 3rd child by his 3rd wife etc. The Nick Cannons of the world are kind of making up for the increasing percentage of guys who aren't being picked at all. After the relationship predictably fails (because it was purely built on short sighted lust for him in the first place) those guys somehow find yet another woman who gives him yet another kid.
Ill-Professional180 | 22 hours ago
> Enjoy it while it lasts I guess. I'm not in the business of going extinct nor am I in the business of radically changing my country
Oh, so you're just racist. How boring
Whaddduptho | 21 hours ago
I am a minority on this planet fighting so that we don't go extinct. How horrible of me rofl.
Ill-Professional180 | 21 hours ago
Don't you see it yourself though? I called you racist. Why? You consider yourself a "minority", that means you are making distinctions on this level. Can't you see we're all just people though? You may have a different phenotype (look a certain way), and have a different tradition than other humans, but that's it.
Moreover, both of those things change all the time. The gene pool is influenced all the time, the cultural mixing is happening continuously. Arguably, when Spain occupied my home country of The Netherlands we probably did a big old gene and culture exchange, changing both countries. Did that make Spain less "Spanish"? Clearly, a countries identity is a moving target.
EDIT: Finally: if this "Spanish" culture you are referring to is going to go extinct, why does it deserve to continue? That's like keeping a shitty football team in the superliga cause we like its logo. It has to adapt.
Whaddduptho | 21 hours ago
I'm not listening to this nonsense, okay?
Yeah I want to keep my people going and you can't shame me out of doing so. We brought a lot of good things to the world that didn't exist previously, period.
Do you give this same lecture to all groups who recognize their minority status or just the white guys like me?
Ill-Professional180 | 21 hours ago
> I'm not listening to this nonsense, okay?
Okay, but you must recognize that by not addressing anything I said I will leave this conversation with the impression you are just sticking both fingers in each ear going "lalalala".
> Yeah I want to keep my people going and you can't shame me out of doing so. We brought a lot of good things to the world that didn't exist previously, period.
I'm not trying to shame you, I'm just pointing out that your worldview is racist and self-defeating and challenging it. You have a choice in life, and embracing love not hate won't make it worse, can you see that? And yes lots of inventions were by majority white traditions, and like anything that helps society that's really great. On the other hand, algebra was invented by the Arabs, how would you feel if they used the same argument?
Ill-Professional180 | 22 hours ago
To me what you say reads that "Spain" is defined as something formed only by the native Spanish people. Apparently that system of Spain, and many other European countries, kills itself. Addressing by this "fixing" birth-rates can be a consideration: by placing incentives etc. within society to have more children. However, it's a long-term solution and we don't really know how to do it properly. Hence you will always keep immigration, at least on the short-term.
The REAL issue in this case, and you say it yourself: why must Spain be defined by Spanish people? America had this solved: the identity was one of a mixing pot. Now, America has embraced something else, which will ultimately prove self-destructive in my view. That said, why can't the Spanish identity be redefined with a similar narrative?
Tactical, high-skill or shortage-skill immigration is completely net-positive in terms of economics. You can attack the cultural issues that arise by essentially doing what the USA did: pro immigrant propaganda, sustainable amounts of immigration, and a strong focus on "integration" into some shared narrative. Then, Spanish people don't have to change their life choices by having more kids, you get a better economy, and you solve this issue of declining birthrates on the short-term. Honestly I am a bit surprised that countries are not taking this a bit more seriously: form a fucking committee or whatever and think about it! It's obvious that racism and xenophobia of the masses are a trade-off you have to deal with...
Pjpjpjpjpj | 15 hours ago
To be fair on the American experience, it has gone through multiple waves of multi-culturalism and xenophobia. Immigrants were sought and welcomed, then forbidden and expelled, repeatedly over the decades. Each wave of xenophobia was followed by decades of opening and welcoming with the pendulum moving further and further in that direction each time.
Currently, an administration elected by 49.8% of the population and currently liked by 35% of the population, is incompetently attempting simple draconian changes to swing major policies toward expelling as many people as possible and preventing others from entering. The same draconian unsuccessful attempts are being made at trade, national security, federal budget cuts, etc.
There are most definitely Americans who like and want this direction. But I would not say that America, as a whole or even as a majority, has embraced it. I do agree that if it continues to be pursued and supported in its current form, it will significantly degrade or even fundamentally destroy the country.
I suspect the vast majority of Americans want managed immigration - programs that encourage and even pursue needed skills, programs that invite guest workers for key trades/industries, and programs that support valuable immigration while rejecting complete "open door" policies of amnesty for all, multi-generation immigration, etc. The balance is ensuring current citizens have opportunities for training and education, and are not simply undercut by allowing foreign workers to fill positions for lower pay. Fundamentally, that is no different than the discussion currently taking place in Canada, or the UK, or Spain, or Germany or most other countries.
To your main point - I agree that every country will need to accept the concept of a melting pot, maybe with an expectation of core commonalities (e.g. language tests, civics tests, etc.). If they refuse (as South Korea and Japan seem committed to do), then they will need to re-engineer their economies to prosper with a decreasing population. Given the cost and development and environmental benefits, that does seem worth at least as much if not more effort than the time being spent on trying to get people to have more kids.
Ill-Professional180 | 15 hours ago
>But I would not say that America, as a whole or even as a majority, has embraced it.
And I completely agree. While its fun (as a European) to treat Americans as a loud monolith spouting bullshit, I know many kind Americans with a very different point of view.
>I suspect the vast majority of Americans want managed immigration
I also agree, if you can ask them whilst they are lucid and intellectually honest (not specific to Americans neither for the record so sorry if this comes across offensive).
My thesis is perhaps a bit hetrodox, but personally I believe that the advent of a new unregulated media form, i.e. the internet and specifically social media has melted the brains of the populace against their self interest, leading to extreme and misguided views on topics e.g. immigration. I know many reasonable people who have turned extremely right wing because of videos of "migrant overrun cities" and "small boats". In my point of view, this is simply extreme-right rage bait, painting dangers that are largely overstated. The algorithms promote it accordingly to maximize engagement, or for other reasons depending on how conspiratorial you lean (I don't at all, for the record).
As such it is also my dream that the EU puts very strict controls on algorithms and the like as I really believe this contributes very little to life. We and our economies can survive without Instagram and TikTok infinite scroll.
>To your main point - I agree that every country will need to accept the concept of a melting pot, maybe with an expectation of core commonalities.
I completely agree, if you are an "evil genius" I feel like brain draining the shit out of the global south should be your secret plan. The universities there are catching up, especially if you manage to convince the best students to move hemispheres. Creating predictable pathways towards integration and eventual citizenship WILL motivate these people, which is an anecdotal understanding I have gained as I have many friends in this situation.
Whaddduptho | 21 hours ago
> Addressing by this "fixing" birth-rates can be a consideration: by placing incentives etc. within society to have more children
Like what incentives? Raising womens income causes the opposite impact actually. Educating people also decreases rates. Giving paid time off work makes no difference as shown by the Europeans failure to raise rates.
> The REAL issue in this case, and you say it yourself: why must Spain be defined by Spanish people? America had this solved: the identity was one of a mixing pot.
I never said that I think it's perfectly okay. We didn't make up the term melting pot, the french did. But the french were not even credited with popularizing it. If you look into the guy who did you might understand why I can't even say his name and why I don't trust his push to popularize it.
Back when we originally embraced it there were no social benefits to suck dry. We didn't even have an income tax. Now they take money from me and give it to them.
Only European nations are expected to do this. If I move to another country they're not gonna refer to me as Moroccan, Spaniard, Nigerian etc.
GoldBofingers | 19 hours ago
>Only European nations are expected to do this. If I move to another country they're not gonna refer to me as Moroccan, Spaniard, Nigerian etc.
Oh cut the crap man, lots of countries outside of Europe have a way more inclusive identity than you think. I'm part Ethiopian and in Ethiopia there's still old communities of people of Armenian/Greek/Italian descent who have been there for generations, they are 100% seen and treated as just Ethiopians cause they're born there and speak the language. You forget that European nation-state homogeneity is a actually an exception on a global level, the vast majority of countries in the world are multiethnic, multiconfessional and multilingual. Europeans are the ones that have exclusive national identites as a default.
Whaddduptho | 19 hours ago
> old communities
Oh, the old communities, eh? Probably took hundreds of years to finally be seen that way.
> they are 100% seen and treated as just Ethiopians
I'd love proof of that. I don't buy it for a second.
> You forget that European nation-state homogeneity is a actually an exception on a global level, the vast majority of countries in the world are multiethnic, multiconfessional and multilingual.
Like which ones? Name the countries. Don't just give vague answers.
> are the ones that have exclusive national identites as a default.
Googles response: "In daily life, 'Indian' is treated as an ethnic identity. If someone does not look South Asian, local society will almost never default to calling them Indian. White people who have spent their entire lives in India, speak fluent Hindi or regional languages, and hold Indian passports still get treated as tourists or outsiders in daily interactions.
In Ethiopia, the daily social reality for a white person is even more starkly defined than it is in India. If you are white in Ethiopia, you are universally referred to as a Ferenj (or Ferenji). The legal and social structures make it virtually impossible for a white person to be considered Ethiopian by locals in everyday reality. Even if a white person is born in Ethiopia, speaks fluent Amharic, eats injera every day, and wears traditional Habesha clothes, society will still view them as a Ferenj who mastered the culture, never as a native Ethiopian.
Unlike Western nations, Ethiopia does not view itself as an immigrant nation. The Ethiopian Nationality Law does not allow dual citizenship. If a foreigner wants to become an Ethiopian citizen, they must completely renounce their original passport. Ethiopia fiercely protects its national identity, even ethnically Ethiopian people who move abroad and get foreign passports lose their citizenship.
Being born on Ethiopian soil does not make you a citizen unless at least one of your parents is ethnically Ethiopian."
Ill-Professional180 | 21 hours ago
> Like what incentives?
Well thats exactly my point. You can't really do anything but immigration. Thats why you have to embrace it. Sure that may not be ideal in your eyes, but it's quite clear you have no choice to some extent. Might as well do it correctly.
> Only European nations are expected to do this.
You might be surprised to find I'm NOT a fan of immigration out of some goodness of my heart. I think it's just good cultural and economic policy to embrace immigration in a sustainable way. Its just that every European country sucks at doing integration.
Whaddduptho | 21 hours ago
> Well thats exactly my point. You can't really do anything but immigration. Thats why you have to embrace it. Sure that may not be ideal in your eyes, but it's quite clear you have no choice to some extent. Might as well do it correctly.
I rather go through a depression, seriously. If anything it'll rebalance things in my favor.
> Its just that every European country sucks at doing integration.
Compared to what other countries? Most of them are more racially/ethinically homogenous than European nations. What countries would accept me with open arms and completely ignore the fact that I'm white? None that I can think of.
Ill-Professional180 | 21 hours ago
> I rather go through a depression, seriously. If anything it'll rebalance things in my favor.
But why? Where does this feeling come from? Have you made friends with immigrants before? Do you or a loved one have some bad experience? One thing I always ask people with this sentiment is: are you basing yourself on right-wing rage-bait from tiktok or from any of your actual lived experiences? I'm saying this living in a huge city with zero bad experiences with migrants of any kind, so I just don't relate. I've seen plenty of ragebait though.
> Compared to what other countries? Most of them are more racially/ethinically homogenous than European nations.
I'm only aware of the details in my home country. How the immigration is done matters a huge deal. For example, Indonesians, our ex-colony, are considered in a very different way than people from Turkey, who we isolated in what are essentially slums with the idea that it was temporary. It's easy to see how the latter can lead to more issues, thus more xenophobia.
Whaddduptho | 21 hours ago
> But why?
I meant the birth rates mostly. Putting men back at the top rather than where we're heading now. Men (especially in the west) have been getting trashed as of recent for no good reason. We built some of the safest societies on the planet yet western men are getting less and less out of life on this current path (and I want a life where I don't have to hear people saying that men aren't necessary). Because a person who says that is just spoiled relative to everyone else in the world. Getting treated shittier and shitter (while simultaneously importing foreign men), and then you wonder why I want a big reset?
I laugh at any term ending in phobia. I know some of you may like to use those token words to shame me into doing something but it's not gonna work.
Ill-Professional180 | 18 hours ago
Well, I think your world view is clear to me. I am not trying to shame you, I once thought similarly when I was younger. Look the argument is played out, im left wing you’ve got some clear culturally right wing ideas.
In some ways I think you’ve proven my point: its clear you have failed to mention any tangible reason other than typical right wing ragebait narratives adjacent to incel culture and general xenophobia. These ideas only exist online however. Have you considered what in your personal life, excluding the online world, is making you dissatisfied? If you want to share I am happy to hear about it
Whaddduptho | 18 hours ago
Reddit is what ruined the confidence I once had in myself. I was a very sociable person at one point and then I left many friends behind and became recluse after reading the many opinions of women on here. Now I'm more dysmorphic than ever before. I'm not even joking I wish I never found the place. I never hated myself as much as after coming here. If there is one site I regret ever finding it is genuinely this website. I now kind of view this website as womens journal in some ways......a journal that I never should have read. A user can anonymously say all the bad things they've always wanted to say about men (and they take full advantage of that). It enlightened me as to womens inner thoughts and all I can say is wow. My impression of women was 10x better before finding this site. After visiting here I look back and I'm shocked at the confidence I once had. Here is where I learned how undeserving I am. Can't unsee it now though.
Ill-Professional180 | 18 hours ago
I understand what you're saying. I have also struggled with a sort of "germophobia" induced by what you can read online, cost me years of my life. What is a lived experience of mine however is that people in the real world are far kinder and more reasonable than people online. Online everything is black and white, the real world is far more interesting and empathetic.
Ultimately the way out of this is simple: block reddit on your phone, on your browser, etc. and start touching grass even if you hate every minute. I know it's a meme but it's really true. Just try, you'll see. Whatever is not fulfilling you, you will not find it on reddit or elsewhere online. Therapists also help, if you can afford.
Thom0 | 18 hours ago
> Their excuses for not having kids are pretty lame they have more social safety nets for their own people than most of the world. Europeans receive far more time (paid) off work when having a kid. They're pickier about a lot of things and yet the birth rate among people born in Europe is still lower than counterparts in the US
A good point, but it is missing a key factor.
The issue is cost of housing and rent. This is why Europeans are not having kids. The entire world is dumping their capital in European properties, and pretty much every EU government since the early 2000's has failed to hit a single annual housing target.
Housing is too expensive and it consumes all of our income. The cost also means people are entering the housing market much later in life which has a knock on effect on birth rates. Having children in rented accommodation is financial self-destruction. You will never be able to save a deposit.
The US has cheap housing in parts. South Asia has the joint family system to overcome housing costs. East Asia has both a joint family system and cheap housing. East Asia shares the same problems as the West.
Population decline is a global phenomenon and there are only a handful of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa who are above replacement. We are entering a period of global population contraction. Global declines in population are always due to environmental causes - war, famine, disease and extreme weather. We are in an asset drought - global assets are all overvalued and this is crushing the middle income earners who can't afford housing.
Europeans taking the risk to have children they cannot afford is a behavioral response to environmental factors. If you look at demographics who are having children you will find a correlation between birth rates and social welfare receipts. This is not a racial, or cultural trend - this is a trend in all demographic groups. Middle income earners are excluded from social housing, child support (depending on the country), and jobseekers allowance.
Pjpjpjpjpj | 20 hours ago
It is amazing that when humans have free, widespread access to birth control and sex education, they have fewer children. Almost like many couples don't want many, or even any children.
When humans are free to have the relationships they desire, without extreme social pressures and laws, many choose same sex marriages without children, many choose never to get into a long-term legal relationship until much later in life, after prime child-bearing years, and many finally feel comfortable to simply not have children because they don't want them.
And when humans have access to intellectually stimulating lives with widespread free or low cost access to interesting communities, sports, education, arts, etc. they are far less interested in growing a family at home. Their personal growth is along whatever lines they want, rather than simply having kids.
The more safe and secure and comfortable a society is, the LESS likely they are to have multiple children. Many couples have one, some have two. But few if any have three or more. And so the average will not reach the replacement rate of 2.1.
Spain's situation is precisely because they have done a better job of creating a safe, stable, comfortable society. Lower birth rates are the natural outcome of that.
The solution is not to undo all these great advancements. We've designed the economy around even-growing populations. A flat or reducing population is a great, great thing in many, many ways. The adaptation should be to re-design the economy, not re-create the factors that forced people into having more children or bribe them to do so.
Neat-Air-8305 | 15 hours ago
Choice is most are staying lonely
Whaddduptho | 20 hours ago
> The more safe and secure and comfortable a society is, the LESS likely they are to have multiple children. Many couples have one, some have two.
No the reality is that an increasing percentage of men get to have precisely 0 kids (whereas certain lucky men have women after him even when he has kids from past relationships) and in exchange is worked like a dog.
You live in some fictional world where the same percentage of men gets to have at least one kid and that's not reality. Hypergamy is the reality and it's not working out for me.
You're putting what you want at the forefront no different than I. A lot of what you describe is precisely what I view as the problem. I don't know why I would want those things. It serves the guys who are physically desirable in some way, it doesn't at all serve me. I'm the one left holding the bag if anything. He has the fun and I receive the bill for it. Costs 100K to send them to k-12, and another 100k to send then through college. All for kids she had with some other guy. I should be able to opt out of having to pay for that shit. Collecting income tax especially at such a high rate is a major betrayal of what this country was founded on.
Pjpjpjpjpj | 20 hours ago
Ah, now I understand everything.
Whaddduptho | 19 hours ago
Glad you understand.
And I don't care about any rebuttal you might have. I'm here to get what I want in life. You work on what you want, okay?
After watching so many of you make selfish decisions I think it's about time that I make my own selfish decisions.
Lalalalalalolol | 15 hours ago
Womp womp.
CaptainObvious110 | a day ago
wow that's something
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
Or you can have a strong culture that makes Spaniards out of immigrants.
In Denmark we have our problems with immigration too, but I am pretty proud we have a culture and society that has taken a lot of immigrants, and made them Danish. Thinking you have to be born spanish to be spanish is part of the problem
Whaddduptho | 17 hours ago
You go right ahead and be proud of that rofl. In fact take in as many as you can, I support you.
From what I can tell Denmark is still 90% white so you've hardly dipped your toe in from my (USA) perspective.
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
Immigrants are 16-17% of our population and we currently have the strongest economy, lowest public debt, free education + stipend, high quality infrastructure and strong growth
Attracting immigrants and turning them into productive Danes with our overwhelming power of hygge is the secret sauce to this success story
There are problems, but they can be solved, and are marginal compared to the successes
Whaddduptho | 17 hours ago
From what I read 86.5% are ethnically dane.
And another 3.5% are western immigrants from the UK, baltics, nordic, from other areas of the EU.
Only 10% of the population in Denmark can be described as non western immigrant.
Those are rookie numbers you gotta pump those numbers up
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
And these non-western and western immigrants typically have even bigger ethnic and language barriers than spanish speaking immigrants from south america have in Spain
Turn them into Spaniards
Whaddduptho | 17 hours ago
Wait...I just remembered.
Isn't Denmark one of the few countries who is literally paying them to leave? Something like 35k USD per immigrant who gives up their citizenship?
What is the "Jewelry Law" you guys have? You seize their assets as they enter the country?
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
Very superficial understanding of either issue, as expected from an American. Why don't you reply to this instead of a comment you already replied to?
The US has a literal white supremacist movement in power right now, with masked goons kidnapping people of the streets because they look 'brown'
I'm not sure anyone should be taking advice about integration or good governance from an American these days
Maybe restore your democracy and reduce your inequality, then you might have something valuable to share
Whaddduptho | 17 hours ago
No no.
You were talking about how great Denmark is don't let me stop you now.
Tell us more about the Jewelry law.
Tell us more about how you give massive amounts of money to them if they renounce their citizenship.
Please I'd love to hear more.
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
Well since you insist I shall oblige you
The Danish 'jewelry law' was a populist implementation by the then right wing government. I was made use of 17 times in total
The thing about paying money is also not true. For one they are not citizens, so its not about renouncing citizenship. It's about giving refugees from places like Syria a financial incentive to return to their home countries with the means to actually rebuild and start something
And now I can return to talking about how much better Denmark is than the US. We have a maternal mortality rate that is nearly six times lower. Can you imagine that? We have a poverty rate that is three times less. We live nearly 4 years longer on average. Far fewer of us die from violent deaths. Oh and we have a political system that actually works
In the US apparently 40% or more of you actually believe in angels. No wonder the country is fucked
Whaddduptho | 17 hours ago
I'm from the USA.
Europeans are a century behind when it comes to this topic.
To say we don't know more about this would be quite silly to say.
Remote_Page8799 | 17 hours ago
I mean, the US has a literal white supremacist movement in power right now, with masked goons kidnapping people of the streets because they look 'brown'
I'm not sure anyone should be taking advice about integration or good governance from an American these days
Maybe restore your democracy and reduce your inequality, then you might have something valuable to share
CautiousMagazine3591 | a day ago
Cueta for the win, just a couple of more rounds of that and they'll blow past 50 million in no time, then race is on for France and United Kingdom to breach 70 million. Too bad for Italy though population decline is a weird sensation.
PallasCavour | a day ago
Aren't these new citizens mostly immigrants from Latin America? What does Ceuta habe to do with it?
that_was_awkward_ | a day ago
Nothing. He was just going for an easy cheap joke.
TheJournalist022 | a day ago
Most immigrants moving to spain are from latina america.
BadFurDay | a day ago
All the people that entered Ceuta this week have returned to Morocco (except those that died, but Morocco doesn't care about their citizens lives when orchestrating political pressure moves).
YouFourKingsHits | 21 hours ago
The government and the media lied. There are thousands still there.
hyperrev2 | a day ago
Lying on the internet is so easy 🤥
BadFurDay | a day ago
https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/07/31/most-migrants-who-crossed-into-ceuta-have-returned-to-morocco-as-death-toll-rises-to-34/
radiant_0wl | a day ago
There's about fifteen thousand left still.
(Well that was the case two days ago anyway).
leskny | a day ago
Morocco refused to get back non-Moroccan nationals, Ceuta is a hub for international illegal migration thanks to Spain's constant regularization programs
hyperrev2 | a day ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ejdj22zq9o
Yea……thousands still left
YouFourKingsHits | 21 hours ago
You shouldn't trust the media. It's a total lie.
TheVenetianMask | a day ago
The whole bulk of immigration in Spain is from Latin America, followed by Europeans, and it also has more Chinese citizens than France. It's not the top destination for francophone people from Africa naturally.
tamadeangmo | a day ago
Chinese citizens, so not Spanish, France has considerably more people of Chinese descent than Spain.
AdditionalPapaya8359 | 16 hours ago
We have less kids because we have a demoralized and castrated af population who cant even have a future for themselves plus the herd of elephants in the room.lasagna spaghetti 140 characters.