Despite the economic boom of recent years, the employment records, the wage improvements or the importance of the social shield put in place after the pandemic, Spain maintains levels of inequality and vulnerability significantly higher than the European average. This demonstrates the persistence of profound structural problems and gaps that cannot be reduced without more active redistributive policies. These are two of the main conclusions of the latest FOESSA report on social exclusion, presented on Wednesday. The foundation, linked to Cáritas, reveals a meticulous set of data that x-rays a restless and restless society, whose structural problems must be urgently addressed so that they do not put the cohesion of citizens at risk.
Over the last three decades, Spain has seen a clear precariousness of its social structure: in 1994, the middle classes represented 58% of the population; Last year they were 15 points less. Certainties such as that having a job or completing compulsory schooling protect against poverty have disappeared. Not only does job insecurity affect 47% of the active population (11 and a half million people), but 11% of workers are at risk of poverty, the third worst figure in the EU, according to a Eurostat analysis. One in 10 people who have completed ESO suffer from severe social exclusion.
This scenario has worsened in recent years with the widespread housing problem caused by high house prices and, in particular, by the increase in rents, which affect the most disadvantaged families and young people to a much greater extent. 45% of the population living in rent is at risk of poverty. Spain’s laudable macroeconomic growth is full of nuances if it is not transferred proportionately to the quality of life of its citizens: 17% of the population suffers from material deprivation, the fourth worst record in the EU; Around three million people, including 600,000 children, cannot feed themselves adequately.
The succession of crises has also opened a generation gap. The social exclusion of the younger generations, those who will build the country’s future, has not stopped growing for almost two decades. Nearly two and a half million young people today live in structural precariousness. As the report highlights, the legitimacy of the welfare state cannot be sustained if growing sectors of society, especially young people, see the political system as incapable of guaranteeing minimum conditions of protection and progress for all.
Bridging this divide must be a priority objective of the action of all political leaders, whatever their ideology. Policies such as better income redistribution, both between rich and poor communities and within them; Tax reform that strengthens its progressivity, expanding affordable housing stock or making progress in reducing temporary work must be discussed as a priority. And improve both the volume and management of social benefits. In times of the growing threat of ultra-populism, strengthening consensus in defense of the welfare state and public policies against inequality is the best way to defend the stability of democracy itself.
