Press Release 09/10/2012
Eustat presents the “Socio-Economic Report on the Basque Country 2012”, a summary of Basque social and economic reality
The publication is the result of the work of 23 renowned specialists dedicated to teaching and research at the UPV / EHU and Deusto
The Basque Statistics Institute - Eustat has recently published the Socio-Economic Report on the Basque Country 2012, whose main objective is to offer a summary work that provides an understanding, via an overview,of the social and economic development of Basque society in recent years, and compares it with the situation in Spain and Europe.
The content of the publication will be studied at the two-day symposium that begins tomorrow, 10th October, and ends on the 11th, in the Auditorium at the UPV-EHU (Bizkaia Aretoa). The Symposium will be inaugurated by the Basque minister for the Economy and Inland Revenue, Carlos Aguirre,and attended by the Director of Eustat, Javier Forcada, and the General Secretary of the UPV / EHU, Eva Ferreira, as well as the two coordinators of the publication, Cristina Lavía and Felipe Serrano.
The creation process of the Socio-Economic Report, which consists of 16 chapters, one for each topic, has been written with the direct collaboration of 23 eminent professionals dedicated to teaching and research at several Basque universities.
In the opinion of the director of Eustat, Javier Forcada, the publication is particularly relevant because it develops and promotes cooperation between Eustat and the universities. In this regard, he points out that it is essential not only to disseminate the available information but also to analyse it in the broadest sense of the term by giving added value to the "key statistics figures", unravelling what they mean, and organising, relating and interpreting the information in a reflexive manner.
The director of Eustat gave some examples of the main ideas that can be extracted from the Socio-Economic Report:
- We are witnessing a stagnating population that has had slight demographic growth since 2000.
- We have sustained growth in life expectancy and and a life expectancy in good health.
- The base of the population pyramid is becoming narrower, the population over 64 is increasing and those under 20 are diminishing.
- Civil marriages are increasing and have clearly become the majority.
- Average family size (2.6) has diminished and family heterogeneity has increased.
- The Basque language continues its ascendant progress, being spoken by 37% of the population.
- Gender inequality clearly persists.
- The growth rate of the foreign population, which is 6.5%, is slowing down due to the crisis.
- Our population has a high level of sociability characterised by broad yet highly uniform primary social networks and secondary networks with little activity.
- We have an education system that promotes equality and consolidates redistribution measures.
- Following a period of economic expansion that ended in 2008, we are experiencing an economic downturn. Our economy has resisted better than the Spanish economy and also compared to other recessions, basically due to a structure that is less dependent on construction, more industrial weight, more external openness, and sustained and growing investment in R&D&I.
- In 2008, unemployment increased in the Basque Country, reaching levels comparable to those of the EU-27, although it is half of the average in Spain.
Summary of the Sociodemographic Area
Cristina Lavía, coordinator of the publication's Sociodemographic Area, outlines the following ideas:
The analyses conducted confirm that, with a stable population of just over 2 million (2,169,000 in 2010), we live in one of the societies with the highest life expectancy (85 years for women and almost 78 for men). This implies a demographic structure with more people over 64 (19%) than under 21 (17%).
A slight recovery in births and fertility in recent years have much to do with one of our current challenges: the consequences of foreign immigration that already represents 6.5% of the population (almost 142,000 people). The composition of this population is undergoing a period of adjustment but the profile of Latin American women still predominates, representing one fourth of the total contingent of foreigners residing in the Basque Country. This is a settlement phenomenon: the data indicate that 73.4% of foreigners plan to remain in the Basque Country in the long term.
Another structural component is the improvement in the global population's health. Mortality has decreased 21-22% (by gender) in the past 10 years. In general, the quality of life of the Basque population has improved in the broadest sense. According to data based on periodic surveys, the percentage of families who say they cannot meet basic expenses went from 5.3% to 2.8% in 2004-2008. However, the population's subjective perception shows symptoms of the crisis: the percentage of families who believe that their economic situation has worsened is 42%, and 27% directly evaluate their situation as bad..
With regards to the situation of the Basque language, based on a trend of uninterrupted growth, 37.4% of the population with 2 or more years' residence is able to communicate in Basque. This ability has not shown an equivalent impact with regards to transferring it as a mother tongue, however. Only one fourth of the population uses it as such. As pointed out in previous reports, differences can be found in sociolinguistic realities at provincial level: in Álava 25% are Basque speakers; in Bizkaia 31.3%; and in Gipuzkoa, 52.9%.
The data also point to the education system's impact on Basque learning in the population of the Basque Country. In the 2010-2011 academic year, 60% of pupils in the non-university general education regime studied in the D model.
The report specifically included an analysis of the evidence available on gender inequality, from the most shocking analyses, such as violence against women (4,285 women victims in the Basque Country in 2010) to the most common, such as a difference of 11,000 euros in the average income of men and women (2006); activity rates almost 15 percentage points lower among women (2011); and the difference in the daily average dedication to household tasks, which remains at 1 hour and 19 minutes for men, compared to 3 hours and 25 minutes for women (2008).
The Basque population has a high level of sociability and the family is still the main point of reference in social interaction and lifestyle. According to the surveys, 96% maintain a relationship with the family and 88% classify it as intense. On average, the population has a network of around 22 people, including relatives and friends (broad network), of which around a dozen make up the close network.
However, at the same time, the expression of social capital in terms of civic, social and political participation is very low (a percentage of less than 2 points on a scale of 1 to 10). The population's confidence is not high, particularly in the institutions (4.66), but individuals in general consider themselves to be happy (an average of 7.07) and more so the broader their network of close relationships is.
Summary of the Economic Area
Finally, the coordinator of the Economic Area, Felipe Serrano, provided a summary in which he highlighted the following points:
In the last decade, the Basque Country's economy displayed sustained economic growth that ended with the outbreak of the financial crisis and the subsequent economic downturn in 2009. In the past year the growth rate registered a negative value of 3.9 points. The last time a negative economic growth rate had been observed was in 1993. However, unlike then, in 2009 we entered an economic recession in which we are still immersed.
If we transfer the recession to the labour market, the most relevant data, in terms of the developments in the early nineties, is that the unemployment rate has not reached the same proportions. Another differentiating datum is that the unemployment rate in the Basque Country has moved away from the unemployment rate for Spain as a whole. Whereas the unemployment rate reached 25% of the active population at the lowest point of the economic cycle of the nineties in Spain and the Basque Country, the current unemployment rates stands at more than the 24% and in the 12%, respectively.
The activity rate has grown at a slower pace in the Basque Country than in the rest of Spain. In 2011 the rate was 55.4% in the Basque Country and 59.48% in Spain. The difference in trend points to a population that ages faster in the Basque Country than in Spain and which, moreover, has not been compensated by sufficient migration movements.
Therefore, with regards to the composition of GDP, we can indicate that the industrial sector's weight in the Basque Country in 2010 represented 24.5% of GDP, whereas its weight in Spain as a whole was 14.8%. The building sector has gone from representing 9.3% of Spain's GDP in 2000 to attaining 12.5% in 2010. The data for the Basque Country on the same dates are 6.7% and 7.8%. Thus, when the real estate bubble burst the effects on employment were substantially different. Whereas the loss of jobs in Spain was 50% in the third quarter of 2011, it was only 20% in the Basque Country.
Job loss in the industrial sector was substantially lower in the Basque Country too. From the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2011, the Basque Country lost 10.2% of the employed population in the industrial sector, compared to 21.4% in Spain as a whole.
The better performance of employment in the industrial sector was influenced by the export effort made by Basque companies in the past decade. In 2008, Basque exports represented 30% of GDP, compared to 18% in the rest of Spain. This export effort is the result of many factors, including the effort to adapt and innovate displayed by Basque industry.
For further information:
Basque Statistics Office
C/ Donostia-San Sebastián, 1 01010 Vitoria-Gasteiz
Tel: +34-945-01 75 00 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01 E-mail: eustat@eustat.es
Contact: Manu Riveiros
Tel+34-945-01 75 62 Fax:+34-945-01 75 01