Catrau
06-25-2013, 03:10 PM
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Portugal’s baby bust: Confronted with massive unemployment, Europe is again experiencing a steep decline in birthrates. At the center of this is Portugal, where the recent fall in births — to 89,841 in 2012, a 14 percent drop since 2008 — has been so acute that the government is moving to close a slew of maternity wards nationwide.
LISBON — For an enterprise in the business of welcoming life, the birthing ward in Portugal’s largest maternity hospital is eerily quiet. On a recent morning, not a single expectant father nervously paced the orange laminated floors. Unhurried nurses passed rows of darkened rooms with empty beds, busying themselves with paperwork and a mere three women in labor.
Elsewhere in the hospital, signs of Europe’s crisis within a crisis are everywhere. Serving a country that was battling a low birthrate even before the region’s economy fell off a cliff, Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital delivered about 7,000 babies a year until recently. But with economic uncertainty causing young couples to rethink family plans or leave these shores for other countries, the number of births crashed last year to 4,500, leading the hospital to mothball an entire wing and slash 20 percent of the staff.
http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/w420/1Catrau/w-portugal_zpsb824fcb4.jpg
The recent decline in births across Portugal — to 89,841 babies in 2012, a 14 percent drop since 2008 — has been so acute that the national government is moving to close a slew of maternity wards nationwide. In an increasingly childless country, 239 schools are shutting down this year and sales of products such as baby diapers and children’s shampoos are plummeting.
At the same time, in the fast-graying interior, gas stations and motels are being converted into nursing homes even as stores selling toys and baby clothes close their doors. Here in Lisbon, Alfredo da Costa — founded in 1932 when this once-great maritime nation still commanded a global empire — is on the chopping block, set for closure this year.
“We used to hear the best kind of cries in these halls, of babies,” said Teresa Tome, Alfredo da Costa’s head pediatrician, as she strode through the quiet birthing ward. She later added: “The recent decrease in births has been dramatic. This is because of the economic crisis, all the unemployment, all the uncertainty about the future. It is making a bad problem for the country worse.”
Portugal is at the forefront of Europe’s latest baby bust, one that is shortening the fuse on a time bomb of social costs in some of the world’s most rapidly aging societies.
As in many corners of the industrialized world, Europe has faced a gradual decline in birthrates since the 1960s. But in a number of the region’s hardest-hit countries, a modest rebound during the 2000s — when European governments welcomed immigrants and rolled out cash benefits for young couples starting families — has now gone into reverse.
Birthrates are falling again in several nations that are confronting massive unemployment, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Cyprus. The baby shortage, economists say, is set to pile on the woe for a swath of the continent that may already be facing a decade or more of economic fallout from the debt crisis that started in 2009.
A reckoning accelerates
By 2030, the retired population in Portugal, for instance, is expected to surge by 27.4 percent, with those older than 65 predicted to make up nearly one in every four residents. With fewer future workers and taxpayers being born, however, the Portuguese are confronting what could be an accelerated fiscal reckoning to provide for their aging population. Portugal is ahead of other nations in Europe in planning for those explosive costs. But some government officials here concede that far deeper cuts — as well as a push toward a united social security system within the European Union — may be needed to cope with what is turning out to be a worse-than-expected demographic crisis.
The diminishing number of young Portuguese could lead to a vacuum of dynamism and innovation in the years ahead, signaling what could be a long-term decline in the fortunes of nations in a region harboring some of the United States’ largest trading partners and closest political allies.
The U.S. birthrate has also come down sharply since the 1960s. But the United States is projected to have a generous influx of immigrants in the years ahead while also maintaining a more robust birthrate than those European nations hit the hardest.
With deaths regularly outpacing births and both native-born Portuguese and immigrants from former colonies such as Brazil and Angola departing the country in large numbers, the population is falling. Some hold out hope that the birthrate will bounce back if and when the economy improves and young Portuguese feel more secure about their future.
But experts predict that the population loss ahead could be beyond even the worst-case predictions of nearly 1 million inhabitants fewer — or almost 10 percent of the current population of 10.56 million — by 2030. That has many here bemoaning the “disappearance” of a nation and asking: Who will be left to support a dying country of old men and women?
“This is one of the biggest problems we face as a nation,” said José Tavares, a political economics professor at the Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon. “If we don’t find a way to fix this, we will be facing a disaster.”
Fearing for the future
Along the narrow, hilly streets of the inland municipality of Vila Velha de Rodao, Mafalda Diogo Sabino’s fame is already legendary. The local newspaper heralded her arrival in September with a half-page spread and a goody basket of oils and lotions delivered to her door. Every day since, seemingly everyone has wanted a piece of the fickle little celebrity, with her adoring fans shadowing her in the hopes of pinching an unsuspecting cheek or catching a glimpse of her now-fabled smile.
In this graying corner of the Iberian Peninsula, the 9-month-old’s claim to fame is merely being born.
Communities such as this one, a conglomeration of villages with a population of 3,600 — nearly half what it was in the 1970s — have become ghosts of Portugal’s future. Mafalda’s mother, Susana Diogo, 27, had to travel two hours by car in the summer heat to give birth at the nearest hospital able to handle an expectant mother with diabetes. Diogo and her husband, Mario Sabino, 32, worry about their daughter’s future in a town with only three other newborns and just one school.
“I wonder what Portugal will look like for both her and us by the time she gets older,” said Diogo, who lost her job when a nearby call center closed after she became pregnant.
Here, care for the elderly is the largest single public expenditure. Recent national cuts have reduced the number of seniors the town is able to help in its main adult day-care facility.
Local officials have sought to lure back young people, offering cash subsidies for new home buyers in an attempt to stem years of losses of working-age residents to inland cities and more prosperous countries. The town is providing preschool for next to nothing, using a corner of a nursing home for the children.
Seniors living at the home, such as Maria Jesus Rodrigues, 87, relish the contact with children.
“We used to have children everywhere when I was young. We never thought about the economic side; we just had them,” Rodrigues said. “But there are not so many now. Young people today are thinking more about how they will pay for children with so few jobs. I guess I understand.”A few minutes later, Rodrigues, who moved to the home from her nearby village, where the youngest resident is 57, burst into a local folk song.
“I have to sing now,” she crooned, “because when I die, there will be no one left to sing for me.”
Catarina Martins contributed to this report.
By Anthony Faiola, Published: June 23
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/portugals-birthrate-plummeting-a-signal-of-more-economic-trouble-ahead/2013/06/23/64c86c20-ced4-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html
Portugal’s baby bust: Confronted with massive unemployment, Europe is again experiencing a steep decline in birthrates. At the center of this is Portugal, where the recent fall in births — to 89,841 in 2012, a 14 percent drop since 2008 — has been so acute that the government is moving to close a slew of maternity wards nationwide.
LISBON — For an enterprise in the business of welcoming life, the birthing ward in Portugal’s largest maternity hospital is eerily quiet. On a recent morning, not a single expectant father nervously paced the orange laminated floors. Unhurried nurses passed rows of darkened rooms with empty beds, busying themselves with paperwork and a mere three women in labor.
Elsewhere in the hospital, signs of Europe’s crisis within a crisis are everywhere. Serving a country that was battling a low birthrate even before the region’s economy fell off a cliff, Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital delivered about 7,000 babies a year until recently. But with economic uncertainty causing young couples to rethink family plans or leave these shores for other countries, the number of births crashed last year to 4,500, leading the hospital to mothball an entire wing and slash 20 percent of the staff.
http://i1074.photobucket.com/albums/w420/1Catrau/w-portugal_zpsb824fcb4.jpg
The recent decline in births across Portugal — to 89,841 babies in 2012, a 14 percent drop since 2008 — has been so acute that the national government is moving to close a slew of maternity wards nationwide. In an increasingly childless country, 239 schools are shutting down this year and sales of products such as baby diapers and children’s shampoos are plummeting.
At the same time, in the fast-graying interior, gas stations and motels are being converted into nursing homes even as stores selling toys and baby clothes close their doors. Here in Lisbon, Alfredo da Costa — founded in 1932 when this once-great maritime nation still commanded a global empire — is on the chopping block, set for closure this year.
“We used to hear the best kind of cries in these halls, of babies,” said Teresa Tome, Alfredo da Costa’s head pediatrician, as she strode through the quiet birthing ward. She later added: “The recent decrease in births has been dramatic. This is because of the economic crisis, all the unemployment, all the uncertainty about the future. It is making a bad problem for the country worse.”
Portugal is at the forefront of Europe’s latest baby bust, one that is shortening the fuse on a time bomb of social costs in some of the world’s most rapidly aging societies.
As in many corners of the industrialized world, Europe has faced a gradual decline in birthrates since the 1960s. But in a number of the region’s hardest-hit countries, a modest rebound during the 2000s — when European governments welcomed immigrants and rolled out cash benefits for young couples starting families — has now gone into reverse.
Birthrates are falling again in several nations that are confronting massive unemployment, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Cyprus. The baby shortage, economists say, is set to pile on the woe for a swath of the continent that may already be facing a decade or more of economic fallout from the debt crisis that started in 2009.
A reckoning accelerates
By 2030, the retired population in Portugal, for instance, is expected to surge by 27.4 percent, with those older than 65 predicted to make up nearly one in every four residents. With fewer future workers and taxpayers being born, however, the Portuguese are confronting what could be an accelerated fiscal reckoning to provide for their aging population. Portugal is ahead of other nations in Europe in planning for those explosive costs. But some government officials here concede that far deeper cuts — as well as a push toward a united social security system within the European Union — may be needed to cope with what is turning out to be a worse-than-expected demographic crisis.
The diminishing number of young Portuguese could lead to a vacuum of dynamism and innovation in the years ahead, signaling what could be a long-term decline in the fortunes of nations in a region harboring some of the United States’ largest trading partners and closest political allies.
The U.S. birthrate has also come down sharply since the 1960s. But the United States is projected to have a generous influx of immigrants in the years ahead while also maintaining a more robust birthrate than those European nations hit the hardest.
With deaths regularly outpacing births and both native-born Portuguese and immigrants from former colonies such as Brazil and Angola departing the country in large numbers, the population is falling. Some hold out hope that the birthrate will bounce back if and when the economy improves and young Portuguese feel more secure about their future.
But experts predict that the population loss ahead could be beyond even the worst-case predictions of nearly 1 million inhabitants fewer — or almost 10 percent of the current population of 10.56 million — by 2030. That has many here bemoaning the “disappearance” of a nation and asking: Who will be left to support a dying country of old men and women?
“This is one of the biggest problems we face as a nation,” said José Tavares, a political economics professor at the Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon. “If we don’t find a way to fix this, we will be facing a disaster.”
Fearing for the future
Along the narrow, hilly streets of the inland municipality of Vila Velha de Rodao, Mafalda Diogo Sabino’s fame is already legendary. The local newspaper heralded her arrival in September with a half-page spread and a goody basket of oils and lotions delivered to her door. Every day since, seemingly everyone has wanted a piece of the fickle little celebrity, with her adoring fans shadowing her in the hopes of pinching an unsuspecting cheek or catching a glimpse of her now-fabled smile.
In this graying corner of the Iberian Peninsula, the 9-month-old’s claim to fame is merely being born.
Communities such as this one, a conglomeration of villages with a population of 3,600 — nearly half what it was in the 1970s — have become ghosts of Portugal’s future. Mafalda’s mother, Susana Diogo, 27, had to travel two hours by car in the summer heat to give birth at the nearest hospital able to handle an expectant mother with diabetes. Diogo and her husband, Mario Sabino, 32, worry about their daughter’s future in a town with only three other newborns and just one school.
“I wonder what Portugal will look like for both her and us by the time she gets older,” said Diogo, who lost her job when a nearby call center closed after she became pregnant.
Here, care for the elderly is the largest single public expenditure. Recent national cuts have reduced the number of seniors the town is able to help in its main adult day-care facility.
Local officials have sought to lure back young people, offering cash subsidies for new home buyers in an attempt to stem years of losses of working-age residents to inland cities and more prosperous countries. The town is providing preschool for next to nothing, using a corner of a nursing home for the children.
Seniors living at the home, such as Maria Jesus Rodrigues, 87, relish the contact with children.
“We used to have children everywhere when I was young. We never thought about the economic side; we just had them,” Rodrigues said. “But there are not so many now. Young people today are thinking more about how they will pay for children with so few jobs. I guess I understand.”A few minutes later, Rodrigues, who moved to the home from her nearby village, where the youngest resident is 57, burst into a local folk song.
“I have to sing now,” she crooned, “because when I die, there will be no one left to sing for me.”
Catarina Martins contributed to this report.
By Anthony Faiola, Published: June 23
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/portugals-birthrate-plummeting-a-signal-of-more-economic-trouble-ahead/2013/06/23/64c86c20-ced4-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html