Birth and Death Rate Evolution in Spain (1940-Present)
This is a graph of the evolution of birth rate and mortality from 1940 to the present. It is necessary to clarify the terms of birth and death. The birth rate is the number of births that occur in one place, per thousand inhabitants. Mortality per thousand is the number of deaths occurring in a place, per thousand inhabitants.
As can be seen in the graph, both the birth rate and mortality have fallen since 1940 until now. This is due to improved health and improvements in general. High birth rates are due to religious beliefs, the absence of effective methods of birth control, and reproductive mortality to ensure children’s labor and a family income for the rural population, but also the urban proletariat. High mortality rates are due to the inefficiency of medicine and the shortcomings of health systems.
In the period prior to 1940, mortality was due to catastrophic epidemics, wars, or subsistence crises. Plague, typhus, smallpox, cholera, yellow fever, etc., were responsible for catastrophic mortality until the end of the 20th century across Europe. Medical discoveries achieved since 1870 and the diffusion of vaccines caused diseases with very high infant mortality rates to disappear (measles, etc.).
Then there is another phase that upholds the values of fertility, and mortality goes down quickly. Thereafter, the birth rate recovers but decreases rapidly as a result of the economic crisis in 1929 and the years of political instability in the Second Republic. The Civil War was a war of mortality. The dictator Franco slows the decline in the number of births. In this period, the birth rate remained high (1940-1975) between 19 and 22 per thousand, slowing its downward trend. This is because the birth rate was driven by politics in the years of Franco’s dictatorship; the effects occurred until 1960 because after emigration to Europe felt the effects. Meanwhile, mortality decreases rapidly owing to the extension of the health system and the rejuvenation of the population that produce high rates of birth. At the end of this phase, birth rates are still close to 20 per thousand, and mortality does not exceed 9 per thousand.
Economic aid to large families (4+ children), the criminalization of abortion, the persecution of unmarried couples, and prohibiting the sale of contraceptives, all in accordance with Catholic thought, explain birth rate values above 20 per thousand in the 1960s. Death rates go down as a result of lower infant mortality, which is remarkable. That recovery on birth occurs in the postwar years, in which a large part of the Spanish population knows the great needs for surviving.
After a sharp decline in the birth rate to below 10 per thousand and a mortality rate whose values went up to the end of the twentieth century, Spain completed its demographic transition. Currently, the number of children women have can no longer guarantee the replacement of generations, due to the incorporation of women into the workforce. Hereinafter, the average age will increase very quickly, especially despite unemployment levels. The labor market needs to incorporate an active population. In this situation, there is debate on the need to accommodate foreign immigrants who come to meet labor demand, the hardest and poorly paid, which may not play out in the same generation, a time span of many years from 2010.