It is not necessary to get intensely tired out to reach the evident conclusion that all that happens in the area of a region, country or the entirety of the planet Earth is reflected in the number, structure diverse quality of its population. If we also look towards the future, that whole real rigmarole of complex circumstances that are found in the diverse human groups that compose that country unfold in the future This rebounds in a thousand ways on the history and characteristics of successive generations. It is not at all surprising then that great thinkers affirm that of all the social sciences the most important is Demography.

One of the most striking characteristics of the demography of the last few years in Germany, and in general in "developed" Western countries is their population's progressive aging. The growth of the proportion of people of 65 and over within the total of the inhabitants of the country is greater and greater. As it is an aging from the foundations its importance increases since the proportion of old people grows because the number of children diminishes because of the falling birth rate. The causes are located in the socio-cultural sphere: consumerism, permissiveness, secularisation (especially feminine), family and marriage crises, increase in abnormal unions, obsessive fear of the new life, genetic manipulation, selfish fear of a future that appears without meaning,... etc.

In a country without growth and with a decline in demography, the capacity for export to vent its growing productive capacity appeared as an overriding necessity. German productivity together with the aging of the population gave rise to a growing saturation of demand on the part of a population steeped in material goods and all types of devices since it had consumed all the consumable as regards automobiles, electrical appliances, nutritious sybaritisms, music systems,... etc. That society that went on aging gradually accumulated for its old age, increasing saving at the expense of consumption since, rightly and with great common sense, it did not trust the systems of state pension by distribution. A demography in the middle of a slump saw how its domestic market began to weaken alarmingly. With the slow but relentless phasing out inherent to demographic cycles, the slump appeared. The specialists already knew years ago that the population of Federal Germany would diminish but nobody wanted to believe it then. The reality is that that moment arrived implacable since its fecundity of 1,3 was then the lowest in Europe. (It is important to remember that it is necessary to reach the critical figure of 2,1 children per woman so that the population doesn't fall.)

Alain Minc in The Great Illusion explained this very fact perfectly: If things stay just as they are now, that is to say, if there is no massive immigration or a sudden and unlikely rise in the birth rate, the population will have fallen to 38 million inhabitants in the year 2030. That means that Germany will have lost as many inhabitants in non-births as it did throughout the whole Second World War. The unstoppable shock wave of this phenomenon that transforms the country into a continuous general fading shrinkage, prevails over the other economic, political, cultural, psychological and social factors, transforming and changing round all the macroeconomic forecasts and equations.

For the Federal Republic, so much in need of revitalizing its exports to compensate its meagre domestic demand, the last resort came from fall of the Berlin Wall. With the Europe of the twelve voluntarily condemned to the same demographic decline an accelerated race was started in search of Eastern markets. Imports from those eastern European countries were only impeded by their financial poverty but for that reason they were determined to channel capital resources towards central and Eastern Europe increasing their purchasing power. The convertibility of 1 eastern mark for 1 western mark has allowed a currency of very low importance to have the same purchasing power as one of the most solvent currencies in the world. The danger and reality of inflation were clear but the very powerful common and monetary sense of the Bundesbank was there in order to avoid this, gaining control over exterior resources and controlling price take off. Together with this, power of demand was facilitated to bear the costs of the pensioners of East Germany in different ways. Firstly by facilitating loans to the GDR, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine or even Russia; as well as increasing export aid to companies that sell in those countries; and finally control by German banks over financial resources from Western Europe to lend solvent clients of the East in exchange for purchases of German products... etc.

Germany now has a cheap and medium qualified work force in the countries of Eastern Europe where it is closer culturally. It does not need to go to the shores of the Pacific to do social dumping. If Germany and the western economies are indispensable to Eastern Europe, western aging will also make the human work of the East indispensable.

We should remember in this final point that the birth rate in Spain was 1.3 some years ago and that it is still decreasing. It becomes peremptory to export competitively and increase the working population by retraining unemployed citizens, increasing the birth rate or having recourse to immigration that will become indispensable. In many aspects the content of the previous paragraphs would have been the same if the title of the article were: Speaking About Spain.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Tuesday October 19th 1993