Ageing alone? The future of the Portuguese Population in discussion?

Abstract

Demographic paradigms are constantly in change with time. Together with the increasing lifespan that is breaking limits thought never attainable, fertility rates are declining across entire Europe. These two factors are contributing jointly to a generalized aging in populations for the most industrialized countries. Portugal is not an exception, and if in some cases fertility recuperation is starting to be observed, it seems that this recuperation is not close to happen to the Portuguese population. However, even that this fertility recuperation starts shortly, the “benefits” will not be identifiable in a short term. Additionally, the fact that Southern Europe is in economic crisis, and that Portugal was the second country from the south, after Greece, in economic collapse, resulted in a strong impact at the family context. With such low fertility and deep economic crisis, the thematic of migration adds a major concern about the population future in the country. Migration in Portugal is predicted to increase rapidly in the next years, possibly returning the country to the same patterns registered in the 1960’s when Portugal was a country of massive out-migration. This reality results in very deep problems to entire populations and let politicians and demographers interested in answering questions like: Will be the country economically sustainable in the future? Is Portugal going to decline total population?, or, How these changes will influence the households structures in the future? Population projections significance is recognized all around the world, being used by different governments with the intention to suppress the necessity of having more information about the diverse demographic issues, and Portugal is not an exception. Trying to answer to the advanced questions, we intend to elaborate a cohort component projection, for a medium term period (next 20 years), that will allow us to identify the Portuguese population structure in the future and, at the same time, evaluate the possible changes that the country will have to face. Here, we assume that: mortality improvement will 1 not be interrupted, estimating future patterns applying the Lee-Carter methodology to forecast future mortality and life expectancy; fertility decline and postponement will increase; and finally migration will be characterized by a massive out-migration. Another purpose of this study, is also to break down these projections, using the headship rate method proposed by the United Nations in 1973 and the model improvements proposed by Ediev in 2007, to estimate the future composition of households in Portugal, by age, sex and civil status. In this way, it is also our aim to provide with our results a possible and important basis of decision for policy makers in what concerns not only to the population structure itself, that is growing older, but also in order to identify (and how to provide) health care demands. The authors made use of to the Human Mortality Database (www.mortality.org), Human Fertility Database (www.humanfertility.org) and the Statistics Portugal (www.ine.pt) as data sources.