The evaluation of the demographic dynamics, education
levels, and in foreign trade imbalances shows Portugal’s growing weakness and
dependence relatively to the Spanish state, in a context in which both are
peripheries a Europe suffering from a process of economic and democratic
entropy.
Summary
1 -
People, the most precious capital
1.1 -
Migrants
1.2 -
Knowledge, the great wealth
2 - An
unbalanced and unequal external trade
2.1 -
Iberian countries’ foreign trade profile
3 – Per
capita incomes
We have recently observed the
inequalities between the various countries and their regions since 1990, and
Portugal’s presence among the peripheral areas or those in demographic
regression is very visible in this
study, and
this. Somewhat further back in time we noticed the purchasing
power variations in Portuguese municipalities between 2004 and 2013, which were materialized in the observation of a greater
homogeneity between the various regions, as a result of a more extensive
impoverishment in those municipalities where the income was higher within, of
course, the Portuguese context.
In the present text we will focus on the
inequalities within the Iberian Peninsula by disaggregating, as far as
possible, the scoring elements by the Portuguese regions and the Spanish
state’s autonomous regions.
1 - People, the most precious capital
As we
said recently, the population dynamics is an
indicator of prime relevance to see whether a region is prosperous or evolves
towards relative poverty. In the first case, it is attractive to its
natives and also to people coming from its outside; and, in the second case, it tends to repel its own natives
due to lack of attractiveness, and reduce its own reproduction (birth) rate.
For the sum of the two peninsular
states, demographic evolution is quite different in the present century, as can
be seen in the following table. In Spain, even including the
last years with very low