The Economic and Social Council (CES) has warned this Wednesday of the problem of child poverty that Spain has, being the second country in the OECD, only behind Bulgaria, which invests less in children, and has announced the creation of a ad hoc commission to defend the need for more investment in childhood.

“Spain must increase investment in childhood not only for moral reasons, but also for economic reasons. What we invest in children has a higher return than what is invested in infrastructure. It has consequences for jobs, their future income, the income that the Treasury will have and economic productivity”, claimed Antón Costas, president of the CES, in the presentation of the socioeconomic and labor report of the institution.

The lack of investment in childhood generates a loss of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 1.5 points on average in the OECD, while in Spain it amounts to 2.5 points, he stressed.

“The increase in the cost of living and the persistence of educational gaps reinforce the importance of guaranteeing equal opportunities, especially if one takes into account that previous recessions have had an impact on child poverty levels with lasting consequences on health, well-being and educational achievements.In 2022, 6.7% of households reduced expenses related to education, and it is worrying that this proportion reaches 23.2% in excluded households and 32.8% of those that are excluded severe”, collects the memory.

In addition to drawing attention to this matter, the CES has highlighted other problems on which it believes it is urgent to intervene, such as the following.

The president of this institution has expressed concern about the birth in Spain of a “black market” for appointments to be attended by the Administration, given the collapse that exists in the public sector, for example in Social Security or the Tax Agency .

They consider that it is necessary to “improve administrative capacity and increase face-to-face attention”, since the current situation causes “discomfort, inaccessibility and growing dissatisfaction”, which could even lead us to begin to appear in international petty corruption indices. “It is worrying,” Costas insisted.

In macro terms, inflation continues to be one of the main problems threatening the Spanish economy and, according to CES calculations, it is 90% caused by business results and only 10% by wages.

Raymond Torres, director of the CES and president of the Labor Commission, explained that the GDP deflator in Spain reflects the country’s internal subjacent inflation and that its behavior in the last two years has been 90.7% due to the business results.

The increase in margins has allowed corporate profits to stand today at 3.1% above the pre-pandemic level, while wages are 3.1% below.

The CES has highlighted the impact of the labor reform, especially in terms of the drop in temporary employment in the private sector, since the public sector keeps its own intact.

He has claimed the security of workers with a fixed-discontinuous contract compared to temporary ones, which leads them to have a predisposition to consume of 0.82% compared to 0.72% of temporary ones.

They have noticed that there is a vacancy problem in Spain that could worsen in the future as more specialized workforce is needed to deploy European funds, unlike the defense made by the Ministry of Labor that this problem does not exist in Spain. the country.

They consider that the problem could be due to the fact that in some sectors there is a shortage of some specific profiles; because the working conditions are not good enough; and, mainly, because there is a problem of intermediation in the labor market that prevents the supply from matching the demand for jobs.

The CES has also detected “too high imbalances” in public finances, with high volumes of deficit and public debt.

“There is a possibility in Spain of improving the efficiency of social spending because some countries, with the same volume of spending, manage to improve poverty and inequality at a faster rate than Spain”, they have pointed out.

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