In the first quarter of 2025, the New retirees of the General Social Security Regime They charged an average pension of 1,760 euros per month, that is, a 5.5% rise compared to the same period last year. This figure exceeds the average salary of young workers (children under 35) who is 1,670 euros per month, as published by an experts from the Juan de Mariana Institute.
This document shows an “especially bleeding” intergenerational gap warning that there is a unprecedented imbalance “ between rent and wealth for young and old in Spain. A situation that exploded a few months ago when different influencers criticized the public pension system, unleashing thousands of reactions in social networks and the response from economists like Gonzalo Bernardos.
You may be interested
Maribel Mesón, retired, explodes against the ‘influencers’ that complain about the system: “Surely they are out of Spain quoting in another place without paying taxes”
Pepe Álvarez (UGT) launches a message to young people: “They have to know that the best way to upload salaries is not to take away their grandfather’s pension”
The study affirms that although the ‘street’ speech and politicians are focused on differences between classes, the most important divisions are between generations. Thus, those over 75 have increased their participation in national wealth around 8% in 2002 reaching 20% in 2022. And for their part, young people in this same period reduced 7.5% to 2%.
The average wealth of those born in the 80s is 50% lower than that of those born in the 60s. And in what has to do with income, there is also an important generational gap. Between 2008 and 2024 the real income of workers between 18 and 29 years fell 3% and those over 65, raised by 18%.
If the European Union data is taken into account, those over 65 have a 6.4% higher than average income, and the Spaniards 7.3% less.
Retirees have increased their real consumption by 5%
People over 65 have increased their consumption if the data is attended since 2006. They spend 5% more while young people under 35 have reduced 36%. In the ‘family budgets’ section of the study, it is verified that young people buy less furniture, reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages, transport, dress and leisure but continue to maintain housing and education expense.
The Juan de Mariana Institute disassembles the tradition that young people fail to save enough because they spend too much on leisure or technological means. “The data disassemble this cartoon, the real problem is structural, stagnant wages, inaccessible housing and public policies that do not give priority to new generations.” In this sense, it should be noted that the government has recently presented a Help of 30,000 euros for young people They hire a rental rental.
Problems to access a home
This report insists on presenting inequalities in access to housing, 81% of those born between 1945 and 1965 own 42 years, compared to less than 50% of those born after 1985. Only 20% of children under 35 have a mortgage today.
Thus, “during the last two decades Spain has experienced an economic and social phenomenon as deep as silent. In a progressive and continuous way, the country has witnessed an unprecedented income and wealth imbalance that leaves older generations in a much more favorable position than that of younger citizens.”
The pension system is “unsustainable”
The Institute warns that the pension system is unsustainable because a retiree receives 62% more than what contributed to the system throughout its work career as they point out from the College of Actuaries of Spain, cited by Europa Press. “The generosity of the system causes the real social security deficit to have triggered, around 3.8 of GDP with 56,000 million euros and that the implicit debt derived from its unpaid promises ascends to 507% of the gross domestic product (GDP).”
Since 2010 the quotes are insufficient to finance pensions, “and the hole is covered with an increasingly bulky tax burden on workers.” This has been warned by several economists, including Santiago Niño Becerra.
The current model of pensions and transfers “grows growing the elderly to the detriment of young people” consolidating a scenario in which retirees enjoy available income equal or superior to those of younger workers. Reforms are claimed that restore the generational balance and that prevent the gap in the coming years from continuing to be expanded, as they assure from this body.