Economic indicators, but many young Spaniards do not perceive these advances in their daily lives. Since 2007, social exclusion among children and young people has not stopped increasing, and both groups have become “the big losers of the current socioeconomic model,” according to the IX FOESSA Report, prepared by the foundation linked to Cáritas and presented this Wednesday. Today, 2.5 million people between 18 and 29 years old live in .
The organization warns of an “alarming chronicification” of inequality and emphasizes that “the zip code and family backpack outweigh capacity and effort,” because family origin determines the possibilities of social mobility more than merit. Furthermore, compulsory education is no longer enough to escape poverty: the true “firewall” is now found in the post-compulsory levels—Baccalaureate and Vocational Training—which multiplies the risks for those who do not complete these studies.
With paths to social advancement increasingly fragile, the report detects a “generational malaise” that is eroding trust in institutions. “Spanish youth live with deep pessimism about their future, marked by job insecurity, difficulties in accessing housing, family dependency and the impossibility of building an autonomous life project,” summarizes the document, prepared by 140 researchers based on a survey of 12,289 households throughout the country. Its objective is to offer a comprehensive x-ray of today’s Spain, where an apparent good economic performance coexists with a . To do this, it analyzes 37 indicators that cover dimensions such as employment, housing, education and health, among others. Based on these indicators, the report measures the levels of social inclusion and exclusion, classifying households and people according to different intensities: full integration, precarious integration, moderate exclusion and severe exclusion.
Young people between 18 and 29 years old—born between 1996 and 2007—have: the Great Recession and the covid pandemic. In that group, the population that is now in severe exclusion has suffered an increase of 83% since 2007. “It is a generation marked by the succession of economic and social crises,” summarizes the report, which describes how each crisis widens the social fracture and the recoveries fail to put the pieces back together. Although Spain has reduced the levels of total exclusion after the pandemic – the proportion of households in exclusion fell almost three points and that of people more than four points between 2021 and 2024 -, the severe exclusion remains well above the levels of 2007. In total, 9.4 million people suffer some type of social exclusion. Of those, more than four million suffer from it seriously, 52% more than before the financial crisis.
Crises, FOESSA points out, expand exclusion rapidly, while recoveries only partially reduce it. Thus, the crescent. A third of people in severe exclusion are minors. Its poverty rate reaches 29%, the highest of all age groups and one of the highest in Europe. 15.4% of minors live in severe exclusion, double that of 2007. On the other hand, among those over 65 years of age, only 2% are affected. Severe exclusion, measured with 37 variables, is a form of vulnerability that implies a structural loss of rights and the impossibility of covering basic needs.
Inequality that is inherited
The , who enters their first job in worse conditions and with salaries between 15% and 30% lower than previous generations. Raúl Flores, coordinator of the report, warns: “This is not a ‘youth crisis’, it is a crisis of society that mortgages us all, fractures social cohesion, threatens the welfare state and deteriorates our democratic health.”
Education, commonly seen as a social elevator, can act as a multiplier of exclusion, especially when combined with another determining circumstance, which is family origin. They are more than twice as likely to fall into poverty than those with educated parents. “Social integration depends more on starting position and inheritance than on one’s own merit,” concludes Cáritas, who talks about the myth of meritocracy. Spain maintains levels of inequality higher than the European average, and family origin, inherited economic, cultural and social capital continue to be determining factors.
Women, on the front line of exclusion
Inequality is also reflected in gender. Although the general demographic profile shows that severe exclusion is today slightly more male (51%), when looking at who financially supports the home, the gender gap widens. They have gone from 17% exclusion in 2007 to 21% in 2024. In addition, almost half of the households in severe exclusion (42%) are led by women, a figure that has increased more than 15 points since 2007. In single-parent families, exclusion has almost tripled: from 12% of households to 29% in the same period.
The report highlights the “female labor revolution” as the great structural change in Spanish society: the labor force participation of women between 32 and 42 years old has gone from 40% in 1995 to 70% in 2024. However, it warns that this revolution has been incomplete. Domestic and care work: 50.5% take care of most of the household tasks compared to 18.9% of men, and they dedicate almost 17 more hours per week to care.
Furthermore, seven out of ten primary caregivers are women, and even 22.6% are women, compared to 4.9% of men. “The change has transformed the productive sphere, but not the sexual division of labor,” the document concludes.
“People don’t fail, the system fails”
Despite the difficulties, three out of four try to get ahead: they look for jobs, train, turn to social services and adjust expenses. 77% have participated in some inclusion strategy; More than half have worked during the last year and one in four has accessed training. “The myth of the passivity of people in poverty and exclusion, that idea that they live on social benefits without seeking solutions or taking actions for their inclusion, is false. This reality shows that people do not fail, the system fails,” says Flores.
But even effort is not always enough and . In fact, more than a third of those who live in moderate or severe exclusion work, although in precarious conditions. It is the phenomenon that Flores calls “working poverty,” which already reaches sectors of the salaried middle classes. Precariousness, the report warns, has become a structural feature of the Spanish labor market.
Added to this is housing, another of the central axes of exclusion. 45% of those who live in rented homes are at risk of poverty or social exclusion—the highest figure in the European Union. And although exclusion is not an imported problem, the gap persists: 69% of people in exclusion are Spanish, but almost half of the population of immigrant origin (47.4%) lives in that situation, a rate that triples that of natives (15.3%).
The result, comments the coordinator of the report, is a society marked by rootlessness, “where discomfort is often channeled through feelings of frustration and exclusive identities that erode social cohesion.” For this researcher, only with solid redistributive policies, with equitable access to housing and with the renewal of the welfare state, can the bonds of belonging and solidarity be rebuilt.
