Fifty million reasons to work on improving quality of life

When news programs a few days ago reported statistical projections indicating that Spain will have fifty million inhabitants in a few years, few people remembered all the changes behind these forecasts. Perhaps it is worth starting with the way demographic growth and transformations are now perceived, when barely half a dozen years ago the opposite was being said: that the population would inevitably decline and age. Now, by contrast, emphasis is once again being placed on the fact that life expectancy continues to increase and that population pyramids are not aging as rapidly, thanks in part to the rejuvenation brought about by immigration.Behind this figure are also fifty million life projects, which must be understood within an advanced society. A society that is seeing its family patterns change, developing programs to integrate diversity, and expecting new services for families and individuals to emerge—all of which will contribute to improving the collective quality of life. But also to competitiveness and economic growth, since behind all these demands for new services lie numerous opportunities to establish business activities and implement public policies capable of responding to new needs. These initiatives will also benefit from the growing efficiency of existing technological infrastructure and business capabilities. New activities will generate modern services in which communications and data-processing technologies will enable personalized offerings. Likewise, the capabilities already present in the financial, insurance, healthcare, and human-resources-management sectors, to name a few, will make it easier to properly train the professionals who will be needed and to provide suitable financial coverage, drawing on prudent individual savings and public assistance to develop the fourth pillar of the welfare state. The fact is that these fifty million citizens will need policies to support work-life balance, assist dependent people, promote integration and equality, and, ultimately, ensure quality of life and new ways of living as advanced, nondiscriminatory, and supportive citizens. They will also need business communities, as they expand into new business opportunities, to recognize the value of participating in these processes—not only to improve their positioning and image, but also to retain talent by offering better working conditions. Thus, behind the repeatedly cited figure lie multiple vital, business, and political reasons for addressing every aspect of new social realities. Along these lines, and in order to advance the analysis of the many opportunities emerging, as well as how the new challenges are beginning to be managed both here and elsewhere, the Alares Foundation has organized an International Congress (February 20 and 21, registration: www.congresointernacionalares.com), bringing together many of the innovators who are trying to understand how the future is arriving. They will also discuss what needs to be done to ensure that it becomes a promising horizon for the fifty million citizens we will be at the dawn of the new millennium.