More people died last year in Spain than were born, so the government has appointed a ‘sex tsar’ to encourage citizens to make babies.
The new sex tsar will draft a national strategy for the country to deal with the rapidly declining birthrate, UK newspaper The Independent reports.
Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy appointed Edelmira Barreira to deal with the demographics challenge.
The declining birthrate in Spain is one of the worst in Europe, and in 2015, the death rates surpassed birth rates for the first time ever. “We have provinces in Spain where for every baby born, more than two people die. And the ratio is moving closer to one to three,” Alejandro Macarrón, a consultant, told The Guardian in 2015.
Spanish citizens between the ages of 18-49 had an average of 1.3 children according to an October 2016 report, which is below the 1.58 average for the whole European Union. The same study also said that within 15 years, single, non-married people could make up a fifth of the countries populations.
Some experts theorize that after working long hours and late nights day, people are simply too tired to get busy. The long hours “do not help with making a family,” Rafael Puyol, professor of the IE Business School in Madrid, said. “Then a child arrives and it is even worse.”
Spain is hardly the first country to try and boost its population by encouraging lovemaking. A local politician in Sweden proposed last week that workers should get a paid hour off of work once a week to have sex. (RELATED: Swedish Town Floats Idea Of Paid Hour Off From Work To Have Sex)
Russia famously named September 12 a national “Day of Conception” in 2007, stressing that having babies and raising a family is part of one’s civic duty. Women who gave birth exactly nine months later could win a refrigerator.
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