# "Spain is different"



## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

A new survey on social and economic indicators in EU countries puts Spain top of the charts in


 Life expectancy (81.8, EU average 79.6)
 Difference in income between the richest and poorest 20%
 Cocaine consumption
 Tolerance of minorities (6% of Spaniards thing homosexuality is intolerable, compared to Poland's 44%)
 Tolerance of immigrants (6% think immigration is a major problem, compared to the UK's 25%)
 km of high-speed railway track
 Number of public festivals (12, joint top with Greece. But we are near the bottom for annual leave allowance, with an average 22 days compared to 30 in Germany and Denmark.

We come near the top in


 Satisfaction with life (second to Denmark)
 Cannabis use (second to the Czech Republic)
 Unemployment (second to Greece)
 Second lowest homicide rate (after Slovenia)
 Using phones to access the internet (third after Sweden and the UK)
 Electricity prices (third highest afer Ireland and Cyprus)
 Telephony and internet prices (47% higher than EU average)

Any surprises here?


Spain is different: 11 marcas España | Política | EL PAÍS


----------



## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

Alcalaina said:


> A new survey on social and economic indicators in EU countries puts Spain top of the charts in
> 
> 
> Life expectancy (81.8, EU average 79.6)
> ...


Not really. Maybe all that drug use is not such a bad thing, if it helps Spanish people to remain satisfied with life despite massive unemployment and disparity between rich and poor. fosters greater tolerance of minorities and keeps the murder rate low!


----------



## Madliz (Feb 4, 2011)

Here's another one I saw recently - Spain is near the top on the divorce:marriage ratio at >60%.


----------



## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

Madliz said:


> Here's another one I saw recently - Spain is near the top on the divorce:marriage ratio at >60%.


All that tells me is that people are getting divorced quicker than they're getting married. I'm "at the marrying age" and a lot of my friends aren't getting married due to various reasons, including the financial crisis. I'm not surprised at all by that map. 

Divorce here is NOTHING like it is back at home. I might have three or four students a year whose parents are divorced, whereas in the US about half the class' parents wouldn't be together anymore.


----------



## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

According to the colouring on that map Spain has the worst divorce rate in the world. I can't see any other Black colours apart from a tiny smidgeon down in S.America somewhere ??


----------



## Madliz (Feb 4, 2011)

gus-lopez said:


> According to the colouring on that map Spain has the worst divorce rate in the world. I can't see any other Black colours apart from a tiny smidgeon down in S.America somewhere ??


Here's the original article with a larger map:

MAP: Divorce Rates Around The World - Business Insider

"The divorce rate is still high in the U.S. at 53%. But Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are worse off with divorce rates higher than 60%. Belgium has the highest rate of divorce in this data set at a staggering 70%. The lowest official rate is in Chile with 3%"


----------



## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

First off, their map and statistics are pulled from Wikipedia. We all know how wonderfully trustworthy Wikipedia is! I'm horrible at statistics, but I'm fairly sure that comparing a marriage rate of 3.6 to a divorce rate of 2.2 and saying that 60% of Spanish couples divorce is considered piss-poor calculation. 

More reliable statistics can be found here: http://www.ine.es/prensa/np800.pdf
España registra su cifra más alta de divorcios desde 2008

In the Wikipedia article (Business Insider's ONLY source), they use the divorce to marriage ratio: "_Another measure of divorces is the divorce to marriage ratio, *which is the number of divorces to the number of marriages in a given year *(the ratio of the crude divorce rate to the crude marriage rate).[1] For example, if there are 500 divorces and 1,000 marriages in a given year in a given area, the ratio would be one divorce for every two marriages, e.g. a ratio of 0.5 (50%). However, this measurement compares two unlike populations, those who can marry and those who can divorce._"

I reiterate: people aren't getting married because there's no cash and a lot of my peers see no need to get married nowadays. However, due to the crisis and other stress factors, people are getting divorced. Therefore, of course, if we calculate the divorce rate like this we are going to get a shockingly high divorce rate. Goodness, what are we going to say when the marriage rate falls even more. The divorce rate could go over 100%! 

The article they use as evidence is: Divorce demography - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spain's marriage rate is among the lowest of the countries cited. 



If any of you are writers, *please* do not cite wikipedia.


----------



## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

elenetxu said:


> First off, their map and statistics are pulled from Wikipedia. We all know how wonderfully trustworthy Wikipedia is! I'm horrible at statistics, but I'm fairly sure that comparing a marriage rate of 3.6 to a divorce rate of 2.2 and saying that 60% of Spanish couples divorce is considered piss-poor calculation.
> 
> More reliable statistics can be found here: http://www.ine.es/prensa/np800.pdf
> España registra su cifra más alta de divorcios desde 2008
> ...


I agree with you, however I do think that Wilkipedia has its place in the world. I think it often has very up to date info, but it's usually a good place to start research and not to finish it.
I don't know the divorce/ marriage stats for the UK, but, divorce rates are probably low merely as a reflection of the fact that a lot fewer people are seeing the need to get married (which, by the way I see all around me in Spain too)


----------



## 213979 (Apr 11, 2013)

Pesky Wesky said:


> I agree with you, however I do think that Wilkipedia has its place in the world. I think it often has very up to date info, but it's usually a good place to start research and not to finish it.
> I don't know the divorce/ marriage stats for the UK, but, divorce rates are probably low merely as a reflection of the fact that a lot fewer people are seeing the need to get married (which, by the way I see all around me in Spain too)


Wikipedia is a great place to start research but I believe it should never be the sole resource that a person uses for an academic paper or article. Anyone can easily edit Wikipedia. I recently read an interesting study on the "most edited articles on wikipedia". It is worth taking a look at.

I had a prof in uni who would tell us not to use it. He would then edit the wikipedia article to catch anyone using it as a source. It was quite the lesson for some!


----------

