La Caixa

For another year, ”la Caixa” Foundation presents its Spanish Social Yearbook that, as is customary, brings together a wide range of social indicators on municipal, provincial and regional levels. With the publication of the Social Yearbook, 2004, the Foundation continues to bolster the publishing area it started up four years ago with its Social Studies Collection, for which this yearbook seeks to provide a frame of reference.

The Social Yearbook, together with the Economic Yearbook, both published by the Research Studies Department of ”la Caixa”, form a unified whole that has the same structure and complementary information. The former focuses on social aspects whereas the latter contains economic indicators. In both cases, the Gauss Centre of the Lawrence R. Klein Institute at the Autonomous University of Madrid, headed by Dr. José Vicens, professor of Applied Economics, has been in charge of organising the wide-ranging information contained in the database.
With the publication of this yearbook, ”la Caixa” Foundation has the aim of facilitating the work of professional researchers in the social sciences as well as providing a reference for other groups and the general public. Towards this end, the contents of the yearbook have been improved and made more comprehensive year after year, both in its printed and electronic form. The on-line version even offers a more thorough breakdown of some variables and provides increased possibilities for searching and processing data.
This year’s edition features more than 100 new variables. Standing out among the main indicators added are: educational level of the population (illiterate persons with no education, those with primary school, secondary school or university studies), marital status of the population (single, married, widowed, separated or divorced), makeup of homes and dwellings (number of family members per home, occupancy scheme of the dwelling and homes that have a second residence available) and the population with health risks (smokers, consumers of alcohol, sedentary persons and those who are obese or overweight).

The yearbook is structured into two broad sections. The first section includes social indicators for each one of the 3,171 municipalities in Spain with over 1,000 inhabitants. In this part, variables are grouped under the following subject headings: population and demographics, socio-economics, senior citizens, education and politics.

The second part lists other indicators that prove highly useful in gaining a good understanding of social realities, but which are only available on provincial and regional levels. This section also includes twelve indexes of social wellbeing in Spanish provinces: income, health, healthcare services, educational and cultural background, educational, cultural and leisure-time offerings, employment, work conditions, dwellings and household equipment, economic accessibility and road safety, co-existence and social involvement, citizen safety, and natural surroundings and climate.

Available on-line at: www.estudios.lacaixa.es/anuariosocial

www.fundacio.lacaixa.es