西班牙任命“房事部長” 挽救出生率

Spain has appointed its first Minister of Sex whose job will be to get people busy between the sheets.

西班牙任命首位“房事部長”，其職責就是讓人們多多“滾牀單”。

The government hopes to boost Spain’s falling birth rate, which is one of the lowest in the developed world.

西班牙政府希望藉此提高該國下滑的生育率，西班牙的生育率在發達國家中倒數。

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy appointed Edelmira Barreira as the country’s sex tsar to get Spaniards to produce more babies.

西班牙首相馬里亞諾?拉霍伊任命芭雷拉爲首位“房事部長”，提高西班牙的生育率。

The country is faced with a population crisis, with fewer births than deaths recorded for the first time last year.

西班牙面臨人口危機。去年，該國的出生人口首次低於死亡人口。

Experts say long working hours and a culture of eating late at night and going to bed after midnight are partly to blame for the nation’s sex famine.

專家指出，工作時間長、太晚吃飯的習慣、午夜後才就寢，是造成西班牙“性饑荒”的部分原因。

Rafael Puyol, of the IE Business School in Madrid, said: “They do not help with making a family. Then when a child arrives it is even worse.”

馬德里商學院的拉斐爾-普約爾說：“這些都對家庭生活無益，有了孩子會更糟糕。”

Since 2008 the number of births in Spain has plunged by 18 percent.

自2008年以來，西班牙的出生人口已經下降了18%。

And the number of childless couples has nearly tripled from 1.5million in 1977 to 4.4million in 2015.

2015年丁克夫婦人數爲440萬，是1977年150萬的近三倍。

Most Spanish women say they would like two or more children but in 2015 those aged 18 to 49 had an average of 1.3 children – well below the EU figure of 1.58.

多數西班牙女性稱她們想要兩個或更多孩子，但2015年，年齡在18歲到49歲的女性平均只有1.3名子女，低於歐盟平均值1.58。