RT Journal Article
T1 Demographic vs economic variables in the modelling and forecasting of the demand of aggregates: The case of the Spanish market (1995–2016)
A1 Escavy Fernández, José Ignacio
A1 Herrero Fernández, María Josefa
A1 Trigos Luque, Larua
A1 Sanz Pérez, Eugenio
AB Aggregates, including sand, gravel and crushed stones, are the first mined resource by volume of production and the second most employed natural material, only after water. The demand of aggregates depends on the level of activity of the building and construction industry, which supplies housing and infrastructures to society. Knowing the variables controlling the demand of aggregates permits an estimation of future demand. This figure is of great interest for both the private sector to take strategic decisions and for the public sector to optimize permits and to promote or limit extraction in certain areas.This work studies the relationship between the demand of aggregates and various demographic, economic and construction variables during a complete economic cycle (1995–2016) in Spain. The analysis includes variables such as population, GDP, unemployment rate, etc., as well as variables never used before, that have resulted to be relevant: the number of people reaching the emancipation age, number of divorces, etc. Results indicate that the higher correlations appear between the demand of aggregates and house permitting, net in-migration, population increase, value added by construction, and number of people reaching emancipation age. There is as well a strong inverse correlation between the unemployment rate and the demand of aggregates. With these results, various models to forecast the demand of aggregates are proposed and an estimation of the total demand in Spain until 2050 is given.
PB Elsevier
SN 0301-4207
YR 2020
FD 2020-03
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/6080
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/6080
LA eng
NO Fundación Agustín de Betancourt
NO Fundación General UPM
DS Docta Complutense
RD 15 dic 2025