POPULATION-CUBA: Fewer Cubans in Next century

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Mar 2 1997 (IPS) - If projections hold true, Cuba’s population will increase by less than one million inhabitants during the next 30 years, and will begin to decline from 2025.

Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, research assistant with the Center for Population and Development, a department of the National Statistics Bureau, says that “Cuba reached the 11 million mark in 1996, and in the next 20 years it will pass 12 million.”

Alfonso is author of the study, “Cuba: a Completed Demographic Transition. The Aging of the Population.”

The soon to be published study, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, points out that Cuba’s demographic trajectory “is unique among countries in development, revealing a very advanced demographic transition.”

Demographic transition is a process that all countries pass through in their historical evolution, and which leads nations from high birth and death rates to low ones, along with lengthened life expectancy from birth onward.

According to official sources, Cuba ended 1995 with a life expectancy of 75 years, an infantile death rate of 9.4 per thousand live births, a general mortality rate of 7.1 per thousand inhabitants and an overall birth rate of 1.49 children per woman.

The gross reproduction rate, the indicator commonly used to measure the level at which a population replaces itself, has remained below one child per woman since the 1980s and descended to .89 in 1990 and .2 in 1995.

According to “The Status of World Population”, a 1996 publication by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Cuba has the lowest total fertility rate and the lowest rate of population growth of any Latin American country.

According to Alfonso, “Cuba’s population growth is low and in the last 10 years the annual rate has remained around 1 per cent with extreme values of .2 and .4 per cent registered in 1994 and 1995.

According to the UNFPA, it is probable that the world’s population will increase by 86 million per year until 2015, with a median growth rate of 1.5 per cent.

For more than a decade, specialized studies have placed Cuba alongside Uruguay and Argentina in the group of Latin American countries with advanced transitions.

Recent studies indicate that demographic transition can be assumed to be completed in the Cuban case and that, too, it can be spoken of in the “post transitional” stage.

“Cuba stands out not only for its early start in the demographic transition at the beginning of the century but for having achieved an accelerated and homogeneous culmination of the transition in recent years,” noted a study carried out by Cuban experts, by the UNFPA and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

The beginning of the process dates back to the first years of this century when some 1.3 million immigrants arrived on the island mostly from Europe, bringing their tradition of small-sized families.

At the end of the 1950s, Cuba’s urban population had surpassed 55 percent of the total population, the literacy rate reached 76 percent the life expectancy at birth was 59 years of age, 12 years more than the regional average.

Since the 1960s, after Fidel Castro came to power, demographic indices suffered the impact of massive access to free government services in the areas of health and education along with a jobs policy that encouraged equality between the sexes.

Free access to contraception, legalization of abortion, elimination of illiteracy and the slow but steady incorporation of women into academic programs and employment were some of the causes of the acceleration of the demographic transition in the last few decades, according to the experts.

For Alfonso, the fact that there is no expressed population policy in Cuba and that at the same time policies applied on different social sectors have had “a universal impact,” on the demographic variables, demonstrates the interrelation between population and development.

The Cuban situation is characterized by having few demographic differences between urban and rural zones and between the various social strata, but at the same time, there are some non-conforming variables.

Specialized studies consider the “relatively high number” of induced abortions as a non-conforming variable, as well as the high fertility rates among young women, migration from the country to the city and high rates of divorce.

According to the National Statistics Office, in 1995 the birth rate in a group of young women of 19 years of age was 60.2 for every one thousand women, there were 6.4 marriages and 3.7 divorces for every thousand inhabitants and Havana received 53,206 immigrants from other regions of the country.

Statistics from Cuba’s Ministry of Health reveal that in 1994 there were 89,389 induced abortions on the island, resulting in a rate of 27.3 per each thousand women between 12 and 49; 60.2 for every 100 births and 37.4 for every 100 pregnancies.

Considered a health problem – and proof of insufficient knowledge concerning the use of contraceptives – the prevalence of abortion is in frank decline when compared with 1990 rates. At that time, 147,530 abortions were performed, resulting in a rate of 45.6 for every thousand women of reproductive age.

Aging is a direct consequence of demographic transition, and will have direct impact on strategies of health, social security and economic planning.

Official sources say that Cuba now has some 1.4 million citizens older than 60, nearly 13 per cent of the total population. The average age of Cubans has shifted from 24.1 in 1907 to 34.2 in 1995.

Alfonso’s study shows that “this aging tendency will intensify, and by 2025 it is predicted that a quarter of all Cubans will be 60 years or older. By that time, the average age of Cubans will be greater than 40 and Cuba will display all the characteristics of so-called aged nations.”

Projections for 2025 indicate that the number of Cubans 60 or older will exceed 2.9 million, while the average age will reach 42.4 years. If current reproductive parameters remain constant, Cuba will live through a process of declining population early in the next century.