By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Jul 10 1998 (IPS)

Although 12,000 more babies were born in Cuba in 1997 than in 1996, the increase does not indicate an abrupt shift in the reproductive patterns of this Caribbean nation, where fertility has not even reached replacement levels in the past 20 years.

Data compiled for a scientific workshop organised on the occasion of “World Population Day” Saturday shows that the number of births rose from 140,300 in 1996 to 152,000 the following year.

The director of the Centre for Studies on Population and Development of the National Office of Statistics (ONE), Juan Carlos Alfonso, stressed that the 1996 fertility level marked a nine-decade low, meaning a continuation of last year’s rise would have to be seen before it could be defined as a “trend” towards recovery.

Preliminary ONE statistics indicate that by the end of last year Cuba’s population stood at 11.094 million inhabitants, with a density of 100.1 persons per square kilometre and a growth rate of five for every 1,000 inhabitants.

From 1996 to 1997, gross reproduction – daughters per woman – rose from 0.7 to 0.76, but still below the estimated minimum of 1.0 needed for replacement. Overall fertility grew from 1.44 to 1.56.

In 1997, 13.7 births and 7.0 deaths for every 1,000 inhabitants were registered in Cuba. Infant mortality stood at 7.2, and mortality in children under five at 9.4 for every 1,000 live births.

The increase in births could be due to the fact that the women born during the baby boom of the early 1960s reached their 34th or 35th birthdays. But since the data on fertility according to the age of women have not yet been released, that theory could not be corroborated.

According to the latest edition of Cuba’s Demographic Yearbook, there were slightly over three million 15 to 49-year old women in 1996, of whom close to 942,000 were between 30 and 39 years of age.

From 1992 to 1996, fertility rose from 44 to 47.9 among women aged 30 to 34, and from 16.2 to 17.2 among women aged 35 to 39. Among 25 to 29-year-olds, fertility dropped from 80.4 to 77.6.

Although Cuba’s birth rate was already low prior to the devastating economic crisis gripping the island for the past eight years, the problem has been exacerbated because many women have decided to put off child-rearing while waiting for the situation to get better, the experts say.

Cuba moved quickly through the demographic transition characterised by passage from a high to low birth rate, a drop in mortality and rise in life expectancy at birth.

In Latin America, that process is in its most advanced phase in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica, with Haiti and Bolivia, with high birth and death rates, at the other extreme.

Studies show that in the first half of the century, life expectancy in Cuba rose from 38 to 59 years, 12 years higher than the regional average, while literacy increased to 76 percent. In the 1950s, 55 percent of the Caribbean nation’s population was urban, one of the highest levels in Latin America. And its birth rate of 3.6 children per woman was one of the lowest in the region, comparable to European levels.

Those trends were consolidated by the revolution that triumphed in 1959.

Cuba is thus approaching the third millenium with a population that is aging fast, with few prospects for a new demographic explosion.

While in 1950 Cuba’s inhabitants accounted for 3.5 percent of the total population of Latin America, by 2010 they should account for a mere 1.9 percent. And by the year 2020, one of every four Cubans will be age 70 or older. “By 2020 we will have around 400,000 people over 80,” said Alfonso.

The shift in age structure, “an indicator of development” that will have a major impact on jobs, public health and social security, will constitute “a very heavy cost for the family and society,” he underlined.

The phenomenon, predicted since the late 1970s, is no longer a simple projection on paper for experts, who do not foresee any radical shift in fertility patterns among Cuban women.

Specialists attribute Cuba’s reproductive patterns to the profound transformation of the social role of women since the 1960s, the considerable rise in their educational levels and their growing tendency to work outside the home.

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