POPULATION-CUBA: Economic Problems Affect Birthrate

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 25 1997 (IPS) - Cuba’s long-running economic crisis, brought on by the collapse of ciummunism in Eastern europe and continuing U.S. sanctions, has had its affect on the country’s birth rate.

Women like Rosa Gomez put off having children for two or three years “until things get better.” Mariela Diaz, 30, worried that her biological clock was ticking, became pregnant and had a very low birth weight baby which “luckily soon recovered.”

Dixie Edith, a journalist by profession, openly states her desire to have three children while her friends say she is “off her head” and the demographers wish her case was not so isolated.

Since 1978, the gross birth rate needed to guarantee population replacement in Cuba has stood at less than one child per woman. The ideal number of children is still two, but a great many women are settling for one.

The worst economic crisis experience in Cuba in the second half of the century worsened the living conditions of the majority of the 11 million people on the island, but did not change women’s reproductive models.

During the worst times of the last seven years, the most apocalyptic predictions pointed towards a possible deterioration of the health indices in the Caribbean country and a slowing of progress toward full sexual equality.

In the middle of this decade, around 40 percent of Cuban women of working age worked outside their homes. Women made up more than 60 percent of the technical workforce, more than 40 percent of the scientific researchers, and nearly 30 percent of management.

According to the three most recent population censuses the amount of economically-active women rose from 12.42 percent in 1953, to 11.54 in 1970 reaching a peak of 32.8 percent in 1981.

There are no reported cases of illiteracy in Cuba, women have equal access to education with men, are paid the same salareis for the same work and, since early in the sixties, they have also had access to family planning methods.

The social policy embarked upon by the Fidel Castro government after he came to power in 1959, established sexual equality, legalised contraception and abortion, made the whole health system public and created the conditions which have produced the reproductive health indices shown by the Caribbean country today.

A national survey carried out at the end of the last decade showed 99 percent of Cuban women of child-bearing age were aware of at least one method of contraception and that 88 percent of them were using this at the moment.

Experts estimate the use of contraceptives could have fallen in the last few years as a result of fluctuations in the availability of these in the chemists shops and specialist institutions.

The frequency of induced abortion, carried out legally, rose to 25.9 per 1,000 women aged between 12 and 49 years old and leads to the belief that specialists may be using this as a form of family planning.

Sources in the National Statistics Office and the Ministry of Public Health said that in 1995, 99.8 percent of births on the island were attended in health centres, and while there were 147,170 births, only 48 women died from pregnancy related causes.

“Toxemia/pre-eclampsia appears as the top cause of maternal death, a situation which is receiving special attention, because it shouldn’t happen,” states the fourth follow-up report to the national action programme of the World Children’s Summit.

Fifteen women died of toxemia during the pregnancy or immediately after the birth, eight by abortions, one by hemorrhage and 24 by other pregnancy or birth-related complications.

Experts became alarmed when the maternal mortality rate shot up to 31.6 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 36.2 a year later. In 1992, the rate began to drop, but once again rose to 42.8 in 1994.

“In the past few years we have had to do magic to maintain the levels of care,” said a gynocologist at a downtown Havana hospital, who complained of problems with hygiene and of the scarcity of supplies and medicine.

Government sources acknowledged in 1993 that a national investigation had been launched into the causes of the fluctuation of teh maternal mortality rate, and that measures had been instrumented to improve prenatal care.

Cuba’s maternal-infant care programme establishes a schedule of 15 medical visits during the pregnancy, immunisation against several illnesses, and the early diagnosis of genetic diseases.

At the peak of the crisis, when the rates of women beginning pregnancy underweight and gaining inadequately rose slightly, authorities decided to send such cases to state food kitchens.

“I got pregnant in 1994, and decided to have the child. Things were going pretty badly those days, and in my house sometimes we had nothing more than a plate of rice and beans,” said Mariela Diaz, who for months ate at a factory canteen near her home.

Diaz is one of a number of Cubans who have opted for single motherhood. Born during the baby boom of the 1960s, she belongs to the large group of professional women who chose to put off their personal life for the sake of their careers.

But late motherhood is not yet a big issue in Cuba. A study carried out in 1995 by local and UN experts, “Cuba: Transition concluded that “women under age 20 account for one-fifth of all births.”

The problem of teenage or pre-teen pregnancy in the 1980s,was overcome by a massive sex education campaign and even Carlos Varela, a well-known troubador sang his “it’s not yet time for the stork.”

According to the most recent studies, the biggest problems of reproductive inequity are seen amongst the less well educated non- white urban adolescents. They make up only eight percent of all adolescents and contribute 13 percent of all children born to women aged less than 20 years old.