POPULATION-CUBA: Decades-long Gains in Danger of Being Wiped Out

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 29 1998 (IPS) - As it prepares to enter the new millennium Cuba faces the challenges of catering for aging population and preserving the equity achieved over the past 40 years, but now threatened by a long-term economic crisis.

“The main challenge is not only to maintain the situation but to make progress,” Juan Carlos Alfonso, a sociologist and demographer, told IPS. “Today’s achievements could be obsolete in five years,” added Alfonso, who is the director of the Center for the Study of the Population and Development of Cuba’s National Office of Statistics.

Pointing to some of the gains made over the past four decades, he noted that Cuba has “an infant mortality rate of 7.2 per 1,000 live births, a maternal mortality rate of 21.6 per 100,000 lives births”, only a fifth of the population live in the capital and 97 percent of Cubans are literate.

But “the big merit of the Revolution is not so much the indicators as their homogenization,” said Alfonso. This, he added, is a sign of the quality of life in the country.

When the Revolution triumphed on Jan. 1, 1959, Cuba was one of the countries with the highest mortality and fertility rates, and the lowest health and education indices in Latin America.

If the gap that existed then between the rural and urban population, as well as the country’s social groups, had continued, Cuba’s population would have been larger and some five million people would be living now in Havana, which was where most opportunities were concentrated.

“The demographic transition dates to the beginning of this century, but it became more intense and homogeneous in these past 40 years, decisively influencing the evolution of the country,” said Alfonso. “Having 11 million inhabitants is not the same as having 15 million.”

Specialists define demographic transition as the step from high fertility and mortality rates to low ones, a development process that goes hand in hand with increased life expectancy, and the aging and shrinking of the population.

Alfonso noted that “today in Cuba the differences between the fertility of university women and those who only finished high school are minimal and there is no higher mortality rate among people with lower educational backgrounds”.

Alfonso, who authored a study on such issues for the United Nations in the early 1980s, notes that one of the most interesting aspects of population growth in Cuba is the absence of large differences between social groups, races or regions.

But this could be at risk as the national economy begins to show signs of slowing down and experts and authorities alike recognize the resurgence of social differences.

The Ministry of Economy and Planning revealed on Dec. 21 in a report to parliament that the gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by only 1.2 percent this year.

Cuba has a long way to go before it regains ground lost during the recession that has plagued it this decade and which, local economists say, have pushed it back 13 to 18 years. GDP slid by 34.8 percent from 1990 to 1993 and, according to the economists, it will take five to 10 years for it to return to the 1989 level if growth rates of two to four percent are maintained.

The Cuban population, now 11.1 million inhabitants, suffers from deficient public services, medicine shortages, high food prices and the effects of a dual exchange rate.

This year, the monthly minimum salary was 217 pesos, which is 217 dollars at the official exchange rate and 10.70 dollars at rate of 21 pesos to the dollar used in exchange houses. Since the use of the dollar was legalized in 1993, some basic goods can be bought only with the U.S. currency, although a limited quantity of foodstuffs are still sold at subsidized rates.

“The country could continue progressing until the beginning of the next decade thanks to so-called ‘epidemiological inertia’, which is the resistance, built up over a long time, to disease and illness due to high levels of immunization and a high nutritional level of consumption,” said Alfonso.

Since “demographic changes are a long and slow process,” he explained, the crisis of the 1990s has not yet brought about manifest population-related changes. He admitted, however, that fertility had declined, progress on the reduction of mortality had levelled off and the rural-urban flow had resumed.

The challenge, he said, was to prevent the gains and the process of homogenization from unravelling. The challenge, he added, is even greater since Cuba’s population is aging. Specialists estimate that 25 percent of the population will be 60 or older within four decades.

And already, nine percent of elderly people live alone.

In addition to these huge challenges, there are others linked to issues like high abortion, teenage pregnancy or divorce rates.

“Life is a like a black and white photograph, full of gray areas,” said Alfonso. “We are speaking about processes that take time, which require us to help create the material and social conditions to sustain them, and to change attitudes to facilitate that process.”