CUBA-POPULATION: Ageing Population Requires Fresh Policies

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 29 1996 (IPS) - As it faces the 21 century with one of the largest “greying” populations in Latin America and with its economy in tatters, Cuba badly needs a coherent population policy, experts here say.

On the one hand, the island can display population indicators that place it ahead of all countries in Latin America: life expectancy, 74.7 years, infant mortality rate of 9.4 per thousand live births.

But the combination of a decrease in mortality rate to 7.1 per thousand and a fertility rate of less than one daughter per woman since 1978, has contributed to an increase in the older population.

“The era of ageing” has reached the Caribbean. Besides acting as a thermometer for development, it also brings a host of negative effects. For one, the economically active population is decreasing, and there has been a sharp increase in the number of people in dependent situations.

The situation is further complicated in a developing country like Cuba, which has been affected by an economic crisis for over five years and whose per capita gross national product will not reach its 1989 level until the first five years of next century.

“The country immediately needs an explicit population policy that can function as a integrating instrument between different sectors, and not as an independent artefact in some state office,” says Juan Carlos Alfonso, an expert on demographic issues.

Sources at the National Office of Statistics (ONE) indicate that at the end of 1995, there were 1.4 million people over 60 living on the island, about 13 percent of a total population of 10.9 million.

Cuba’s population reached 11 million in the first quarter of 1996. But experts predict that if the trends of the past 20 years continue, it is unlikely that it will ever reach 12 million.

“In the year 2005, there will be more deaths than births,” says Alfonso, adding that according to predictions there will be 2.1 million people over 60 in Cuba by then, representing about 18.4 of the island’s total population.

The Center for Demographic Studies at the University of Havana (CEDEM) agree with independent experts that Cuba will continue to be a country with low fertility levels, even if life conditions improve.

The National Fertility Survey, conducted in 1987, revealed that the ideal number of children for Cuban women is two. Even then, before the crisis, the overall fertility rate was 1.82 children per woman.

“On the other hand, Cuba will not become a country of immigrants in order to resolve the problem of the decrease in absolute numbers of its labor resources,” says Alfonso.

According to expert sources, the ageing population will lead to a revolution of the Cuban system. Economic and social policies will have to be redesigned in order to serve the new population structure.

Cuba needs a more efficient economy based on the introduction of advanced techniques in order to face the ageing of a generation which is now 35 years old and whose members were born during the demographic explosion of the 1960s.

Carlos Dotres, Cuba’s Minister of Public Health, acknowledged on July 11 that the Cuban public health system will have to make some readjustments in order to seek better solutions to the health needs of the ageing population.

The Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) is projecting to accelerate a programme geared towards older adults which will concentrate resources in the prevention of chronic, non- transmittable diseases.

However, MINSAP is an exception. Several conferences held in this country in the past 10 years have warned about the effects of ageing, but have not been able to sensitize those in charge of designing policies.

A detailed analysis of the demographic transition in Cuba in the past decade, published at the beginning of the year by Cuban experts and the United Nations, concluded that the absence of clear guidelines has caused miscalculations in population development.

Cuba has made huge strides in the decline of infant and maternal mortality, in life expectancy, and in the elimination of certain diseases. But the country has also seen an increase in the incidence of abortions and has maintained its rate of teenage pregnancies. At the same time, the average age for mrriages has declined and internal migration continues at an alarming rate.

Experts say a coherent policy would have to confront all these pending problems and then trace the norms to deal with the effects of an ageing population.

“The ideas about the need for a population policy in Cuba are more than 15 years old,” said Eramis Bueno, director of the CEDEM during a seminar on Population, Development and the Environment last July.