| Dropping fertility rate |
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| Escrito por Dixie Edith | |||||||||
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The local population growth rate is likely to go further down in the next few years. Experts believe that such a trend is being influenced by birth, death and migration indicators. The Cuban population had been shrinking for years, but grew by over 3,000 inhabitants to total 11.3 million in late 2009, announced Juan C. Alfonso, director of the National Office of Statistics' Population and Development Study Center. "Out of this figure, women make up 5.6 million," he stressed. Around 130,000 babies were born in the island last year. This was the highest number since 2004. The global fertility rate (number of children per breeding-age woman) moved from 1.5 in 2008 to 1.6 in 2009, government data revealed. "Only 111,323 babies had been born in 2006," Alfonso recalled. Emigration flows were similar to those that had been seen in previous years, while the number of deaths grew as a result of accelerated population aging. Births The population replacement rate has been steadily dropping in the last three decades. "Last year, the demographic structure was marked by a balance between men and women (1,003 to 1,000, respectively), a decline in the population group aged 0 to 14, and a growth in the group aged 15 to over 60", he stressed. Nodalys González and Grisell Rodríguez, two specialists at the University of Havana's Population Study Center, conducted a research work along these lines concluding that the age of local women who decide to have children has moved from 25 to 26. María C. Franco, a Center researcher, highlighted the need to develop further actions to increase the local fertility rate, which is today the lowest in the region. Cuba will have a large number of senior citizens by 2050, a report of the United Nations Population Fund recently indicated.
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