Editorial | Population dangers

Another year of decline in deliveries at Kingston’s Victoria Jubilee Maternity Hospital suggests a continuation of Jamaica’s trend of declining birth rates, which holds potentially significant implications for the island. Not least of which is the stability of the population and Jamaica’s ability to transform into, and maintain itself, over the longer term, as an economically prosperous and viable society.

It is in that context that The Gleaner repeats its call for a serious discussion on the island’s demographic trajectory, including whether Government policy should encourage and/or incentivise families to have more children and, if so, what programmes should support this project.

Victoria Jubilee Hospital (VJH) is the island’s primary maternity hospital, and perhaps the largest such specialised institution in the English-speaking Caribbean.

It is a tradition that the parents, usually the mother, of the first child born at VJH each New Year receives much attention and the baby showered with gifts from corporate entities. This year was the turn of Sashenee Williams, 27, a married first-time mother, and her daughter, Alara, who was born at 2:12 a.m. on New Year’s Day.

In 2022, there were 6,700 births at Victoria Jubilee Hospital. The following year, the figure declined by 682, or 10 per cent, to 6,019.

For the first 10 months of 2024, the maternity hospital recorded 4,791 births, an average 436 monthly and 1,227 shy of the figure for all of 2023. The full year data has not been collated, but it is highly unlikely the 2024 figure will reach the previous year’s.

HAVING FEWER CHILDREN

“We don’t have 1,000 births a month,” said Dr Omar Wellington, VJH’s acting chief medical officer.

Recalling the experience of her pregnancy and giving birth, Ms Williams half-jokingly told a reporter of this newspaper that it was unlikely that she would have another child. Should she stand by that sentiment, Ms Williams would be in sync with the trend of Jamaican women having fewer children.

For instance, in 1970, women of child-bearing age, on average, had 5.47 children. A decade later that had declined to 3.82. Now it is 1.9, down from 2.4 in 2008, reflecting the combination of better education among women; that more of them are in the workforce and delaying child-bearing; easier access to birth control services; and the success of family planning messages, like the acclaimed “Bev Brown” ad of the 1980s that promoted “two is better than too many”.

But there are issues that come with declining birth rates. The total fertility rate of 1.9, for example, is below the 2.1 that demographers say is needed to keep a country’s population stable.

Put another way, at the current fertility rate, if it is not reversed, Jamaica, when all things are taken into account, is on track for a long-term decline of its population. Which also means having a society with significantly more grey people and insufficient numbers of working-age ones to finance the social welfare needs of the older generations.

Indeed, Jamaica’s demographic data are already signalling the negative long-term prospects.

When births, deaths and net migration numbers are taken into account, the island’s population decreased by 0.3 per cent in 2023, the fourth straight year of decline.

Moreover, at 9.7 per cent, the elderly, people 65 and over, are the fastest growing segment of the population. At the same time, the child population (age 0-14) is declining as a proportion of the overall population, and the median age of Jamaicans is becoming older. In 2015 it was 28.9 years. By 2023 it had climbed to 30.6 years.

DOESN’T FACE A CRISIS

For now, though, the island doesn’t face a crisis. The age dependency ratio (ADR) of the population, that is, those between 0-14 and the 65s and older as a ratio of those of working age, is 44 per 100, declining from the 48.3 a decade earlier. That is usually the case when a population becomes greyer, without a replacement growth of young people.

The advantage, at first, is an expanding working age population, which, on its face, is of sufficient heft to support the youth and old – or the age-dependent segment of the society. This, therefore, is a potential window of opportunity that can be exploited for development and growth.

The great problem arises as this group grows old, joining those at the grey end of the population spectrum, and are not replaced because the fertility rate is too low: below the 2.1 required for replacement.

Jamaica is the early part of that zone, in danger of facing a crisis in the future unless the underlying issues are addressed.

For now, public policy should be going hell for leather to extract value from the so-called population dividend, the surfeit of working-age people, too many of whom, unfortunately, are outside the workforce, either voluntarily or because they lack the education or skills to participate therein. This, in part, informs this newspaper’s advocacy of a holistic, multi-sectoral industrial policy, involving Government, the private sector, trade unions and civil society organisations. Issues such as education and training, research and innovation, resource allocation and investment incentives must be part of this strategy.

Simultaneously, public policy has to sensitively address the question of population decline, and sustainable ways to change the current trajectory, without negatively impacting the rights and ambitions of individuals. Especially women.