Jamaica's birth rate sparks concern over future workforce

Jamaica is experiencing a baby recession, with birth rates dropping to 1.9 in 2023, below the 2.1 needed for population replacement. This trend, common across 22 countries in the region, raises serious concerns about the nation’s future workforce and development goals, especially given the high migration of young, educated Jamaicans. As Jamaica’s population ages, with 65-year-olds becoming the fastest-growing demographic, the country faces challenges in supporting its ageing citizens amid a shrinking workforce. Experts call for urgent policy interventions to address this decline and its long-term impacts.

Baby recession!

Jamaica Gleaner/5 Oct 2024

JAMAICA APPEARS to be in the midst of a baby recession. With some 52,000 births recorded in 2023, Jamaica showed fertility rates of 1.9 which is below the internationally accepted rate of 2.1 for population replacement. More recent figures indicate that current birth rate for Jamaica is 14, 895 births per 1000, which shows a 1.64 per cent decline from 2023. The decline in births is common to about 22 countries in the region.

Research indicates that the downward trend is widespread. Respected medical journal, the Lancet, reported that more than half of the world’s countries have fertility rates below the replacement level.

China, for example had a fertility rate of 7.5 in the 1960s, which fell to 2.5 before the introduction of its one-child policy in the early 1900s and slid further from 1.8 to one after the policy was abandoned in 2016. Meanwhile, the fertility rate in India which has surpassed China as the most populous nation, has also fallen below replacement levels.

Most of Asia and Europe are below replacement levels. The countries that are producing babies above replacement levels are in sub-saharan Africa, the Middle East and north Africa. The statistics are showing that the world’s population growth will increasingly take place in countries which are under economic and environmental stress and who will necessarily find it difficult to provide jobs, education, health care and housing.

If we cast our minds back, we will recognise that lower birth rate for Jamaica signals success of its two-child campaign established in the 1980s by the National Family Planning Board under the slogan, ‘Two is better than too many’. The availability of contraceptives and women no longer feeling pressured to have children before they are ready or not at all, as the stigma of childlessness is steadily erased, the empowerment of women, and fertility issues among couples are some of the factors cited.

CONSEQUENCES

Sadly, there are consequences and serious implications for our developmental outlook. If we take into consideration the fact that Jamaicans migrate at a fast rate and that 80 per cent of migrants are young and educated, where are the future workers to come from when 65-year-old is the fastest-growing segment of the population? And who will drive the development goals imagined by vision 2030? Will developed countries continue to empty our classrooms and hospitals?

There is every indication that Jamaica will in a few years become a country of predominantly middle-aged folk. Increased longevity and below replacement fertility throw up many challenges including providing care for an ageing population amid a shrinking workforce and the taxation burden they must bear.

The situation requires urgent policy intervention. Even though the issue has become a surging topic among health experts and planners, we have not heard much in terms of a national solution. We do see, however, some countries trying to fix the problem by raising retirement age, re-training in middle life, offering incentives such as longer paid parental leave, workplace accommodation for workers’ children and other initiatives in recognition of the long-term value that children bring to a society.

Migration has become a hot political potato and increasingly, immigration is being employed by developed countries to solve some of the diminishing supply of workers. It is an easy sell to lure young people faced with job insecurity, inability to afford housing, so they pull up stumps and move away.

There is a dire warning from billionaire Elon Musk, he the father of 12, who has said that falling birth rates will lead to a civilisation that ends not with a bang, but a whimper, in adult diapers.

Surely, Jamaica needs a plan to combat this baby recession.

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