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| A group of elderly women exercise in Havana |
HAVANA — The scene at Havana's Victor Hugo Park is
unfortunately typical, with a handful of boys kicking a soccer ball through
trees while dozens of gray-haired seniors bend and stretch to the urgings of a
government-employed trainer.
So few children, so many elderly. It's a central dilemma
for a nation whose population is the oldest in Latin America, and getting
older.
The labor force soon will be shrinking as health costs
soar, just when President Raul Castro's government is struggling to implement
reforms that aim to resuscitate an economy long on life support.
"We must be perfectly clear that the aging of the
populace no longer has a solution," Castro's economic czar, Marino
Murillo, told lawmakers in an alarmed tone last month. "It is going to
happen, and that cannot be changed in the short term. ... Society must prepare
itself."
The aging of Cuba's population has its roots in some of
the core achievements of Fidel Castro's revolution, including a
universal health care system that has increased life expectancy from 69 years
during the 1960s to 78 today, comparable with the United States.
Abortions are free and it is estimated that half of
Cuban pregnancies are terminated. High university graduation rates, generally
associated worldwide with low fertility numbers, have Cuban women averaging 1.5
children, below the rate of replacement.
Cuba's National Office of Statistics says about 2
million of the island's 11 million inhabitants, or 17 percent, were over 60
years old last year. That's already high compared to Latin America as a whole,
where the rate is somewhere north of 9 percent, extrapolating from U.N. figures from 2000.
That U.N. study shows Cuba's population is aging even
faster than that of China, which has forbidden couples to have more than one
child. Cuba's rate would be typical in a wealthy European nation. But Cuba lacks
the wealth to cope with it.
The trend is accelerating, with the number of seniors
projected to nearly double to 3.6 million, or a third of the population, by
2035. During the same period, working-age Cubans are expected to decline from
65 percent to 52 percent.
The future may look a lot like Emelia Moreno. Still vigorous at 75 years old,
she lives alone in a small apartment in Central Havana and spends much of her
time at a neighborhood senior center that provides 1,000 retirees with medical
attention, meals and social activities such as singing and dance classes.
"Cuba is fighting so that people of a certain age
don't feel too bad," she said.
But her only child left for the U.S. a decade ago, and
she knows that one day she'll be completely dependent on the government because
she has no family to take care of her when she cannot.
"I had heard people talk about how they felt empty
when a family member left, but I had no idea," Moreno said, caressing a
photo of her daughter, Yeniset.
The graying trend can be traced partly to the country's
weak economy, resulting in the loss of people such as Yeniset, an outflow of
35,000 per year as people seek opportunity in the United States and elsewhere.
Research shows emigrants are increasingly women of
child-bearing age, which compounds the problem, according to Alberta Duran, who was among the first to
examine the aging trend before retiring from her post at a Cuban sociological
research institute.
"The aging population has been turning into Cuba's
biggest demographic problem since the 1990s," Duran said.
By 2021, more Cubans will be leaving the workforce than
entering, according to government projections.
The contracting labor pool presents a challenge for
Cuba's goal of making the country more productive and efficient without
abandoning its policy of providing for everyone's basic needs. Officials aim to
eliminate 1 million redundant government jobs and grow a non-state sector that,
it is hoped, will account for 40 percent of economic activity compared with
about 15 percent today.
"Reform becomes more difficult due to
emigration," said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a Washington-based
expert on Cuban demographics. "Those who leave are the youngest,
best-educated and most ambitious."
And with the ranks of seniors increasing, Diaz-Briquets
said, resources that could be used to stimulate the economic project inevitably
will have to be diverted to care for the elderly.
Demographers agree that Cuba's population has topped out
around 11.2 million, and negative growth will be the rule for the forseeable
future.
Murillo, the economic czar, said authorities are
studying measures for next year to try to stimulate fertility rates, but he did
not give details.
"We are going to have a serious problem with the
availability of a labor force," Murillo acknowledged.
In recent years Cuba has implemented a number of
measures for the aging, including an expanded denture distribution program and
establishing "grandparents' circles" of elderly citizens who get
together for activities and help each other out when the relatives they live
with are at work.
Authorities recently asked seniors to keep active later
in life by rolling the retirement age progressively back from 55 to 60 for
women and from 60 to 65 for men. Raul Castro himself is already 16 years past
his golden-watch moment, at 81.
Cuba recently allowed retirees to return to work and
still collect their pensions. They're also being encouraged to join the class
of small-business owners setting up shop under Castro's reforms, though experts
say that idea has limited potential.
Aging populations present difficulties for countries
around the world, and attempts to spur birth rates have produced meager
returns, Diaz-Briquets said.
But he suggested that if Castro's reforms can create
more opportunities for private enterprise, Cuba might be able to woo immigrants
from countries where extreme poverty is rampant and homicides are skyrocketing,
places where the Communist-run island's free health care and relative public
safety might seem a good alternative.
"The situation in Haiti and some Central American
nations will continue to be even worse than in Cuba," Diaz-Briquets said,
adding that a post-U.S.-embargo Cuba could be even more attractive to potential
migrants from those countries. "The way things are going, and assuming
some more positive scenarios for Cuba, the idea doesn't seem that outlandish."
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