March
11, 2008
Cuba's
population falls 2 years in a row
Cuba's government experts expect the island's population to continue
a downward trend, dropping by 77,000 people in the next 20 years.
The population has fallen for two years in a row.
By
Wilfredo Cancio Isla, El Nuevo Herald
Published in The Miami Herald
For the second consecutive year, the population of Cuba decreased
in 2007, according to the government's National Statistics Office,
in a trend the experts say is expected to continue until 2025.
The latest report from the statistics office showed that Cuba's
population in 2007 was 11,237,154, nearly 1,900 less than the
11,239,043 that were counted in 2006.
The last year of population growth was 2005, when the island had
11,243,836 people.
Cuba has not experienced a similar drop since the 19th century,
when the population shrank as a result of the 1833 cholera epidemic,
the Ten Year War of 1868-78 and the final war of independence
from 1895-98.
Government estimates predict a decrease of 77,000 people in the
next 20 years, or a 0.7 percent drop from current figures.
A recent report by the Cuban government's Center for Population
Studies and Development suggests that some of the factors in the
decreasing population are families having fewer children, out
migration ''and an increased rate of mortality'' affecting both
the young and people over 60 years of age.
Birthrates are at their lowest levels of the past 100 years, at
10.1 per thousand inhabitants.
The fertility curve in Cuba quickly descended to 1.44 per thousand
during the economic crisis of the 1990s and has remained more
or less stable until 2007, when it hit 1.49.
''It seemed that the entrance into the 21st century would be marked
by the recovery of this indicator, but up to the present there
is no evidence in this respect,'' said the report, titled Cuba:
Population Projections, 2007-2025.
The demographic crisis is also a product of emigration.
Some 450,000 Cubans have left the country since 1994, according
to the Cuban statistics office.
U.S. estimates are that 191,000 Cubans have arrived in the United
States since 2000, 77,000 of them in the past two years alone.
Copyright
2008. The Miami Herald. All rights reserved.
