Every year, the population in Cuba decreases and ages in absolute terms and the total fertility rate is 1.45 children per woman.
This indicator is well below the generational replacement rate and also the average of 2 children in Latin America, according to data from the World Bank; while teenage births mark an uphill trend.
“Births conceived by mothers under 15 years of age are increasing: in 2021 there were 381, while in 2022 and 2023 they were 397 and 419, respectively, and immediate actions are required to reverse the situation,” said Reinol García Moreiro, deputy minister of public health, who this Tuesday described the data as worrying.
Teenage pregnancies got all the attention of the Commission for Attention to Youth, Children and Women’s Equal Rights due to the high incidence of this phenomenon in the country, with a growth trend during the last three years, said a dispatch from the Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN) news agency.
The paradox is doubly worrying and involves all of society; a long-standing demographic crisis that the deputies have set their sights on.
Early motherhood
The deputies at the Havana Convention Center, in the presence of Jorge Luis Perdomo Di-Lella, deputy prime minister of the Republic, learned that 82% of teenage fertility corresponds to the group that ranges between 15 and 19 years of age, while the remaining 18% falls on those under 14.
According to García Moreiro, the increase in births to mothers under 15 years of age, a phenomenon that demands immediate actions to reverse it, affects the gender gap, since there is an imbalance between the number of girls and boys who become parents at that stage of life.
Last year, only 14 men held that condition, while there were 417 women, according to the deputy minister of public health.
Phenomenon’s causes
The official identified de facto unions between adults and minors as causes of teenage pregnancy, links with which the phenomenon is naturalized; the insufficient comprehensive sex education actions and the lack of sex and reproductive health services only for members of that age group.
The lack of disclosure of the regulations that classify the situation as a violation of the rights of minors also contributes to this.
Confrontation plan
The ministries of Labor and Social Security, Education, Higher Education, Public Health, Justice, Culture, Tourism, the Interior, and organizations such as the Union of Young Communists and the Federation of Cuban Women, are entities that will intervene jointly to confront the proliferation of teenage mothers.
This state and public sector front must promote, with an educational perspective, better use of free time at an early age, timely information on the subject on all platforms, media and means of communication that this public consumes, prioritized attention to families in situations of vulnerability, especially in rural communities, where teenagers live, and the open approach to issues associated with sexuality, indicated the deputy minister.
The educational and cultural prophylaxis will be reciprocated by legal actions that will establish action protocols in the event of complaints of sexual relations between older people and girls and teenagers.
La población de Cuba cayó un 18 % entre 2022 y 2023, según un estudio independiente
Demographic contraction of the island
Cuba’s population decreased by 18% between 2022 and 2023, mainly due to migration, to reach 8.62 million people, according to an independent demographic study ready for publication to which EFE has had access.
The study by the renowned Cuban economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, published by the Horizonte Cubano/Cuban Horizon website, from Columbia University, tries to quantify the effect of the massive exodus that the country has suffered since 2021 and cover the gap left by the lack of official statistics on the matter.
The calculation is based on the number of Cubans who have arrived in the United States between October 2021 and April 2024, which amount to 738,680 people, according to information released by the U.S. authorities that combine visas, paroles, and irregular arrivals.
