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7 The Cuban Population Major Characteristics with a Special Focus on the Aging Population Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga By the end of 2007 the median age in Cuba had risen to 37.0 years. There were 1.9 million senior citizens (people sixty years old and older, or “over fiftynine ”), constituting one in six Cubans, or 16.6 percent of the population of slightly more than 11.2 million.1 The age profile in these figures is characteristic of the world’s developed countries. And as in those countries, Cuba’s aging population is the result of secular decreases in both fertility and mortality.2 The problems an aging population causes for a society are well known. The largest of these is the increased demand for health care and social services correlated with the growth of a population that has greater functional limitations. A second major problem is the changing balance across the generations. In terms of the number of people, this means that more people require care while relatively fewer are able to provide it, regardless of whether that care is provided through public channels or individual channels (mostly within families). Economically, this means that there is an ever larger number of nonworking people requiring formal or informal intergenerational transfers from a relatively smaller number of working people. Many problems of aging are more acute for senior citizens who live alone. Due to changing family residence patterns and simply to people living longer, the percentage of senior citizens who live alone in Cuba is constantly increasing . Because women live longer than men on average, there are more elderly women in this situation. And because women have had a lower workforce participation rate, their status as senior citizens living alone can be even more vulnerable than that of men, despite all social efforts to pay special attention to this group. 190 Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga Fertility and mortality have declined in nearly all Latin American countries. However, Cuba’s demographic history differs from those countries in at least three respects, all of which have an impact on the nature of its aging profile. First, Cuba has the lowest birthrate in the region. Although there was a small baby boom in the 1960s after the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the total fertility rate (TFR) has been below 2.0 children per woman since 1978.3 In 2007, Cuba’s TFR stood at 1.43 children per woman. This is a result, to some extent, of changes in fertility patterns connected with the increase of women working outside the home, their high educational and health levels, and, in general, with the increase of women’s social empowerment . Among Cuban women, 59.1 percent are now part of the workforce, with 65.6 percent of these being professional workers or technicians.4 But a second factor is transformation in the patterns of family formation. Although marriage is even less a prerequisite for childbearing than before, and people have been marrying at earlier ages, these changes are more than offset by opposing factors. One factor is that many young couples reside with other family members in living situations with limited space for additional children. Another important factor is the decreased stability of couples, whether formally married or not. The second aspect relates to the structure of households and families. Three related family mechanisms are typically used to address the pressure from the significant growth in the Cuban senior population. The first involves their increased cohabitation with younger family members. The second involves the adaptation of existing family networks specifically for regular transfer of both material and emotional resources to senior citizens. The third involves the exchange or swapping of living quarters among family members. The children of the 1960s baby boom are now between forty and fifty years old. So although the rapidly increasing number of senior citizens is already putting pressure on these family support mechanisms, there is still a sizable base in the working population to make these mechanisms possible. With the very low fertility rates that set in by the 1970s, however, when the baby boomers reach retirement age in a decade, these mechanisms will be much more severely stressed. There will be fewer chances for intergenerational transfers of any kind, including shared living quarters. Cuba’s significant emigration over the last five decades is a second factor that has to be considered due its impact on family structure. The third distinct aspect of the demographic changes in...

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