BOGOTA —
Colombia has recorded historic lows in its birth rates so far in 2024, the lowest figures in the last decade according to official data from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE).
The 145,000 babies born in Colombia until April 2024 represent a decrease of 14.6% compared to the same period in 2023. According to DANE, this is the lowest number since figures of this type have been compiled in the country.
In addition, the report shows that births have been declining since the COVID-19 pandemicwith a number of births below 200 thousand in this period from 2020 to date.
Surveys have shown that many young Colombians are reluctant to have children, discouraged by job prospects and low wages, which make raising children difficult due to the rising cost of living.
The Voice of America interviewed women and experts in Bogotá about this demographic trend. She also spoke with older adults, a population segment that, if the decline in births continues, will be the majority in the coming decades.
“I don’t plan to have children because of the situation in the country; I don’t plan on being a mother because it’s a very hard job,” said Sofia Guerrero. In turn, Viviana Lopez told the VOA that the “reason” why they are not considering having children is “economic”. “If it is difficult for us young people, I couldn’t imagine it would be for our children.”
“We have to get used to living with the population pyramid we have now”
For Angela Vega, a doctor in demography from the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, the statistics that come from research on fertility in the country pose “challenges” in the face of a “critical” situation, but we must learn to “organize ourselves based on the new population structure that we will have, because it is difficult to reverse these figures.”
“It is difficult for the situation to change; we are going to have fewer children, the population structure is going to change. We are going to have more old people and fewer young people, what are we going to do? That is where public policy has to be, which should not be aimed at forcing women to have children, that is impossible and even less so now with the reproductive and sexual rights of women. So, we have to get used to living with the population pyramid that we have now,” Vega explained to the VOA.
The figures also highlight a challenge for schools in the country, since according to figures from the Bogotá Education Secretariat, in the Colombian capital alone some 26 private schools have had to close this year, due to, among other reasons, the decrease in the number of students.
“The reason for this is that we have fewer and fewer children to look after, so there is not enough enrolment to fill all the schools; some have had to go through transformation processes, and that is the consequence of this. In public schools, we do indeed have fewer enrolments,” he told the newspaper. VOA Isabel Segovia, Secretary of Education of Bogotá.
Low fertility and accelerated aging: what to do?
At the current rate, another effect of low fertility and accelerated population ageing could lead to changes in global pension systems, since many countries in Latin America and around the world have a distribution mechanism in which current generations, with their contributions, finance the pension payments of current seniors, explains Kevin Hartman, a pension researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
“There are countries where people over 50 years of age, for example, constitute a larger segment of the population than the rest. This means that pension rules, such as the age at which I retire and the number of weeks I have to contribute, will change over time,” he said.
Finally, Vega said that, beyond the incentives and public policies that the Government can adopt, such as longer maternity leave and other incentives that can reverse or boost fertility rates, “the reasons why women do not want to have children must be studied in order to attack those determinants.”
“There are many things that can be done to motivate women to have children, but first we need to know the causes and what women are thinking about. There are many conditions that women are considering for having children and we need to consult them to know how to attack these conditions and try to contain the marked decline in fertility,” she concluded.
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