SANTIAGO – Latin America and the Caribbean is the region in the world that lost the most years of life expectancy due to covid-19, going from 75.1 years in 2019 to 72.1 in 2021, showed an ECLAC analysis of trends recent population.
ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) highlighted that this loss of three years in life expectancy averages unequal figures between countries and subregions, since, for example, the setback was 3.6 years in Central America.
ECLAC projections assume that in 2022 the recovery of the lost years of life expectancy will begin, due to the vaccination process and the measures taken by the countries to combat the pandemic.
Estimates and projections also confirm a declining growth of the region’s population, mainly as a result of declining fertility.
According to the analysis, the population of the region went from 168.3 million people in 1950 to just over 660 million in 2022 and is expected to begin to decrease in approximately 34 years.
The region went from an average annual growth of 4.5 million people between 1950 and 1951 to a maximum of about 8.3 million in the early 1990s.
Starting in 1991, population growth began to slow down and, currently, the population grows at a rate of less than five million people a year.
Slowing population growth, resulting mainly from declining fertility, will lead the region to reach its maximum population in 2056, with a total of 751.9 million people, the analysis says.
There is also evidence of population aging and the approximation of the end of the demographic dividend, as the demographic transition period of a country is known in which more and more young people enter the labor market, the low birth rate and the country’s population pyramid expands in the middle.
The ECLAC text says that the region is in a relatively accelerated aging stage, and it is projected that by 2047 the population of people aged 60 and over will exceed that of those under 15 years of age.
It is estimated that in 1967 the region’s dependency ratio began to decrease, marking the beginning of the demographic bonus, while, by 2029, it is projected that the dependent population (under 15 years of age and over 65) will grow more than the population of working age (from 15 to 64 years).
However, there is regional heterogeneity, with different rates of aging in the countries of the region.
Fertility fell below replacement level and the average age of fertility continued to rise. The total fertility rate of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 is estimated at 1.85 live births per woman, a figure that has been below the replacement level since 2015, and will drop to 1.68 by the year 2100.
Likewise, the average age of fertility maintained a downward trend between 1950 and 2000 due to the decrease in the number of children per woman, and registered its minimum value in 2000 with 26.9 years.
As of 2013 it began to increase and currently a value of 27.6 years is observed, which indicates that low fertility is accompanied by a greater number of women having children at older ages, and it is expected that this trend will continue and that the median age reached 30.4 years in 2100.
Finally, the analysis addresses the growing importance of intra-regional migration and warns that one of the main challenges for the study of migration is the availability of data sources that account for migratory patterns, flows, and characteristics of the migrant population.
A-E/HM
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