Goodbye to Large Families in Latin America

A Brazilian couple and their two children take part in an outdoor activity at a school in the city of São Paulo. Credit: Escola Meu Castelinho

By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Oct 2 2024 (IPS)

Large families are already a relic of the past in Latin America and the Caribbean, as a result of modernisation and the growth of the economy and the labour force. Now, the region faces an ageing population and migratory movements.

In the region, “fertility rate has fallen from 5.8 children per woman in 1950 to 1.8 in 2024. The largest drop in fertility was between 1950 and 2024 (-68.4% versus -52.6% worldwide),” Simone Cecchini, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre, told IPS from Santiago de Chile.

“Improvements in education levels, living conditions, urbanisation, the empowerment of women and their incorporation into the workforce have favoured the option to reduce the number of children,” said Cecchini, whose centre is part of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Martha Marcondes, an educator from the Brazilian city of São Paulo, tells IPS how the number of children has been changing in her family, reflecting regional behaviour.

“My great-grandmother had 14 children, and life was dedicated to them; my grandmother thought differently in her time and only had four; my mother had three, and pregnant for a fourth time, she chose to have an abortion,” she explains.“Improvements in education levels, living conditions, urbanisation, the empowerment of women and their incorporation into the workforce have favoured the option to reduce the number of children”: Simone Cecchini.

Marcondes only had one daughter, because “we liked the idea of a second child, but my husband and I sat down and decided not to have any more. My daughter, who is 22 and studies International Relations, is focused on her career and travelling and does not plan to have children”.

Most of her daughter’s classmates are also only children or at most have one sibling. “Having fewer children is a way of being able to provide a better life for the ones you do have,” says Marcondes.

Couples like Tamara and Héctor – they prefer not to disclose their surnames – agree. She is a pastry chef and he is a firefighter in Ciudad Guayana, in southeastern Venezuela, with a 10-year-old daughter.

“With just enough to pay for school and support ourselves, we don’t have a house or a car. Covering expenses in Venezuela is increasingly difficult, income is very low, so years ago I told Héctor: no more children,” she told IPS from her home town.

Demographer Anitza Freitez, head of the Department of Demographic Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, confirmed to IPS that “the experiences analysed in countries in crisis show that the situation of deprivation in these contexts encourages people to avoid having children.

Cecchini notes that “as people become more educated and wealthier, they choose to have fewer children. This choice has been made possible by greater access to sexual and reproductive health and the use of modern contraceptives, which have also lowered adolescent fertility”.

She notes that while the region’s adolescent fertility rate (50.5 children per 1,000 women aged 15-19 in 2024) is down from the recent past (in 2010 the rate was 73.1 children), it is nevertheless well above the global average (40.7).

Ageing and the economy

The fall in fertility is causing strong changes in the population’s age structure, with a sharp decline in the share of children and a steady increase in that of older adults.

The average household size is also decreasing, from 4.3 persons in 2000 to 3.4 persons in 2022, according to ECLAC data for 20 Latin American countries, while longevity is increasing.

The average life expectancy at birth for both sexes in Latin America and the Caribbean was only 49 years in 1950 and has reached 76 years in 2024.

As a result of declining fertility and increasing life expectancy, 95 million people aged 60 and over will live in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024, representing 14.2% of the total population. In 2030 there will be 114 million, 16.6% of the total population.

In particular, the group of people aged 80 and over is projected to grow strongly, from 12.5 million in 2024 to 16.3 million in 2030.

Cecchini argues that ageing populations and shrinking family sizes are reshaping economies and societies, with their burden of challenges and opportunities.

Ageing, she said, “holds challenges for public policies on social protection, health, care, as well as the labour market. Universal coverage of social protection or health care is still not provided”, and the increase in the older population sharply increases the demand on these systems.

It also increases the need for care, particularly long-term. As the traditional model of care based on women’s unpaid work within large families is no longer sustainable, “public policy measures are also needed in this area,” Cecchini stressed.

But on the opportunity side, older people are increasingly demanding products and services, which can hold benefits for markets.

The ‘silver economy’ – focused on the needs and demands of older people – brings opportunities in fields such as tourism, entertainment, telemedicine, information and communication technologies, smart home systems, healthcare, and home care, the expert says.

“New jobs in these sectors, especially in health and care, will be created as a result of population ageing,” she said.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted within the United Nations 2030 Agenda, do not set targets for fertility rates, but can benefit from reductions, such as reducing poverty by having more people in the workforce with fewer dependents.

Demographic dividend and migration

Population ageing and declining fertility impact on the demographic dividend, the window of opportunity for economic growth and poverty reduction due to the higher growth of the population in the most productive age group, between 15 and 64, relative to the dependent population.

This segment of the population averages 68% of the total in the region, according to World Bank figures, with some countries in the English-speaking Caribbean, Brazil and Colombia above the average, and others below, such as Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

The foreseeable duration of this dividend varies widely across the region – the longest in Bolivia, the shortest in Uruguay – as it depends on the pace of the ageing process, determined by declining mortality, declining fertility and migratory processes.

“But we must always remember that the demographic dividend is only an opportunity, which must be taken advantage of with appropriate public policies, such as investment in the human capacities of young people and the promotion of gender equality in the labour market,” stressed Cecchini.

Migration has a major impact on countries such as Cuba, where more than 800,000 people have left in the last two years, and Venezuela, which has seen more than seven million of its nationals leave in the last decade.

“The decline in fertility in a country like Venezuela is combined with a migratory process, which translates into a loss of the demographic dividend and an ageing population,” said Freitez.

She emphasizes that this process is occurring “in a country where ageing is not at the forefront of public policy. One example is that pensions received by the elderly are not even minimally sufficient to cover some needs, and public health is very deficient”.

Old-age pensions in Venezuela are pegged to the minimum wage, which is less than four dollars a month, although some groups of pensioners occasionally receive bonuses for a few dollars more.

“The entire burden then falls on a family whose structure has been transformed, as more than one million households (of the slightly more than six million in Venezuela) have experienced the migration of some of their members, becoming transnational families,” Freitez said.

Whether due to this dispersion, reduction in fertility rates, progress of modernisation and ageing, the large families that characterised life and tradition in Latin America have now become museum pieces.