Cuba is the largest country in the world,” announced our government-assigned guide. “Did you know that?” He continued with a sardonic grin, “Yes, the capital is in Moscow, the army is in Africa, the doctors are all in Venezuela, and the population is all in Florida!” His joke was one of a series reflecting the oft-wielded sarcastic wit of Cubans as they cope with the challenges of daily life. But the Cuban diaspora is no laughing matter. Multiple trips and countless conversations consistently reveal fragmented families; daughters and sons, fathers and mothers reside and work in Spain or Canada, Italy and Mexico and especially the United States, an estimated 1.7 million (Duany 2017). Two days later, I lunched with a professor of geography from the University of Havana. His mood was far from jesting as he observed, “Cuba may have to begin importing laborers from India or China.” Imagining a Cuba-cum-Qatar is not a concept easily processed; nor is tracking Cuba’s journey from the halcyon years of the 1970s to the demographic dilemma of 2017.
The purpose of this essay is to analyze a complex interplay of forces bringing Cuba near the point of demographic stagnation with growing cohorts of elderly, very low crude and total fertility rates, chronic negative net migration, and a diminishing labor force. Ironically, Cuba’s lauded public health and education programs as well as its socialist economic model are among the prime forces. Exacerbating their negative synergies are United States’ policies, present and past, including the 57-year long Embargo, Wet Foot/Dry Foot Immigration, and Cuban Medical Personnel Parole designed to accelerate demographic decline.
The professor’s comment was prompted by evidence of a recent Cuban policy change. Among President Raúl Castro’s reforms is the right of Cubans to once again sell and buy real estate, including their homes. This is precipitating a building boom in parts of Havana to restore grand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century homes, those that have not tragically collapsed. Domestic restoration funds are scant, but a growing number of Cuban Americans are investing in the enterprise by sending money to relatives. Paradoxically, these new benefactors are those who once fled the Revolution and were repudiated as gusanos (worms), Fidel’s favorite epithet, or more formally as traidores (traitors). But with the loss of Soviet-bloc subsidies and ensuing economic crisis, these traidores find themselves welcomed back under a dramatically different label: trae dólares (bringers of dollars). But this economic opening is hindered by a dearth of willing workers, even in the wake of the announcement that at least 500,000 citizens are losing government jobs. The hope is that yet another reform legalizing several hundred types of self-employment---including carpentry, painting, and construction---will help absorb those laid off. For example, the paladar (restaurant) providing our lunch was once a large private home until reform allowed its conversion into a restaurant, serving mainly tourists as yet. Clearly, shortage of construction workers is just the warning tip of a demographic iceberg.
Over the span of my five visits to the island since 2011, the graying of the population has emerged time and again as a topic initiated by Cubans. The discussion has many facets that seem to be converging in negative spiral or synergy; emigration begets more emigration and younger workers now reside abroad who might sustain programs in public health and education at home, not to mention construction.
Ironically, some of the most laudable social strides forged by La Revolución, namely improved public health, access to contraception, access to education, now complicate demographic and economic recovery.
Cuba’s age structure diagram reveals multiple challenges for contemporary leadership, many resulting from past practices. Immediately obvious is the bulge of working age cohorts (40--54). These cohorts result from a period of higher fertility (CBR) beginning about 1955 and trending through the Revolution to peak in the mid-1960s at 35/1000. Some increased fertility is attributable to reforms extending employment, education, and health benefits to all Cubans, especially the rural poor, a focus of early efforts. Population growth for the period was both a matter of more children born but also more surviving. Simultaneously, infant mortality rate (IMR) was high, approximately 39/1000 in 1960. Systematically, public health policies began reducing that number to the present 6.5/1000. However, Cuban fertility also fell after the 1980s upturn with female access to more education and birth control. In a sense all clinics and schools are a two-edged demographic sword suppressing death rates while increasing life expectancy, but simultaneously suppressing fertility behavior. Cubans have embraced free education, full employment, abortion, and contraception but for various reasons not greater fertility. One generation after Fidel marched into Havana the total fertility rate had fallen by more than 50 percent: from 4.18 in 1959 to 1.89 by 1980 (FRED 2017). The rate appears to have bottomed about 2006 (1.39) only to rise slightly by 2015 (1.72), still much below replacement level (Díaz-Briquets 2014). This rebound seems associated with policy changes permitting more remittances---which have grown dramatically---providing funds to improve or acquire housing and begin small business ventures (Díaz-Briquets 2014), underscoring the economy-demography link.
Presently, the bulge provides a positive dependency ratio. However, a sizeable workforce bloc is within a decade of retirement, as much as 10 percent of all workers. Aware of this eventuality, leadership increased the age for pension eligibility from 55 to 60 years for women and from 60 to 65 for men. This extends the workforce a few years with older and experienced workers who need little new training. One must question the logic, however, of extending the working age of some while simultaneously cutting more than half a million from the labor force. Is the bottom line a temporary extension of the workforce, or delayed pensions, or smaller payrolls (reduction of redundancy)?
Cuban retirees can return to the labor force while drawing a full pension, potentially increasing total personal income as much as 80--90 percent. Depending upon job type, some return to previous positions, while regulations force others to seek new forms of employment. This constitutes a debit for the national treasury for despite reforms expanding the private sector most Cubans still work for the State. At least some older Cubans are anxious to supplement pensions with a new paycheck but to put this in perspective even if it means almost doubling personal income, the official monthly amount would grow from US$25 to less than $50. To be sure, a recent survey indicates Cubans make more than this but not a lot more. One in four Cubans earns less than $50 per month, one-third take home $50 to $100, and one-fifth report their income as $101 to $200 per month (Whitefield 2016). For individuals, retirement can be a windfall while having limited impact on national expenditures, offset in part by a reduced demand for new workforce training. Some retirees are moving into the more lucrative tourist industry. The opportunity to legally drive a taxi, operate or work in a paladar, or rent a room in their home (casa particular) affords a significant supplement to meager pensions. It also represents tax revenue for Havana. But older Cubans are a limited and diminishing workforce incapable of reasonably sustaining the economy more than a few years.
With the oldest age structure in the hemisphere, Cuba’s government faces a daunting task of elder care. Public health strategy is dominated by training of family physicians assigned to neighborhoods who concentrate on preventative care, a practice giving Cuba exemplary levels of life expectancy equal to many developed countries. But there are few medical professionals trained in geriatric care. Economic exigencies and resulting reforms mean that between 2002 and 2012 nursing-home capacity declined by more than 10 percent (Reyes 2014) and families are encouraged to do more to care for elderly members at home, often meaning a job or career is sacrificed to care for one or both parents. Examples of above-average care are facilities operated by private groups, often Catholic, and those receiving assistance from abroad, yet these are not sufficient to serve more than a fraction of older Cubans.
Almost as soon as one’s eye fixes on the bulge in the population pyramid, it drops to the pinched waist, most pronounced in the mid-30s cohort. If the current largest cohorts (40--49) produced children at replacement rate (TFR of 2.1), it would have created a population echo that would have precluded the gap in the national age structure. Despite improving health conditions it did not happen.
At the crucial period for their childbearing, loss of Soviet Bloc assistance plunged Cuba into an economic abyss causing shortages of food, consumer goods, fuel, and energy resources; even the sacrosanct public healthcare system, so devotedly funded and guarded by Fidel, faltered. Marriages and childbearing were postponed with some young women vowing to wait until they could live abroad to begin childbearing (Díaz-Briquets 2015). Abortion rates rose, especially from 1990--1992, the beginning of Fidel’s Special Period in a Time of Peace---Período especial---imposed to deal with the crisis. And still more citizens left the island.
Declining fertility is less than half the story. The Cuban diaspora is typically defined as four waves of mass emigration (Pedraza 1998; Pew 2006). The first in the immediate post-Revolution period (1959--1962) involved the departure of almost 120,000, most from the middle and upper socioeconomic classes, and included more than 14,000 children sent ahead by distraught parents in Operation Pedro Pan. Some families never reunited and few returned to Cuba despite their stated desire to do so. Wave two (1965--1974) was more orderly, based on various bilateral agreements that occasioned so-called Freedom Flights. Wave three was anything but orderly.
When disenchanted Cubans demanded better living conditions and leadership failed to meet their expectations, some 10,000 sought asylum in the Peruvian Embassy compound. Eventually told they could leave Cuba, but only through the designated port of Mariel, in just seven months in 1980, more than 125,000 “Marielitos” fled. Over the decade of the 1980s the total number of departures grew to more than 600,000.
Wave four was triggered by loss of aid from the defunct Soviet Bloc, beginning in 1989--1990. This largely working-age exodus was heavily impacted by a bilateral agreement, the so-called Wet Foot, Dry Foot immigration policy (Miami Herald 2017), a program rewarding any Cuban able to set foot on U.S. soil with the right to pursue legal residency one year after arrival. Cuban émigrés experienced a great advantage over Mexican, Salvadoran, or other nationalities seeking to enter the United States without benefit of proper documents. Fleeing the malaise of the Special Period, Cubans slipped from their homeland, often in makeshift boats and rafts launching the era of the Balseros. Raw numbers fail to tell the full story; change in Cuba’s net migration rate offers a second perspective. The Net Migration Rate (NMR) is chronically and often heavily negative. During six decades depicted, more people left the Island each year than entered despite strict laws making emigration difficult and unauthorized departure illegal, the latter punishable by one to three years in prison. Even discussing undocumented departure carries the threat of a six-month incarceration. Only since 2013 has the exit visa requirement, a costly and time-consuming process, been dropped, and then only for persons deemed “non-vital” to the Revolution. Those considered vital---the highly educated or trained and members with political leadership positions---still must solicit permission to emigrate, and it is not necessarily granted.
Lost to Cuba are skills and talents of thousands of citizens enticed or driven away; lost to the waters of the Florida Straits are additional hundreds if not thousands. Ironically, the Obama administration’s stated desire to terminate the preferential Wet Foot-Dry Foot program provoked an additional hemorrhage of the disaffected with more than 56,000 successfully reaching United States soil in 2016, the largest outpouring in more than a decade. It should be remembered that not all who emigrate from Cuba do so officially or successfully, and that official statistics likely underestimate total losses.
Migration, even “push” or refugee Cuban migration, is age selective. While less selective than free or purely economic migration, in all such movement younger persons are more ready to pick up and move than older cohorts. Disaffected citizens have left Cuba since the 1960s, taking with them their talents and training, their reproductive capacity and potential; both the pinch and narrowing base of Cuba’s pyramid come from low birth rate but also shrinking reproductive age cohorts. Emigration literally pulls the rug from beneath the top-heavy national age structure.
Cuba has no demographic peer among independent states in Latin America or the Caribbean. If population size, birth rate, death rate, family size, and the percent of elderly are metrics of comparison, one must look to Europe to find a country demographically similar. Belgium is perhaps the closest match on all counts, apart from some of the former Soviet Republics. Cuban policies dating from the 1960s---namely universal education, tuition-free university degrees, full access to basic health care, including contraception and abortion---give Cuba a European demographic profile of long life, low fertility, and large cohorts of elderly.
Unfortunately, the Cuba-Europe analogy does not extend to net migration or per capita wealth. Migrants seek to enter Belgium, (NMR 1.22): typically they do not desire to leave but to remain to benefit from the Belgian per capita GDP that is six times greater than Cuba’s. In a sense, the leaders of the Cuban Revolution chose to create selected aspects of a workers’ paradise, at least compared to the previous Batista period, but failed to deliver what they consider less important, namely personal freedoms and material benefits. In response, many Cubans, unable to vote otherwise, cast their ballots by boat while those staying restrict their fertility.
The narrowing base of the 2016 pyramid, projected will shrivel the Island’s resident population. Total population peaked by 2005 and will decline more than one million by 2050 if current patterns persist. As early as 2026, annual deaths will exceed births. By midcentury, Cuba will be a country of ten million with one of the oldest age structures on the planet; national numbers will drop year-after-year.This is the scenario that may require Cuba to import laborers, and in all likelihood well before 2050. Could the Haitian and Jamaican labor migrations of the early twentieth century resume (Díaz-Briquets 2013)? A second possibility is migration from struggling economies in Central America, such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Cultural affinity, especially language, could encourage such movement, especially if reforms increase wages and if the cost of living remains low (an unlikely combination), but particularly if immigrants are afforded access to health and education programs, and freedom to repatriate.
China’s recently reversed One Child Certificate strategy is ample evidence that population is a stream and the flow cannot be altered without future ramifications (Loo 2016). In this sense, the imagery of the solid and stable pyramid is illusory. Cuba’s earliest reforms to initiate fundamental change come from the immediate post-Revolution years. Socialized free education, healthcare, employment, and retirement security were steps intended to correct the deplorable social and economic conditions of earlier eras. In the process, however, other spontaneous “reforms” were triggered.
The broad impact of reforms is most evident in the extended life expectancy enjoyed by Cubans. Cubaphiles point out life expectancy on the island is equal to that in the United States: males 76, females 81 (PRB 2017).1 Few note that Cuba has a lower crude birth rate and total fertility rate than its large neighbor, an unintended result of reforms. Even less recognized is the existence of a highly educated Cuban workforce without sufficient outlet for the skills and talents. The system creates a surplus of skilled would-be workers unlikely to be attracted to jobs they consider inappropriate for their training and education, or which carry artificially low official salaries.
Medical personnel are a case in point. The Cuban system produces the highest doctor-to-patient ratios anywhere. Thousands of technically trained Cubans mostly doctors and nurses, work temporarily outside Cuba, mainly with government approval. Medical Internationalism is a significant aspect of Cuban foreign policy and an important source of foreign revenue as a large share of salaries flow directly into national coffers. But with low wages and poor working conditions at home, and a funded initiative by the United States’ government to lure them away---the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) program---doctors and other medical professional are enticed to defect (Erisman 2012). Even with termination of the CMPP in January 2017, a significant number of Cuban medical personnel are stranded abroad. Deprived of their chance to enter the United States under preferential conditions, they are likewise unable to return to Cuba.
Without emigrating, other members of the medical profession “defect” by pursuing more lucrative employment. Even after doctors’ salaries were doubled to $67 per month in 2014 they earn more driving a cab or waiting tables for tourists. Cuban citizens consequently complain their internationally touted healthcare system is diminished when both personnel and supplies are sent abroad to treat non-Cubans, or reserved for international visitors and tourists.
A small but highly trained biotechnology and computer software-design workforce lacks the means to expand or go international on a competitive scale. As with Cuban medical personnel, the lure of increased earnings leads biotechnologists and software designers into tourism jobs or emigration. Reforms inviting foreign investment via joint-venture companies may change this situation, but to date the number of such enterprises is small and favors investments primarily from Canada and Spain. Also, Havana holds a tight rein on foreign investors purportedly to protect the socialist principles of La Revolución, including excessive enrichment leading to class cleavages.
Least noted, however, is the existence of thousands of Cubans willing to be sustained by a socialized system while exerting little personal effort. Addressing the National Assembly to explain drastic economic reforms, President Raúl Castro warned, “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working” (Peters 2012). He responded with the highly un-socialist declaration that half a million redundant government employees would lose their jobs. Even with low official salaries---or because of them---high absenteeism and low productivity characterize the workforce and the system struggles economically, as well as demographically. Fidel once confided to an international reporter “the Cuban Model doesn’t even work for us anymore” (Goldberg 2010). He would later deny such a statement but it was confirmed in Granma the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party (Ritter and Henken2015). Certainly, current reform efforts sustain the same conclusion. In their own defense, workers are heard to say, “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”---a cryptic assessment of the ills of the system. Simultaneously, layer upon layer of bureaucratic paper-pushing tolerated by Fidel as a means (or guise) of full employment is reduced under Raúl’s more business-minded leadership.
It is patently unfair to compare Cuba, its system dedicated to poverty reduction and wealth redistribution, with countries with largely unrestrained capitalist economies. Still it may be instructive to note that Belgium with a top-heavy population structure very similar to Cuba scores high in terms of worker productivity and efficiency. The same can be said of other older, slow-growth European nations, but not of Cuba. Can reforms move the nation to a middle ground, to what some call a socialist market or mixed economy? To date, economic reforms are at best peripheral and incremental.
After decades of commitment to the socialist ideal of full employment through collective and cooperative labor, the shock treatment of layoffs is an admission of urgency, if not desperation. To be sure, the announced 500,000, which has grown to 600,000, are not set adrift at once (Mesa-Lago 2014). Change is piecemeal, retraining programs exist, and some workers continue to receive paychecks from idle enterprises. Ted Henken projects 1.8 million are slated to eventually lose their state-sector jobs. It is the way of Cuban socialism that all economic reforms are rolled out cautiously, or as President Castro likes to say, “without haste but without pause.” The ill effects of hasty Eastern European reforms are well known in Havana and a source of concern.
Of particular note is publication of a list of approved forms of self-employment, 201 at last count (GACETA OFICIAL 2013; Ritter and Henken 2015). Such lists are essential to economic transition since a decade ago most self-employment was punishable with fines and jail time. Plus jobs are needed to absorb redundant workers released from State payrolls. Some Cubans cynically suggest the list of legal self-employment imitates lucrative aspects of the active Cuban black market. Clearly the list goes well beyond that. The nature of approved non-state jobs (officials shy away from the term “private sector”) speaks to inclusiveness, or perhaps obsessive compulsiveness among government planners. No stone is left unturned For example, among the more unique jobs now authorized are Button-Coverer or Operator of Children’s Fun Wagon Pulled by Pony or Goat, while Refiller and Repairer of Disposable Lighters approaches the bottom of the permitted self-employment barrel. It is difficult to imagine technically trained Cuban workers or even retirees considering a career in fresh fruit peeling when the government safety net, though strained, continues to function.
| Job | Translation |
|---|---|
| Reparador de espejuelos | Eye glass repair |
| Reparador y llenador de fosforeras | Repair and refill disposable lighters |
| Techador | Roofer/Thatcher |
| Trabajador contratado | Hired worker |
| Corredores de permutas | Home-swap runners/Real estate agent |
| Arrendamiento de habitaciones | Home or room rental |
| Programador de equipos de cómputo | Computer Programmer |
| Mochador de Palmas | Palm tree trimmer |
Unquestionably, forms of lucrative self-employment are scattered within the list: construction, auto repair, taxi driver, restaurant (paladar) operator, and room/home renter (casa particular), the latter providing a link to expanding tourism.
A few jobs are more technical. Services for newly legal businesses, namely accountants, computer programmers, insurance agents, office equipment repair, real estate broker, and telecommunication agent support expansion of the non-state sector but only 27 percent of the self-employed jobs are technical (Henken and Ritter 2015). While these reflect promotion of expanded self-employment (cuentapropista) with the qualified blessing of Cuba’s leadership, truly most jobs are unskilled or semiskilled and represent previously clandestine services. The difference is now taxes are assessed. Sometimes these are anticipatory based on the projected earnings of an enterprise and payable in advance. For example, a paladar operator is assessed a tax at the beginning of the year to be paid monthly. If the amount is insufficient then the balance must be paid. However, if the operator overpays there is no provision for refund (Ritter and Henken 2015). This, along with multiple layers of red tape, explains the reported failure of one out of five new businesses. Likewise, official “backtracking” on some cuentapropista enterprises means loss of business opportunity. Two cases in point are Producer/Seller of Household Goods and Seamstress or Tailor. Both proved excessively successful selling imported items, for example, appliances or clothing brought in by relatives, visitors, or mulas (smugglers) instead of buying more expensive and lower-quality goods from official state sources. Not only did success threaten “excessive accumulation of wealth,” but also the government’s monopoly on the import trade (Ritter and Henken 2015). Closure of businesses found in violation sparked public protest and even some government officials warned such action forced self-employed entrepreneurs back into the black market.
Cuba has seldom adequately fed itself beginning with the advent of commercial export agriculture. Either it has sold sugar and tobacco to buy foodstuffs or relied upon Soviet bloc largess. Moscow’s subsidies are gone, sugar is in steep decline, the duration of cheap Venezuelan oil is uncertain, and food insecurity persists. The turn to tourism does not address food needs; indeed, it creates an additional demand favoring some surviving private farmers, but not the consuming public. In response two strategies are operating. One is the proliferation of organopónicos (organic farms) typically on the outskirts of major cities, which produce vegetables, herbs, medicinal, and ornamental plants. By volume their total contribution to national food needs is not great. Organopónicos played a more important role in the “Special Period” of the early 1990s when food insecurity was at a crisis level but they do not obviate costly food imports.
Strategy two is the legalization of “terrenos usufructos.” This is a radical reversal of half a century of state control of farmland and collectivized labor, seminal tenets of the Revolution. Qualifying citizens obtain the use of idle land (the state retains ownership) via a free rent program for a prescribed period. The state commands a majority of production at prices set below market value to prevent “excessive accumulation of wealth” by private operators. Production above quota is used at the discretion of the operator, but initially had to be sold through government channels (Acopio) that were notoriously inefficient but now are reportedly dissolved.
Cuba remains far from domestic food security and costly imports continue to deplete national coffers. As for the terrenos usufructos, about 222,000 were initially taken up of which 151,000 remain in operation with a corresponding reduction in acreage from 900,000 hectares to 200,000 (Doimeados Guerrero 2017). In response, the Ministry of Agriculture doubled the size for individual allotments to 26.8 hectares and the period of use from ten to twenty years. Terrenos usufructos are also approved for livestock production. But total production remains less than anticipated. Part of this is because a sizeable portion of the allotments is not actively cultivated. The formerly idle lands require great effort to put back into production and usufrutarios typically lack capital and access to seeds, equipment, and other critical inputs despite official promises to make these available for direct purchase.
Perhaps more critically, official sources report that 77 percent of usufructarios have no prior agricultural experience to deal with the complexities of farming. For example, half of the terrenos usufructos are plagued by infestation of marabú, a thorny invasive plant that must be removed before effective cultivation can occur. Short on capital, equipment, and experience, the daunting prospect of dealing with marabú and other obstacles explains how one-third of the new farmers fail to maintain their operation. It is unlikely that a significant portion of the more than half a million redundant state workers will take up land and begin growing food. Few younger Cubans will willingly depart preferred city living, often with university degrees in hand, to discover small-scale farming in preference to unemployment, or jobs in the expanding tourism sector, or emigration.
A hint of what is happening in Cuba’s non-state food agriculture can be found in the legal list of jobs. Among 201 choices, the designation “farmer” is conspicuously absent. As close as we find is “part-time seasonal farm laborer.” On the other hand these authorized options do appear: maker of yokes, harnesses, and rope for oxen; thresher, saddle, and harness repair; and mule driver. Travel about the Cuban countryside and it is evident that draft or work animals are widely used. In part, this reflects tradition, but also the uncertainty of adequate and affordable fuel supplies. Likewise, it underscores the fact that both the surviving private farm operations in Cuba and the terrenos usufructos are small-scale farms. The largest authorized individual usufructo is 26.8 hectares and typically only a portion of this is under active cultivation. Small in size and typically undercapitalized, such parcels are more likely to be farmed with manual labor and animals than with machines. In 2016, farmers in Pinar del Rio cut rice with a hand sickle and thresh it with a winnowing technique unchanged for 200 years, while in Cienfuegos Province harvested rice is piled on the edge of the highway to dry before being re-bagged by hand! Indeed, there are jobs for makers of ox or mule harness and drivers of the same, but it is highly unlikely these will be taken up by former government employees newly entering the non-state sector.
Of Cuba’s total agricultural land, just 3.3 percent is listed as in private hands. By 2012, only 23,000 “private” farms survived from an estimated 200,000 in the early 1960s. But even these farmers are subject to a degree of state control, especially in terms of acquiring inputs and legally selling their production. Fidel Castro was notorious for radical policy shifts and small private farmers felt the impact of his whimsy. So-called “free” peasant markets (Mercado Libre Campesino) were created in 1980 but scuttled in 1986 because “peasants” were making too much money. Since the reforms of his brother Raúl, there is a degree of optimism that private farmers will be allowed a degree of economic freedom, but he is loosening his grip on the reins ever so carefully and gradually.
And how does an ageing Cuban population fit into this picture of semiprivate farming? In all countries with a strong rural-to-urban shift, rural regions are left a residual of older residents unwilling to move, while younger cohorts leave to seek education, employment, and perceived social advantage in the cities or even abroad. This is especially true where there is or has been a significant development of agriculture. Farmers tend to be born into their careers. There are few examples of urbanites willingly and in significant numbers migrating into the countryside to engage full-time in agriculture. China’s experience sending urban intellectuals, professionals, and youth into the countryside during the Rustification Campaign (“Down to the Countryside”) was an economic disaster contributing to the so-called “lost generation.” And while Fidel once dispatched 350,000 citizens into the countryside (1970) in quest of a record sugar harvest and inspired Escuela al Campo (school in the countryside) for urban youth to combine agricultural work with formal studies, Cuba’s current urban population cannot be considered a means of supplementing or invigorating the rural labor force.
From 1990 to 2014, Cuban sugar production dropped by 80 percent (FAOSTAT). It was part of the downward spiral of national agriculture precipitated in part by the ending of Soviet-bloc subsidies. For several years post-1991 Cubans tightened their belts. It was a time of true hunger. Not surprisingly, a 1997 statute (Decree Law 217) restricts rural migration into Havana for those hoping to escape rural decay. With resultant accelerated ageing who then is left to farm save older Cubans? Younger cohorts are too well educated, prefer urban employment, have higher expectations, or favor emigration.
On both organopónicos and private farms the labor force observed is primarily middle aged or older. Even on the organic farms in or near cities older workers are the norm. Farms in the hinterland are even more dependent on veteran farmers and their families. Youth have not jumped at the chance to be a usufructario and grow malanga and rice to feed the nation. Cuba’s national goal to grow more food and to be less dependent upon expensive imports, most of which now come from the United States, rests on an ageing population destined to dwindle through natural attrition.
It is November 26, 2016. “Fidel died last night,” the landlady quietly informed me as she prepared breakfast. Amarylis was composed but visibly saddened as she delivered the news. Over the next nine days of official mourning, in Havana and across the countryside Cubans gathered to pay respect to theprimary architect of their socialized lifestyle. In private a few expressed relief for the end of Fidelismo. But the prevailing public mood was best described as reserved; clearly, authorities anticipated the death and orchestrated a celebration, including multiple international heads-of-state paying homage to the iconic Fidel, a respected leader of the nonaligned and Third World nations.
Amidst the lavish eulogies of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro or the praise of Nicaraguan acolyte Daniel Ortega, Fidel’s role in Cuba’s development was assessed by Cubans in private conversation. An academic commented that using only Cuba’s meager resources “Fidel had tried to change the world, but brother Raúl is just trying to fix Cuba’s problems.” Also heard, “Fidel was the visionary with his head always in the clouds while his brother is the businessman with his feet on the ground. We are encouraged by that.” This begs the question do Cubans have reason to be optimistic, even quietly hopeful? Hard demographic times are ahead.
To those who seek to understand and teach about population the Demographic Transition Model (DTM) is both tool and trial. Widely used and frequently criticized, the model in a very general way allows a look at the interplay of birth rates and death rates, two of the three basics in the Demographic Equation. Unfortunately, the model is based on two of the least precise or definitive metrics for population change, but we continue to use it because these are also two of the most widely kept statistics. Initially, a four-stage paradigm, in recent decades a fifth stage has forced itself into the model. Stage five depicts those national populations where falling crude birth rates (CBR) are lower than rising crude death rates (CDR). Cuba is on the cusp of that threshold with CBR and CDR on an apparent collision course. Between 1990 and 2015, births dropped from 17/1000 to just over 10/1000, while deaths grew from 7/1000 to almost 8/1000, prompting predictions the lines will meet and cross within a decade.
A glaring weakness of the DTM is its failure to directly deal with the impact of international migration. Yet migration invariably affects fertility and mortality. If we recognize that virtually all human migration is age-selective and consider that cohorts aged eighteen to twenty-nine account for a disproportionate 40 percent of international migration, the inflow of such cohorts increases potential fertility for receiving countries, but stifles fertility for countries with negative net migration. To state the principle another way, international migration into nearly any country is a youth movement while out-migration accelerates ageing statistically and actually while suppressing fertility. The relationship is complex but real.
Cuba’s accumulation of older cohorts inevitably means rising death rates despite a health care system which is, ironically, in part responsible for the top-heavy national age structure. And precisely because La Revolución championed universal education, healthcare, and expanded career options for women, families choose or feel forced to reduce fertility behavior to a rate below replacement. More than two-dozen contemporary nation states have death rates higher than birth rates, and apart from positive net migration all face demographic decline. Japan, Germany, and Greece come to mind. Cuba is on a path to join such states, but on a fast track owing to chronic negative net migration (NMR -4.90/1,000).
Cuba’s leadership must address three demographic realities that are conceptually simple but operationally are exceedingly difficult: (1) the present population must stay, (2) fertility must be raised, (3) and immigration must be attracted. There are no alternatives. The nation cannot afford to continue to train and lose significant numbers of younger and middle-age cohorts. Half a century of restrictive laws and patrolling coastlines has not worked. Meaningful jobs with living wages are essential to retain a labor force capable of innovating and sustaining an internationally viable economy. This will only be accomplished when life in Cuba is made more rewarding, materially and socially. Piecemeal reforms that are exclusively economic will not win the day.
Many countries with sub-replacement fertility implement schemes generically called “baby bounties.” Soviet women were offered money, medals, and diplomas; Germany offered the Iron Cross for multiple motherhood; Swedes can earn extended maternity leave for both parents. What these programs have in common is that they fail. Baby bounties do not sustain above-replacement fertility. Interestingly, Marxist economic theory historically refuted significant connection between demography and economy. That appears to no longer be the case in Cuba. Authorities are now trying many of the strategies used in other low-fertility nations, including extended maternity leave, double pay for new mothers (salary plus benefits), tax breaks, special residential maternity centers for high-risk pregnancies, and infertility clinics (Cubadebate 2017). Yet total fertility rates remain far below replacement. As noted, a recent small uptick may be linked to increased remittances applied to housing (Díaz-Briquets 2014), something the government has not addressed adequately. A shrinking labor force will require them to do so.
Leadership must also make Cuba a more desirable destination for international migration. Initially, at least, the Cuban-descent population dwelling abroad is key. Most are in the United States, specifically Florida. Cuban-Americans and their children possess both fecundity and financial resources, two commodities currently in short supply on the island. Vestigial cultural affinity may not be strong enough to cause many to relocate but it can cause them to visit and invest under improved conditions. Their demands for change will far exceed those from residents who are socialized to accept far less in personal, property, and political rights. The process has begun with some easing of restrictions on exit and re-entry, residency requirements, and movement of goods and capital. The same university professor who mused about Asian workers reports the arrival on his block of two families from Florida who are rebuilding older homes. However, as Ted Henken warns, many on the Island are weary of what they term “auto-bloqueo,” (self blockade) or what my landlady in Holguin called “burro-cracia!” stemming from the government’s heavy-handed hindering of national and personal economic enterprise (Henken and Ritter 2015). President Castro’s mantra “without haste but without pause” is wearing thin especially with recent closure of several larger paladares, including confiscation of all equipment and a freeze on issuing new licenses in Havana Province (Frank 2016). Officially, the paladares were closed for violating Cuban statutes. On the street a different interpretation holds they were simply too successful and a threat to the official “classless” social and economic structure.
As for importing laborers from China or India, the professor acknowledged it was unlikely. “They (the government) would have to pay more than the official Cuban wage and that would pose a problem.” Cuba has joined twenty-four countries with shrinking populations.2 Typically this results from a combination of very low fertility rates, rising death rates, and negative net migration---precisely the situation in Cuba. However, a few of the twenty-four experience positive net migration though not sufficient to offset decline, namely Finland, Germany, Russia, and Italy, destinations perceived by migrants to offer prospects of a better life. Though national residents may express concern about immigrants, the inflow helps address a labor shortage. Could Cuba potentially beckon migrants in a similar fashion?
One possibility is resumption of historic Haitian and Jamaican labor migrations on a less seasonal basis. These were financially beneficial or they would not have persisted for decades. But the Cuban economy is comparatively less agricultural today and low-skill manual workers would have to find other outlets. Whether social issues such as discrimination would be a problem as in the past is unclear. A second possibility suggested by cultural affinity, especially language, is immigration from some Central American countries with struggling economies. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua are candidates. If reforms raise wages and the cost of living remains low (an unlikely combination), Cuba’s reputation for healthcare and education are positive “pull” factors. Two huge obstacles are limited political and human rights… something most migrants endure regardless of destination. Also, Central American migrants may prefer to enter the large and better-known United States economy versus the small Cuban socialist system.
Across Cuba citizens lined up to pay their respects, signing official memorial books or leaving flowers beneath photos of the young Fidel or the Cuban flag. Uniformed elementary students chattered waiting with single flower blossoms. Their mood seemed largely the excitement of a break in class routine. Little sadness was apparent as they prepared to say good-bye to a figure often appearing in their textbooks or quoted by their teachers. Compared to the number of children in much of Latin America, Cuban children seem fewer in number, better dressed, more orderly. One wonders the future roles they will play. Will they remain in their native land?
Television cameras captured the official scene in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución. It was truly a generational scene. Passing by the urn holding Fidel’s mortal ashes, a few casually dressed twenty-something Cuban youth captured their own scene with “selfies.” One imagined a stirring in the urn for this intrusion of social media, an emerging reality so strongly resisted by the scraggly bearded old man. Dominating the mourning queue, however, were middle-aged and older men and women. Most were stoic; a few wept, some openly. The words of the landlady came back: “My heart hurts and I am sad to hear of his death, but my son who travels a lot outside Cuba simply says ‘it is time to move on.’” Which generation will prevail?
The question is decades old…. ”What happens after Fidel, and now after Raúl?” Cuba-watchers see little prospect of radical change with Raúl’s announced retirement in February, 2018, which as of this writing is postponed until April, 2018. Some even see another Castro in the wings, the president’s son Alejandro, a colonel in the powerful Interior Ministry in charge of State Intelligence. But more than half a century of uninterrupted family rule assures the institutionalization of Cuban socialism. Reforms, once viewed as radical but now judged by some as “timid” are not socio-political but almost entirely economic, and meager at that.
More radical, perhaps, is the elevation of Miguel Díaz-Canel to first vice-presidency of the Council of Ministers. He is not a Castro, he is not a military figure, and he is not old enough to be part of the generation of the Revolution. His qualifications seem to be loyalty to the Cuban Communist Party, loyalty to the Castro brothers, successful administration at multiple levels, and the ability to maintain a low profile. Detractors see him as boring, devoid of new ideas, and ultimately a “place holder” until a Castro family member again becomes head of state. Supporters, most importantly Raúl Castro, see him as one who will help protect and perfect Cuban socialism. But can he? Not alone!
Cuba’s power structure in descending order consists of FAR (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias), next the Cuban Communist Party, and thirdly the existing governmental system. National dominance by the military is reinforced by its pervasive economic role. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces from 1959--2006, Raúl Castro systematically placed trusted military colleagues in key economic positions, often after dispatching them abroad to study in professional administration programs. Two particularly noteworthy appointments in this regard are son Alejandro in the Interior Ministry and former son-in-law Brigadier General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas who directs GAESA (Group de Administración Empresarial S.A.), Cuba’s largest holding company. GAESA was created and is operated by FAR, and Cuba’s armed forces were in turn largely created and are still commanded by Raúl Castro. It is critical to understand that his retirement is specifically from the presidency of the Council of Ministers; he will continue to be Commander-in-Chief of FAR and First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. With some fifty companies under its control including an airline, hotels, sugar production, container shipping, construction, import-export trade, banks, etc., GAESA accounts for somewhere between 21 percent of total hard currency income and the widely repeated 60 percent of the “Island’s economy” (LeoGrande 2017). Clearly, the role of protecting and perfecting Cuban socialism will not be accomplished by a fifty-seven-year-old civilian wearing blue jeans and a blackberry… apart from the consent and help of Cuba’s armed forces. As a Cuban said to me on a Havana street regarding such developments, “¡es una fachada!” (façade).
How does this pertain to Cuba’s population dilemma, namely so-called stage five negative growth? Unless leadership, civilian or military, can stem the flow of emigration, motivate higher fertility, and create conditions that pull immigration, Cuba’s top-heavy demographic structure will topple. If economic reforms are broadened and accelerated more young Cubans may stay home to take advantage of a higher standard of living. If material improvements are perceived as great enough, then fertility may increase though it is doubtful it could reach replacement level given the total age structure. Immigration into Cuba sufficient to offset future labor demands and to revitalize reproductive-age cohorts seems improbable. One has to assume that most immigration would come primarily from the Cuban-descent population living abroad but only when economic, social, and political reforms make the island an attractive destination. This degree of reform would threaten La Revolución and will not be tolerated so long as Cuba’s military holds unchallenged power.