We Bajans are facing another kind of deficit, and I suspect we men are responsible.
Some ladies have decided to stop procreating after 1.6 children, while others have decided on an open door policy.
It is said that the educated and upper-class working ladies get their degrees and education and then opt for one child.
However the ones who are not so well educated and sometimes cannot find a job spend the hours making children and writing to the newspapers for help.
Barbados had a fertility rate in 2011 of 1.56 children per couple. Its population hovered around 279 000 in 2012, and is expected to be 281 000 by 2016. The interesting thing is that according to world statistics, an indigenous population survives on 2.1 children per couple. Therefore the fertility rate of Barbadian “indigenous” women needs to be stepped up – gentlemen please, it is your fault, but no forced entry!
Getting down to the real nitty gritty (or as Sir Branford would have said, the gravamen), we find that if we could keep the birth rate compatible with the death rate, our political brothers would have a steady population with which to wheel and deal.
The death rate, thank God, is only about 2 440 stiffs per year as against a birth rate of 3 366 presents from the stork (2010). So our population should be increasing by at least 900 per year, as between births and deaths in respect of indigenous women – ladies producing one child and ladies producing a plethora of children.
This means that ladies producing many children far out-produce the one-child women, although efforts may be the same.
There is another factor that plays an important part in this scenario. Net migration! It is estimated that in 2009, 0.3 in 1 000 were leaving the island yearly – or 83. Between 2010 and 2012 it was an increase of the same 83 per 1 000. To conclude, therefore, the estimated population in 2016 of 281 000 is quite possible, given the annual increase.
But our fertility rate is below the rate anticipated to preserve “Bajaness”. It stands to reason that if our rate of growth is on the increase, indigenous Bajans are losing the race; we are being taken over gradually by migrants. Who are these? For years we may have been “Bajanizing” women from the islands and Guyana.
European countries are going through horrors with their open policy. Spain has a growth rate of 6.54 per cent in a population of 47 million, but the fertility rate is 1.1. Germany, Italy, Greece and England have fertility rates far below the growth rate and the growth rate is increasing.
In those countries the reason for growth in population has been attributed to Muslim migration. In Barbados, with a Muslim population of about 4 000 or 1.5 per cent, such a conclusion seems unlikely.
“But Wild Coot, you said that we are facing another deficit.” This, from a good friend!
Well I liken our slowly widening deficit in indigenous population to the widening deficit in our economic decline.
“Wild Coot,” she continued, “that Treasury Bill rate and the bank rate are going to cause problems. If you give the bank permission to declare war on the corporations’ savings accounts, the corporations will retaliate by not bringing money into Barbados even if rates are over and away lower.
“Already the loss of profits will allow them to carry forward losses, a signal to the minister that taxes will be smaller. Remember some of the corporations are also net earners.
“Also, there is something called street exchange which the Central Bank has no control over – sorry; over which the Central Bank has no control. Corporations and banks are already suspicious of the Government’s ability to service the increased rate in Treasury Bills. They may feel that the move to increase the rate results from their reluctance to carry National Insurance Funds borrowing to 100 per cent.”
My friend added, “Wild Coot, how do you get 1.6 children? You mean that the second child only takes six months?” • Harry Russell is a retired banker; Email [email protected]
