KINGSTON, Jamaica— Jamaica continues to face a low birth rate problem with the total number of live births in the country declining sharply over the last 20 years.

In 2021, there were 31,276 live births compared to 40,508 in 2010 and 56,134 in 2000.

The information is contained in the Jamaica Population Health Status Report 2000–2022, which was tabled in the Parliament this week. It is compiled by the National Epidemiology Branch of the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

Overall, Jamaica’s crude birth rate, which is the number of annual live births per 1000 population, declined by 10.2 percentage points from 21.7 per 1000 population in 2000 to 11.4 per 1000 population in 2022.

Meanwhile, in 2022, some 21,390 deaths were recorded in Jamaica. The highest number (26,974) of deaths between 2000 and 2022 was recorded in 2021. Notably this was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic although it has not been stated whether the excess deaths were due to the pandemic.

In 2021, the crude death rate showed approximately 9.9 deaths occurring in every 1000 persons in the population. However, this decreased to 7.8 deaths per 1000 population in 2022.

In the meantime, the health status report also highlighted the country’s dependency ratio which in 2019 was 48.1 per 100 working age population. This shows a decline from 72.7 per 100 working-age population in 2003.

The dependency ratio can be disaggregated into child dependency ratio and elderly dependency ratio. Child dependency ratio is the number of children 0-14 years of age per 100 working-age population (15-64 years) and the elderly dependency ratio is the number of persons over 65 years per 100 working age population.

A low dependency ratio is desirable as it indicates that there are more working-age adults in the labour force who can support the young and elderly.

The population by age shows that in 2019 there were 578,738 Jamaicans under the age of 15 compared to 261,750 Jamaicans over the age of 65.

However, between 2000 and 2019 the child population decreased by 31.7 per cent, while the elderly population grew by 32.6 per cent.