THE Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) is sounding the alarm about a potential population crisis facing Jamaica.

Easton Williams, PIOJ’s senior director for social policy, planning, and research, said the magnitude of the crisis becomes clear when Jamaica’s significantly high rate of brain drain is combined with the country’s steadily declining birth rate.

“[It’s a] very serious issue; our fertility levels are going below replacement level, but also in the context that developed countries have not experienced, as they didn’t experience high outmigration from those countries. The region — Jamaica, all the countries in the Caribbean — have very high levels of outmigration,” said Williams, who has been a demographer for approximately 40 years.

“So when you compound the decline in fertility below the replacement levels and you combine that with negative outflows out of that declining population… the only region globally that will experience dramatic reduction in their populations in say the next 20 years is the Caribbean. We are in a serious situation,” he insisted.

The PIOJ senior director was speaking in an interview on Jamaica Information Service’s online discussion programme Studio 58A, along with colleague Antonette Richards, PIOJ programme director of civil registration and migration.

According to the Reproductive Health Survey Jamaica (RHS), 2021, which was officially disseminated to the public by the National Family Planning Board (NFPB) last year, Jamaica’s total fertility rate (TFR) has declined significantly from 4.5 births per female between 1973 and 1975 to 1.9 in 2021, contributing to a decrease in the country’s population estimate.

A fertility rate of 1.9 is below the replacement level of 2.1, the globally accepted average number of children that women would need to produce to keep a population constant.

Meanwhile, Williams said recent data indicates that Jamaica is losing approximately 60 per cent of its tertiary graduates to the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

WILLIAMS…we are at a point now where our under-30 population is starting to decline

“In a previous [World Bank] study, the findings there suggest that… we are losing about 70 to 80 per cent of persons… We at the PIOJ thought that figure was kind of high, so we did a study here… and made the adjustment to the estimate produced by the World Bank at the time to around 60 per cent.

The findings: “We are losing a significant number of persons who are trained at the tertiary level here and are now resident in the US, Canada, and the UK. That, in itself, is very high,” Williams said.

Another factor exacerbating the crisis, he noted, is that the majority of Jamaicans leaving the island’s shores since the 1960s are women of childbearing age.

Faced with this looming crisis in population numbers, the country is being urged to take a novel approach, one that Richards said must begin with a shift in mindset towards brain drain itself.

“Global services partnership — this is the simplest way to put it. We [Jamaica] are training people for export, so you partner with a country that has a particular labour need, [and] you train persons to fill those labour needs. It can take many forms, and that would be open to discussion with the partner country.

“So, for example, the need for teachers — we [Jamaica] are willing to train teachers, some form of assistance could be provided by that country and it allows us to train teachers to meet their demand and our local demand. It’s supposed to be a win-win situation,” Richards explained.

RICHARDS…one of the things I would like us to start doing is flipping the narrative from brain drain to brain gain

“One of the things I would like us to start doing is flipping the narrative from brain drain to brain gain. By flipping to brain gain, we are looking at how we can benefit from what exists,” she added.

Global services partnerships would essentially allow Jamaicans to have the best of both worlds — residing in Jamaica while having the opportunity to work overseas for extended periods — ensuring the country retains more of its nationals and helps to stabilise the population.

Richards also noted that the partnerships could also help to deepen bilateral relations with non-traditional territories.

“It may mean that a partnership like this will not target your typical countries. Over time, we have recognised that Jamaicans are exploring new countries, they are going further than they have before. The teaching exchange programme with Japan, we now have more Jamaicans going there to teach English. But then Japan has a rapidly ageing population, so they also have a lot of other needs that are not being met,” Richards noted.

“It may mean that we are not going to look at your typical US/Canada/UK markets… It may mean that we seek partnerships with other countries in Europe that have labour shortage needs,” she added.

Richards said, too, that global services partnerships could also have a positive impact on Jamaica’s high crime rate.

“It’s also a way to solve our crime issue… because if we have a programme like this, we’re going to set up certain criteria, and for me, one of them would be no involvement in criminal activity. You can’t have been part of a gang, you can’t have been wanted for anything. By doing that, it now gives the Government a chance to get the community on board to support us to keep young people out of crime. A mother is going to say to her son, ‘Stay away from those people because I want you to qualify for that programme.’ ”

Williams added that negotiations with destination countries could ensure that local infrastructure is developed in key industries, ensuring the country is able to continue its development agenda.

“We can establish a partnership where funding and expertise, technology, and so on is supplied by them, and we provide our human resources and other obligations. In this training agreement at that level, some of our people would go to those countries and some would be trained for our country — the home-and-away track. It has worked in other countries,” Williams echoed.

Another suggested solution to the looming population crisis, according to Richards, is the recruitment of foreign nationals to reside in Jamaica.

“Jamaica has always been a source country, a transit country, and a destination country for migrants. We may get to the point where we start looking at how we attract migrants to our shores,” she explained. “If, as a population, we are going to get to the point where [we consider] how we embrace people coming into Jamaica, how do we make Jamaica marketable and welcoming so persons want to come here to live? How do we, as nationals, make these persons feel welcome as part of our system, as part of our culture?”

Based on the scale of the problem, Williams is urging the relevant stakeholders to make the necessary decisions to ensure the long-term survivability of the Jamaican population.

“Look at it this way, we pride ourselves that we have a large population of young people, but that was in the past. We are at a point now where our under-30 population is starting to decline. Our school-age population has been declining; our tertiary segment, that is declining. We are in a position similar to what developed countries have reached… if you look as a region, this region is losing the largest proportion of persons trained at the tertiary level into the developed countries… We need to implement strategies to ensure that the limited [human] resources that we have will sustain our own development,” said Williams.