Changes in Population Create Opportunities for Mexico’s Fox

Remarkable shifts are occurring in Mexico’s population, including a falling birthrate, fewer primary school students and a growing elderly sector. The demographics offer incoming President Vicente Fox some surprising openings to make life better for average Mexicans.

Rodolfo Tuiran, head of the government’s respected National Population Council, sketched the demographic landscape this week in the final report by the current administration on annual population trends.

Mexico’s population stood at 97.4 million in June, according to preliminary figures from the 2000 census. The “natural growth rate,” or births minus deaths, has fallen to 1.74%, and about 300,000 Mexican migrants remain in the United States each year, the council’s report estimates. These factors have contributed to a net annual growth rate of 1.44%, an enormous change from the 3.5% rate in the mid-1960s.

The dramatic slowdown is largely a result of decades of government family planning initiatives. Thirty percent of women used birth control in 1976; now 70% do, the report says. Women in the mid-1960s had an average of 7.2 children; now that figure is 2.4 and headed down to 2.1 by 2005.

These trends mean that after a tremendous boom in the 20th century--from 1900 to 1950, the population doubled and then almost quadrupled in the last five decades--Mexico’s populace is expected to grow a comparatively small 32%, to about 132 million, in the next 50 years.

Population growth in the past put an enormous strain on Mexico’s economic resources. Now there is “a transitory window of opportunity for the next federal administration,” Tuiran said.

Among the immediate opportunities: The anticipated declines in annual births, from 2.2 million in 2000 to an estimated 1.7 million in 2006, “open up unique opportunities to achieve considerable improvements in the quality and coverage of services oriented to infant well-being,” he noted. These include prenatal and postnatal care, birthing assistance and preschool education.

In past decades, Mexico struggled to provide enough classrooms and teachers for its youngsters. By contrast, the primary school population, ages 6 to 11, is expected to decline by 3% during Fox’s six-year term and by a striking 10% by the end of the first decade of the new century. This will allow Fox to concentrate on improving the quality of education, not just cope with the quantity of students.

The changing demographics also pose major challenges. As in developed countries, Mexico will begin grappling with the aging of its population. People of working age, from 25 to 64, will become the largest sector. More Mexicans will be available to create wealth, but that means more jobs must be created--7 million in the next six years just to employ new entrants in the job market, Tuiran said.

The average age will rise from 27 now to 29 by 2006 and 38 in 2030. At present, 1 in 20 people is 65 or older. By 2030, that figure will be 1 in 8.

The population is shifting in other ways. Greater Mexico City, with 18 million inhabitants, has a current growth rate of just 1.5% after tripling in population in the 1950-80 period. Instead of flocking to the capital, people from rural areas are migrating to frontier states such as Baja California, among other regions.

Overall, the trends are favorable, and Fox now has a rare opportunity to stimulate “a virtuous cycle in which employment, savings, investment and more employment could generate the resources the country needs to face the legacy of lags and inequalities,” said Tuiran, “and to break the perverse cycle of deprivation in which millions of Mexicans are trapped.”

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Graying Mexico

Mexico will have to grapple with an aging population as the birthrate drops and life expectancy rises.