It is 10 times more than in Spain and similar to Mexico and Haiti
14ymedio, Havana, July 9, 2024 — The rate of adolescent pregnancies is one of the figures Cuba reports in its Public Health data, which has always boasted of its universal and efficient system. In 2023, 18.9% of births were to girls between the ages of 12 and 19. The figure was published in the umpteenth article that the official press dedicates to the subject, which shows how, far from solving the problem, it continues to increase. The number has risen by more than two percentage points since 2019, when 16.7% of deliveries were to mothers between the ages of 15 and 19. The following year the figure was 17%; in 2021, 17.1%; and in 2022, 17.9%.
In terms of adolescent fertility – also between 15 and 19 years of age – for every 1,000 girls in that age range there were 51.5 (2020), 49.2 (2021) and 50.6 (2022) births. The data from Cuba are far from those of other countries such as Spain, which in 2022, for that age range, reported a rate of just 4.61 births. The statistics of the Island are more similar to those of Mexico (60.3) for example, or those of Haiti (51.2).
For those interviewed by Cubadebate, these numbers represent a “dysfunction” or, as explained by psychologist and demographer Matilde Molina, “the largest disconnection present in Cuban fertility,” especially when compared to the fertility rate of women between 20 and 24 years old (the highest among the age groups), which is not very that much higher with 82.9 births per 1,000 women.
The number has risen by more than two percentage points since 2019, when 16.7% of deliveries were to mothers between the ages of 15 and 19
Other alarming numbers are those of very early pregnancies, between 12 and 14 years of age. In the first half of 2023, 5.4% of adolescent pregnancies correspond to girls of those ages, a high number compared to the figure of 2018, when it was 3.8%.
These are just the global figures, exceeded in many cases, the authorities warn, by the number of pre