Dominican Republic population grows at slower rate without overcoming social imbalances

Santo Domingo – While human resources would be critical to the integral economic and social development of nations, the declining population trend that widens the range of older adults who will retire in the short term brings to the forefront in the Dominican Republic another side of the coin with demographers agreeing that the explosive population growth of the past has been associated with the causes of poverty, inequality, insecurity and environmental deterioration that the State and the interests that weigh most heavily on it to make decisions have not been able to reduce significantly. If we continue the same way, fewer people would not translate into less marginality.

The quantification of inhabitants of the X Population and Housing Census 2022 showed a percentage growth of 1.11%, coming from 2.98 in 1970, but more than doubling the lapse in the number of people in the national territory. By 2023, a little more than one-fifth of the demography (equivalent to two million inhabitants) remained in poverty after a 4.7% reduction, a proportion below the growth of the economy projected for this year at 5.1%. A “fat and red” GDP that is not for everyone. In rural areas, the marginalization of welfare is almost a quarter of the families, and the middle class show dissatisfaction every time they speak.

It is admitted that the size of the Dominican population can influence the Gross Domestic Product per capita. Still, the degree of investments that dynamize the economy accompanied by structural reforms would be more determinant. According to the World Bank, without these optimization goals, the availability of means to create jobs and improve the living conditions of the poorest will remain short. The recipe is “fiscal prudence, creating a competitive business environment and, in the long term, investing in health, education and infrastructure.”

The Dominican Republic is trapped in a waiting period for reforms against the severity of deficits due to growth without restrictions for the quality of expenditures of populist profiles or without priority with a drop in revenues due to a shallow fiscal pressure that leads to spiraling public debt. It remains to be seen whether the Dominican State will achieve with balance a protagonism of positive achievements in the short term, which remains to be seen. Policies that benefit all citizens, including those living in poverty, are needed.

CENSUS UNDER SCRUTINY

Among the expectations for census number ten in history is the unsatisfied curiosity at this point to know, perhaps categorically by the quality of fieldwork, how many foreigners coexist with Dominicans with the convenience in the foreground to establish the most approximate amount possible to the numerical reality of Haitian immigrants who feel real here, a fundamental data to measure the specific weight of their presence continuously object of calculations and appreciations somewhat “to the eye percent” with each one making projections loaded with subjectivities.

This figure of a particular strategic value for the Dominican society, authorities, and interest groups, which the National Statistics Office must have obtained, is being extracted with frustrating delay from the total collected. Promised for later and which would also help to know the exact size and legal status of a growing community of Venezuelans and other nationalities coming from abroad whose insertion into the local community, its uses, and customs occurs smoothly.

Some sectors have worried that the census coverage extended over 79.38% of the country’s population without reaching more than 20% of the community, the lowest coverage compared to the previous three. For this reason, some question its quality, although it is a result of the NSO-exposed causes that are, to some extent, attainable due to significant changes in the settlement patterns of many families.

Along with other adverse situations to the census work in all parts of the world, the organ cited, admitting that the omission was high, the existence of closed residential conglomerates that hinder the collection; the presence of households with members who spend a large part of the day outside; the lack of an effective informative campaign on the visit of census enumerators and the insufficiency of technical control over the process due to budgetary limitations. He also invoked citizens’ distrust for security reasons, including being extremely wary of possible impostors. It can be assumed that many illegal immigrants would flee in order not to be counted.

GROWING FEMALE POPULATION

Of the more than ten million inhabitants computed for the country, the “feminine branch” of the society appears in quantity superior to that of the masculine, with 5,437,095 women and 5,322,933 men; a population thrust that coincides with the numerical progress of the colloquially called “opposite sex” with constant indexes that in the whole planet reflect its more excellent entrance to universities.

It is what specialists describe as a “significant academic gender gap.” A recent UNESCO-UN report criticized that institutions of higher learning focus more on measuring women’s access to higher education than on tracking their outcomes and success rates.”

A striking display of the unequal presence between men and women in Dominican university classrooms was recently made visible when the Catholic University of Santo Domingo graduated 213 women in one cut and only 81 men. Referring to the “success rate” after being graduated in professions, Unesco had previously said that:

“Inequalities between women and men persist today in all regions of the world, including Latin America and the Caribbean and are manifested in all areas of their lives, in lower labor insertion, lower salaries, lower representation in decision-making positions and more time spent at work.” The majority of higher education institutions have various policies and services that support the advancement of women.

HAITI OUTPERFORMS THE D.RD.While the Dominican population measured by census has decreased in thirty years from a rate of 3.61% to 1.21%, Haiti’s population, without necessarily being high because it has a higher mortality rate, has a density of 413 inhabitants per square kilometer, which is close to double that of the Dominican Republic, at 223.55 people per square kilometer. Occupying only one-third of the island of Hispaniola, 11,447,569 human beings inhabit its territory, with the inferiority of this site, which houses 10,760,028. They are, for now and not for long, 687,541 million more than those of this side.

Explosive in its reproduction of the species, Haiti has, together with the condition of being one of the places on the planet with the people most inclined to leave it, the most inhospitable conditions not only because of a devastating depletion of natural resources and low citizen productivity but also because it is one of the countries where life is worth less due to anarchy that makes emigration something almost obligatory; a growing supplier of regular and irregular labor to its neighboring territory whose maternity hospitals and schools are entering in droves.

Cuba, a country considered by demographers as highly urbanized, has only 102.3 inhabitants per square kilometer, and Haiti, with 5.3 million poor and two and a half million in extreme poverty, reveals an ominous disproportion of inhabitants and their social conditions on an island of 48,000 square kilometers and two republics precariously separated by a border. A force more intense than gravity, with the activation of empty stomachs and a sharpened instinct for survival, works energetically against coexistence.

The “Population Fund” of the United Nations Organization predicts that an unequal distribution of populations on the planet tends to generate worrying impacts on national structures. In the UN U.N.enda, the goal for the next ten years is for each country to ensure that all its people have access to comprehensive reproductive health services, voluntary family planning, safe pregnancy and childbirth services, and prevention and treatment of transmitted infections. Haiti is not there.