Why is Chile’s Birth Rate Plummeting?

0:00Today on State of the World, why is Chile's birth rate plummeting?

0:08You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. The number of babies being born each year is falling fast in many places around the world. In the U.S., East Asia, Europe, but also in Latin America. And among the countries experiencing a dramatic birth rate shift in that region is Chile. NPR's Brian Mann takes us to Chile's capital, Santiago, to understand why this massive and rapid change in the fertility rate is occurring. I'm walking through a market in a working-class neighborhood in Santiago.

0:48The snow-capped Andes Mountains glow in the distance. But here on the street, it's all business. Marisol Romero is selling little dolls and flowers. I'm here the week before Mother's Day, and Romero is hoping shoppers will buy presents for their moms. She's in her 50s and comes from a big family. She was one of eight kids. I ask how many children she had. Why did you choose to have only two and not more? Life is expensive, she says. So if you had money freedom, you would maybe have had more.

1:26Romero tells me she wanted five kids but settled for two. I've come to Chile because this country's demographic shift in many ways mirrors trends in the United States. The total fertility rate in the U.S., the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime, has dropped to its lowest level ever, around 1.6. That's well below the threshold of 2.1 kids, researchers say, is needed to maintain a stable population. Chile was at that level a decade ago, but the country's total fertility rate has plunged to just one child per woman. Martina Yopo-Diaz is a sociologist at Santiago's Catholic University.

2:03Today we have a total fertility rate that is lower than most European countries, lower than Japan's. The latest United Nations report found more than one in ten countries around the world now have Chile's kind of hyper-low fertility. Yopo-Diaz and other experts think life in Chile could change fast as the population ages and begins to shrink. I think this has huge implications for which we're not prepared as a society. Key social systems from the economy to the labor market to pensions are based on the principle that there will be new generations to replace the old ones. But now we see that that principle is no longer something that we can, you know, take as given.

2:42It's unclear whether the U.S. fertility rate will keep dropping as Chile's has done. But there's one way the two countries are similar. A fast-growing number of women in the U.S. and Chile are delaying motherhood much later in life. and in many cases, opting out altogether. I meet Florencia Contreras, who's 23, on the street with her friends near the university in Santiago, where they're art students. Contreras tells me, no, she doesn't want kids.

3:13I don't want it to sound ugly, but I feel like motherhood is a burden. Her fellow student, Macarena Lagos, who's 19, speaks up.

3:25I don't want kids either. Not at all. They tell me they think being mothers would mean a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy over their bodies and their lives. Now, there's a second way the birth rate debate in Chile sounds a lot like the U.S. Some politicians in Chile, conservatives and leaders on the far right, have begun talking about ways to encourage women to have more babies. Lagos says this pressure makes her angry. No matter what the government does, it's still my decision, my own. No matter what the government does, I don't think my decision will change. It's important to say many officials in Chile's current progressive government see this independence for women, this resistance to traditional roles, not as a problem, but as a sign of hard-won progress.

4:15Antonio Orellana is Chile's Minister of Women and Gender Equity. We have to discuss this as a government who has a commitment with the feminist ideas. Oriana acknowledges Chile's plunging birth rate is a real concern for the country's economy and social fabric, but she says it's important to focus also on the rising number of women getting college degrees and entering the workforce. Oriana points to a third way the trend in Chile parallels what's happening in the U.S., success reducing birth rates among adolescents. We have almost erased the teen pregnancy within the last 20 years. Conservative leaders in Chile see birth rates as a much more immediate crisis.

4:58José Antonio Cast is a leading populist candidate in this year's presidential race. He posted a campaign video celebrating what he describes as women's traditional role as mothers.

5:14Mothers are essential. The mother-child bond is tremendous, Kass says. A society that wants to develop well needs this emotional bond. Chile's influential Roman Catholic Church has also taken up the cause of motherhood and population. In an interview with the national TV station TVN, the Archbishop of Santiago, Fernando Chomali, called these population trends an urgent problem. The birth rate we have today, he warned, is practically zero. There's a fourth way. This debate over population in Chile sounds a lot like what's happening in the U.S., and that's the question of immigration. Until recently, Chile took in a lot of refugees from Haiti, Venezuela, and other countries.

5:59Now many conservatives here want to close Chile's borders and deport migrants. Sociologist Martina Yopo-Diaz says that kind of policy would send Chile's birth rate plunging even lower. One out of five children that are born in Chile are born to foreign mothers, and the northern regions of the country is one out of two. In the U.S., meanwhile, a study by the Brookings Institution found without a lot of migrants and the children of migrants, the United States could lose a third of its population in this century. But in Chile, as in the U.S., Yobo Diaz says many on the right now view migrants not as a positive, but as a threat, a kind of invasion.

6:37This is creating very important cultural and social tensions in the country. There's a lot of people fueling right-wing discourses about anxieties, about, you know, that we are becoming extinguished as a nation. While in Santiago, I heard one more way Chile's conversation about birth rates and babies matches what NPR is finding in the U.S. Politicians and activists often make these demographic trends sound apocalyptic. But when we talk to women, it doesn't sound grim at all. In Santiago, most women tell me they see their country changing in big ways, but they're happy to be making their own choices.

7:14I asked Marisol Romero, the shopkeeper in the market, whether her decision to have fewer children made her sad. She smiles and shakes her head. No, because I accepted it. And I love my children and now my grandchildren very much. Romero says her two kids have now decided to have only one baby each, an even smaller version of family, she says, already feels normal. Brian Mann, NPR News.

7:48That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening. Thank you.