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By Eulana Weekes
St. Kitts and Nevis (WINN): Nevis Prime Minister Mark Brantley expressed his concerns about the population of St. Kitts and Nevis when he approached the press on June 19.
The Prime Minister was referring to data released by the statistics department following the recent census.
The Prime Minister believes that a sustainable island agenda must focus on infrastructure development and human capital.
“I hope the media and the public will agree with me that 51,000 people are simply too few for the sustainable development of St. Kitts and Nevis. When we remove the elderly, those with some kind of disability, the young children from that 51,320 people, we realize that we have very limited productive resources; in short, we need the people of St. Kitts and Nevis,” Brantley declared.
Looking at societies around the world, as societies become more prosperous and wealthy, people decide not to have children, and so birth rates fall.
Brantley, who has been wondering whether offering women incentives might encourage them to have children, recalled a conversation he had with women of childbearing age in Nevis.
“There was a time in St. Kitts and Nevis when people were having 10, 12 or 15 children a month; those days are long gone, so ‘what’s the answer?’ I talked to women of childbearing age and I said to them, ‘if the government could encourage women to have more children through taxes or other benefits, would that work?’ The answer I got was that no amount of money would encourage them to have children,” Brantley said.
Not only does St. Kitts and Nevis face the problem of maintaining a reasonable population, many other countries around the world face the same problem.
“So we’re in this situation now, and it’s ironic that I’m doing a press conference today after my trip to Canada because when I was speaking to them in Canada, I realized that Canada is facing similar issues, and Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, countries around the world, the UAE are trying to address this by controlling immigration, allowing people to come into the country, to help develop the country,” Brantley said. “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reality of our situation. We need to determine what is the best approach and how we intend to deal with this, but this is clear.”
Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of neighboring St. Vincent and the Grenadines, shared similar sentiments, noting that many young women in his country do not want to have children. Gonsalves called it a national problem.
It’s not a political issue, you know. It’s a national issue. It’s a national issue, and of course women understand having children better than men, obviously because they are the ones who have them. It’s not easy, raising children is a real challenge, but it’s not just a matter of you not having enough money…Haiti is the only country in the Caribbean Community that has a birth rate above the norm, and it’s the poorest. People are much better off now than they were in 1960. So what’s happened. A lot of changes have taken place; more opportunities for women in the workplace, the educational revolution, modernization (and) women deciding not to have a child, but if they have, they’ll have one.”
Results of the 2021 census in St. Kitts and Nevis show that the country’s population has surpassed 50,000 for the first time since the 1960s.
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