Grandmother Raquel gave birth to her first daughter at the San Pablo ranch when she was 18 years old, then another six would come. The offspring grew up in an ugly colony in the capital that Martina, the eldest, found it very difficult so she looked for an escape route in her studies. At the age of 22, her first baby was born and years later the second. There she cut her maternity record. The two brothers now say that they do not plan to have children. This is how the demographic history of Mexico is being written, an aging country: fewer births and greater life expectancy. The last census follows the same trend, sustained for decades: the median age of the population was 22 in 2000, 26 in 2010 and 29 today.
In the 1970s, Mexican President Luis Echeverría began his term with that of “governing is populating”, but when he took the accounts and saw the wool that this would cost in schools, health centers and others, he ended up saying that “the family little one lives better ”. Mexicans seem to agree with the latter, families are shrinking, with a greater incidence in large capitals, which add reasons for this: more expensive homes, remote jobs, the classic picture that does not leave much time for parenting.
“The decrease in fertility that began with Echeverría is now irreversible, but the indicators seem to contradict the president, poverty is very high, so small families may not live better and low fertility does not contribute to the development of the country,” says the demographer and president of the Colegio de México Silvia Giorguli. “It is frustrating”, he adds, “that knowing for decades that aging was coming, adequate measures have not been taken yet. The demography complied, but the social and economic policies did not ”.
Mexico has a low life expectancy: when a baby is born it is expected to live 75 years. People who are around that age are still in acceptable health, the result of a correct agri-food tradition that their children and grandchildren have not inherited. The country is now the second most obese in the world, after the United States, from which it has copied the most disastrous gastronomic customs, a lot of sugar and trans fats, what is known as junk food. Furthermore, Grandma Raquel’s stews are no longer repeated by her daughter, who does not have time because she works outside the home. The next cohorts will reach old age with poorer health and that will require a greater effort from public services. “We are on time to work on healthy aging models, if we don’t do something, from now on it will be terrible,” warns Verónica Montes de Oca, an expert in demography and aging at the 90-year-old Institute of Social Research at UNAM.
People over 60 years of age represent 12% of the population in Mexico, about 15 million, and demographic projections raise that figure to 33.4 million by 2050. Of the four million people who live alone at home, 41%, that is, 1,640,000 are over 60, according to data from the National Population Council (Conapo). Some have no family, but others have their children abroad where one of the tough paradoxes of these times is fulfilled: they leave their own to earn a living caring for the elderly in rich countries.
“Living alone does not mean living in isolation,” says Montes de Oca, pointing to the supportive neighborhood and family network that is part of Mexican culture. “From the Ministry of Welfare these people are identified and there are gerontology professionals who visit them, who know the terrain, do a community sweep, and depending on their socioeconomic conditions receive video calls, pantries, medicines, they are monitored.”
Silvia Giorguli is by no means as optimistic as her demographer colleague. She believes that social policies are not up to what is already happening or what will happen in a few years due to the aging of the population. The general secretary of Conapo, Gabriela Rodríguez, acknowledges that “much more has to be done”, but defends the pension system that this Administration has generalized: “2,200 pesos is the difference between eating or not eating, between having medicine or not having it “, it states. He also welcomes the scholarships awarded to students, which will allow them to “continue their studies” and walk towards a different life and the “priority of the Government in the prevention of teenage pregnancies”, which will contribute, along the same lines, to a life and a better old age, he argues. For Rodríguez, in any case, the aging of the population leaves a crucial issue pending: health. “The terrible pandemic has had at least one good thing: the number of beds in hospitals has multiplied.”
Mexico does not have a public system of geriatric residences in the style of Europe, for example. And the word asylum still makes the population creep. It doesn’t go with the culture here, they say. At 72 years old, the grandmother Raquel, with whom this note began, lives surrounded by six children and nine grandchildren in one of those large houses so common in the country. That is the model still, indeed. But Martina Guerrero, the eldest daughter, who left UNAM with her law degree and works in the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City, broke that model. She lives in another part of the city with her family, much shorter than that of her childhood.
These changes suggest that at some point the country will have to think, if not in geriatric residences, in some model of care for the elderly. The growth in life expectancy has a bitter side, health suffers, dependency situations are longer. And the extension of studies and the exit of women to the labor market will leave a scene very different from the current one, where millions of women take care of children and the elderly at home on a daily basis. “Institutional models are not foreseen in Mexico, they do not belong to our culture,” says Montes de Oca. She opts for supportive social networks and healthy aging that allows people’s autonomy as much as possible. “70% of those over 60 are functional today,” he says. But she knows that at higher ages things change and that women are suffering the burden of home care almost exclusively. In spite of everything, he affirms: “I hope there will never be residences like in Europe.”
Spain illustrates well the transition, in a few decades, from assisting the elderly at home to shouting for residencies. The long families of yesteryear, where some looked after each other (that is, women looked after each other) and where neighborhood networks provided support for any need, have gradually disappeared. The universalization of studies has pushed millions of women into the labor market and now they cannot take care of the elderly or have children, because governments do not implement the appropriate measures to reconcile employment and family life. So the places in nursing homes are always few and fertility is low. Despite this, thousands of women double their day to care for the elderly. Before, they did it because the family culture, like the Mexican one, saw the mere idea of taking an old man to the residence undesirable. Now, because there are no places available.
“Mexican culture is very much about caring for grandparents at home and they don’t like going to residences, and we’ll see if today’s young people will want to go to those centers,” insists the head of Conapo. Time will tell, indeed.
If children are needed to care for the elderly, Mexico is not in the right direction either, because the aging that the census confirms is unstoppable and the decreasing fertility has a lot to do with it, although it is still a more urban phenomenon than rural and very uneven between states. “In urban areas there is greater access to reproductive health services and school enrollment rates exceed those in rural areas, which lowers fertility. But the choice of motherhood is becoming uniform, there is a trend towards demographic convergence in this area ”, says Giorguli. It doesn’t always have to do with poverty. “In countries like El Salvador or Honduras, poorer than Mexico, the aging of the population is also advancing,” says the demographer.
Martina did not want to repeat the example of her mother, Raquel. Although her motherhood was early, her choice was a short family, only two children. So he chose. “Poor my mother, I don’t even know how she managed to take care of so many children, with the meals, the clothes …”, she says. Martina only has two, and her brothers, the one who had the most three. “When my children were born we didn’t have much money, my husband was an intern and my mother helped us with the children, at first we were a bit tight,” she says. Now, however, they belong to that Mexican middle class that is changing family patterns and may not have grandchildren to brighten up their retirement.
source https://pledgetimes.com/mexico-is-aging-who-will-take-care-of-its-elderly/
Disqus comments