In Martinique, a financial incentive to have more children
A view of Fort-de-France in the West Indies, November 23, 2021 AFP - LOIC VENANCE
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1 min
In Martinique, the Assembly voted this Friday on the creation of a fertility bonus.
Up to 3000 euros to encourage women to have more children.
Because the population has been in free fall for ten years.
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The elected officials seek the parade to counter what they qualify as "
demographic haemorrhage
".
and for good reason: Martinique has lost 10% of its inhabitants over the last decade.
“
There are two phenomena that combine: first, a sharp drop in births.
The fertility rate for women has fallen from six children per woman in the 1960s to less than 1.9 children today.
The second thing is that we have an increase in mortality with the aging of the population
, ”explains Claude-Valentin Marie, demographer, specialist in the West Indies.
Due to a lack of jobs, young people are leaving Martinique for the metropolis.
And they stay there.
So, for Olivier Subrie, professor of economics at the University of Paris-Saclay, this fertility bonus first responds to an economic emergency: "
The main factor that explains the economic decline in Martinique is indeed the lack labor.
We're going to run out of hands.
»
But for the economist, the financial incentive will not be enough: “
To have a child, you must also be able to have a home that allows him to accommodate him, therefore larger.
However, we have problems accessing housing.
It also means having the means for a crèche or other structures... Money will not be the only answer.
»
Especially since some breeding programs have failed in the past.
This is the case in Germany, or in Japan.
■
The Egyptian demographic bomb
With our correspondent in Cairo,
Alexandre Buccianti
The Egyptian government is considering a plan to grant bonuses to families with no more than two children.
Until now, it was the punitive measures that were applied: no additional aid or subsidies for the fourth child.
The number of Egyptians living in Egypt is 104 million to which must be added nearly 8 million expatriates.
The demographic explosion is considered by the authorities as a danger equivalent to terrorism.
The first alarm bells sounded in 1975 when the number of Egyptians exceeded 40 million, twice as many as in 1950. We then spoke of a ticking time bomb.
Today, the population growth is one million people every seven months.
Each year, it is therefore necessary to build several thousand schools and hire an army of teachers to welcome more than one and a half million new pupils.
We must also create more than a million new jobs for young people entering the labor market.
A challenge that no government has been able to meet since the 1950s. As a result, the gap is only widening.
Classes are increasingly overloaded: sometimes there are more than 70 students per class.
As for unemployment,
it crosses 60% among 15 to 29 year olds.
The bomb exploded.
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