Rio de Janeiro
BRAZIL has become one of the developing world鈥檚 great successes at
reducing population growth鈥攂ut more by accident than design, says a
demographer at Harvard University. While countries such as India have made
concerted efforts to reduce birth rates, Brazil has had better results without
really trying, says George Martine, a visiting scholar at Harvard鈥檚 Center of
Population and Development Studies.
Brazil鈥檚 population growth rate has dropped from 2.99 per cent a year between
1951 and 1960 to 1.93 per cent a year between 1981 and 1990, and Brazilian women
now have only 2.7 children on average. Martine says this figure may have fallen
still further since 1990, an achievement that makes it the envy of many other
Third World countries. 鈥淏razil has never had a family planning programme, yet
the decline in the fertility rate has been twice as fast as that of India,鈥� says
Martine.
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Martine puts it down to, among other things, soap operas and credit
programmes introduced in the 1970s. Both played an important, albeit indirect,
role in lowering the birth rate. Brazil is one of the world鈥檚 biggest producers
of soap operas, or novelas, which first became popular in the late
1960s. Globo, Brazil鈥檚 most popular television network, shows three hours of
soaps six nights a week, while three other companies all show at least one hour
a night. Most soaps are based on wealthy characters living the high life in big
cities.
鈥淎lthough they have never really tried to work in a message towards the
problems of reproduction, they portray middle and upper class values . . . not
many children, different attitudes towards sex, women working,鈥� says Martine.
鈥淭hey sent this image to all parts of Brazil. It was an indirect effect. It made
people conscious of other patterns of behaviour and other values, which were put
into a very attractive package.鈥�
The credit programmes, in which people could buy small items, such as shoes,
in regular instalments, were also introduced in the 1970s to try to encourage
poorer segments of the population to become consumers. 鈥淭his led to an enormous
change in consumption patterns and consumption was incompatible with unlimited
procreation,鈥� says Martine.
Martine, who has studied Brazilian population growth for 20 years, expects
the country鈥檚 population, currently around 150 million, to stabilise in the
first quarter of the next century at around 250 million.