Shorter Lives

The fecundity rate has declined dramatically from the 60s and 70s when every Brazilian woman had an average of six kids.

Elma Lia Nascimento

Due to an increase in violent death victimizing youngsters and children, men in Brazil, according to the latest data from the IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística—Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) have lost three years in their life expectancy. This information is revealed in the 1999 Social Indicators Synthesis. While life expectancy is 68.1 years for the population in general, women should expect to live 72.1 years compared to the 64.3 years for men.

The good news is that life expectancy has increased for six years since 1980 when Brazilians were expected to live 62 years. But such results have also to do with where Brazilians live. While southern Brazilians can expect to live up to 70.6 percent, those born in the Northeast shouldn't expect more than 65.1. Even here there is some good news when we know that the gap between North and South used to be larger in the past.

The IBGE study reveals that in 1998 around 70 percent of the deaths of youngsters aged 15 to 19 were not natural. In the Midwest, 49.3 percent of the kids who died between the ages of 5 and 9 had violent death. In the state of Roraima the percentage of kids who suffered violent death was 54.5 percent, the highest rate in the country for children 5 to 9 years old.

The rate of demographic increase has stabilized around 1.3 percent, the same it was in 1997, with projections that this rate will continually fall to 1.1 percent in 2010 and then 0.8 percent in 2020. The fecundity rate (there are now 2.4 children per woman nationwide) has declined dramatically from the 60s and 70s when every Brazilian woman had an average of six kids. The numbers also show that the more educated the woman the less children she has. The lowest fecundity rate was registered in Rio; where there is in average 1.9 kids for every mother.

After decades dealing with the challenges of educating and offering jobs to its youth, Brazil will more and more will face the problem of the growing number of elderly. While there are 13.2 million people over the age of 60 today (7.8 percent of the population), this contingent should grow to 30 million by 2025, according to IBGE's projections.

Finding jobs will continue to be a challenge in 2025, instead of 104.5 million people looking for jobs, Brazil will have 138 million searching. Just getting a job would not be enough for those who are trying to find a place to work today. That is because 30 million who have a job are making less than the monthly minimum wage, which is $84 today. The average income for the upper 10 percent of workers today (7.6 million Brazilians) is $1378. 40 percent workers on the bottom level make an average of $70 a month.

The color factor is also more than evident in income distribution. Twelve percent of families whose head of household is white survive with half of the monthly minimum wage per capita. In families headed by blacks there are 30.4 percent of them that have to live on the same amount. The IBGE data also reveal that the illiteracy rate for whites (8.8 percent) in Brazil is almost three times larger for blacks (21.5 percent).

According to Sérgio Besserman Vianna, IBGE's president, " The inequality is apparent in any aspect that we observe: income, region, sex, race. Several social indicators improve but the inequality does not decrease. This is a constant trait of the Brazilian society, which is not the result of the present circumstances but of 500 years of an unjust history."

Among the positive data revealed by the new IBGE report is the fact that 94.7 percent of children between the ages of 7 and 14 are in schools today. This does not hide the fact that 30.5 percent of Brazilians who are 15 or older are functionally illiterate, incapable of understanding simple forms or medicine information, as an example.

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