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Birth rates have dropped drastically in Chile. It could hold clues to U.S.'s future

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Birth rates are falling here in the US and many parts of the world. Much of the attention has focused on declining populations in East Asia and Europe, but the number of babies being born in Latin America is also plummeting. NPR's Brian Mann traveled to Chile's capital, Santiago, where he found the debate over children and population could foreshadow the national debate growing in the U.S.

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing in Spanish).

BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: I'm walking through a market in a working-class neighborhood in Santiago. The snowcapped Andes Mountains glow in the distance. But here on the street, it's all business. Marisol Romero (ph) is selling little dolls and flowers.

MARISOL ROMERO: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: I'm here the week before Mother's Day, and Romero is hoping shoppers will buy presents for their moms. She's in her 50s and comes from a big family. She was one of eight kids. I ask how many children she had.

ROMERO: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: Why did you choose to have only two and not more?

ROMERO: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: "Life is expensive," she says.

So if you had money freedom, you would maybe have had more.

ROMERO: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: Romero tells me she wanted five kids but settled for two. I've come to Chile because this country's demographic shift in many ways mirrors trends in the United States. The total fertility rate in the U.S. - the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime - has dropped to its lowest level ever, around 1.6. That's well below the threshold of 2.1 kids researchers say is needed to maintain a stable population. Chile was at that level a decade ago, but the country's total fertility rate has plunged to just one child per woman. Martina Yopo Diaz is a sociologist at Santiago's Catholic University.

MARTINA YOPO DIAZ: Today we have a total fertility rate that is lower than most European countries, lower than Japan's.

MANN: The latest United Nations report found more than 1 in 10 countries around the world now have Chile's kind of hyperlow fertility. Yopo Diaz and other experts think life in Chile could change fast as the population ages and begins to shrink.

YOPO DIAZ: I think this has huge implications for which we're not prepared as a society. Key social systems, from the economy to the labor market to pensions, are based on the principle that there will be new generations to replace the old ones. But now we see that that principle is no longer something that we can, you know, take as given.

(CROSSTALK)

MANN: It's unclear whether the U.S. fertility rate will keep dropping as Chile's has done. But there's one way the two countries are similar. A fast-growing number of women in the U.S. and Chile are delaying motherhood much later in life, and in many cases opting out altogether.

FLORENCIA CONTRERAS: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: I meet Florencia Contreras (ph), who's 23, on the street with her friends near the university in Santiago, where they're art students. Contreras tells me, no, she doesn't want kids.

CONTRERAS: (Through interpreter) I don't want it to sound ugly, but I feel like motherhood is a burden.

MANN: Her fellow student, Macarena Lagos (ph), who's 19, speaks up.

MACARENA LAGOS: (Through interpreter) I don't want kids, either. Not at all.

MANN: They tell me they think being mothers would mean a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy over their bodies and their lives. Now, there's a second way the birth rate debate in Chile sounds a lot like the U.S. Some politicians in Chile - conservatives and leaders on the far right - have begun talking about ways to encourage women to have more babies. Lagos says this pressure makes her angry.

LAGOS: (Through interpreter) No matter what the government does, it's still my decision - my own. No matter what the government does, I don't think my decision would change.

MANN: It's important to say many officials in Chile's current progressive government see this independence for women, this resistance to traditional roles, not as a problem but as a sign of hard-won progress. Antonia Orellana is Chile's minister of women and gender equity.

ANTONIA ORELLANA: We have to discuss this as a government who has a commitment with the feminist ideas.

MANN: Orellana acknowledges Chile's plunging birth rate is a real concern for the country's economy and social fabric. But she says it's important to focus also on the rising number of women getting college degrees and entering the workforce. Orellana points to a third way the trend in Chile parallels what's happening in the U.S. - success reducing birth rates among adolescents.

ORELLANA: We have almost erased the teen pregnancy within the last 20 years.

MANN: Conservative leaders in Chile see birth rates as a much more immediate crisis. Jose Antonio Kast is a leading populist candidate in this year's presidential race. He posted a campaign video celebrating what he describes as women's traditional role as mothers.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOSE ANTONIO KAST: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: "Mothers are essential. The mother-child bond is tremendous," Kast says. "A society that wants to develop well needs this emotional bond."

Chile's influential Roman Catholic Church has also taken up the cause of motherhood and population.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FERNANDO CHOMALI: (Speaking Spanish).

MANN: In an interview with the national TV station TVN, the archbishop of Santiago, Fernando Chomali, called these population trends an urgent problem. "The birth rate we have today," he warned, "is practically zero."

There's a fourth way this debate over population in Chile sounds a lot like what's happening in the U.S., and that's the question of immigration. Until recently, Chile took in a lot of refugees from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries. Now many conservatives here want to close Chile's borders and deport migrants. Sociologist Martina Yopo Diaz says that kind of policy would send Chile's birth rate plunging even lower.

YOPO DIAZ: One out of 5 children that are born in Chile are born to foreign mothers. In the northern regions of the country, it's 1 out of 2.

MANN: In the U.S., meanwhile, a study by the Brookings Institution found without a lot of migrants and the children of migrants, the United States could lose a third of its population in this century. But in Chile, as in the U.S., Yopo Diaz says many on the right now view migrants not as a positive, but as a threat - a kind of invasion.

YOPO DIAZ: This is creating very important cultural and social tensions in the country. There's a lot of people fueling right-wing discourses about anxieties about, you know, that we are becoming extinguished as a nation.

MANN: While in Santiago, I heard one more way Chile's conversation about birth rates and babies matches what NPR is finding in the U.S. Politicians and activists often make these demographic trends sound apocalyptic. But when we talk to women, it doesn't sound grim at all. In Santiago, most women tell me they see their country changing in big ways, but they're happy to be making their own choices. I ask Marisol Romero, the shopkeeper in the market, whether her decision to have fewer children made her sad. She smiles and shakes her head.

ROMERO: (Through interpreter) No, because I accepted it. And I love my children and now my grandchildren very much.

MANN: Romero says her two kids have now decided to have only one baby each - an even smaller version of family she says already feels normal.

Brian Mann, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Brian Mann is NPR's first national addiction correspondent. He also covers breaking news in the U.S. and around the world.