News
| Apr 15, 2021

Jamaican women more likely to outlive men—UNFPA report

Gavin Riley

Gavin Riley / Our Today

administrator
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Jamaican national flag. (Photo: Tumblr.com)

Life expectancy at birth for Jamaicans has dropped slightly to 74.5 years, according to the latest findings by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The UNFPA, releasing the 2021 edition of its State of World Population (SoWP) report on Wednesday (April 14), surmised that on average, Jamaican women were expected to live to age 78 and for men to die at age 73.

In its 2020 report, the UNFPA said that life expectancy at birth in Jamaica stood at an average of 75 years. There was no distinction between men and women in the previous report.

The new SoWP data, which puts Jamaica’s population at three million this year, found that within the last five years, the population was estimated to have grown 0.5 per cent.

The life expectancy rate for Jamaican men was higher than the world average (of 71 years), on par with Latin American and the Caribbean (73), but lower compared to the most developed regions (77).

In 2021, the average life expectancy rate at birth for women globally is estimated at 75 years. However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, women are estimated to live to age 79—the highest within the six UNFPA regions.

In its analysis of the population, the 2021 SoWP report found that most of Jamaica’s people, some 67.6 per cent, were between the ages of 15 and 64 years.

Life expectancy estimates for women across Latin America and the Caribbean, at 79 years, were the highest across all six global geographical regions analysed by the UNFPA. (Photo: Nations Online Project)

Elderly Jamaicans aged 65 and older constituted the smallest segment of the local population, representing 9.3 of all persons, according to the UNFPA; 23.1 per cent was made up of individuals between zero and 14 years.

Further dissecting overlapping age groups, the report said people aged 10 to 19 years accounted for 15.5 per cent of the population, and those aged 10 to 24 years accounted for 24.1 per cent.

The report put Jamaica’s total fertility rate (number of children born per woman if she lived to end of childbearing years) at 1.9 per cent.

When it came to the four broad topics and 13 components that were tracked by “indicator 5.6.2” in the report, Jamaica was unranked and left scoreless.

The four broad topics were contraception and family planning, sexual health and wellbeing, maternity care, and comprehensive sexual education.

This indicator 5.6.2 captures information on the existence of a supportive law and also on some additional factors that might impede that law’s positive impact, according to the report.

“Data on all of these aspects are used to calculate a value for each country for each of the 13 components, which are then aggregated up to the four broad topics and then to an overall value,” it explained.

Among all countries that reported data for this indicator, the five countries with the highest overall value were Sweden (100), Uruguay (99), Cambodia (98), Finland (98) and the Netherlands (98). The five countries with the lowest values are South Sudan (16), Trinidad and Tobago (32), Libya (33), Iraq (39) and Belize (42).

“Overall values for indicator 5.6.2 shows that the existence of supportive sexual and reproductive health laws and regulations does not depend on a country’s income level,” the SoWP report continued.

(Photo: National Libary of Jamaica)

The data showed that up to 2017, Jamaica experienced as many as 80 deaths per 100,000 live births.

It also revealed that between 2003 and 2018, the island’s adolescent birth rate per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 was 52 per cent.

“Child marriage by age 18” was estimated to be at eight per cent between 2005 and 2019.

There were no reports of female genital mutilation and total net enrolment rate at primary and education institutions was estimated at 83 and 82 per cent respectively.

In the wider Caribbean, Martinique has the highest life expectancy averages from birth, with Barbados standing atop rankings in CARICOM.

See table for 2021 life expectancy estimates across the Caribbean, according to UNFPA:

Country/Territory*Estimated populationAverage life expectancy Expectancy at birth, menExpectancy at birth, women
Martinique400,00083 years80 years86 years
US Virgin Islands100,00080.57883
Barbados300,00079.57881
Puerto Rico2.8 million80.57784
French Guiana300,000807783
Cuba11.3 million797781
Curaçao200,000797682
Antigua and Barbuda100,000777678
St Lucia200,00076.57578
Aruba100,00076.57479
Jamaica3.0 million74.57376
Belize400,00074.57278
The Bahamas400,000747276
Dominican Republic11.0 million74.57178
Trinidad and Tobago1.4 million73.57176
St Vincent and the Grenadines100,000737175
Grenada100,00072.57075
Suriname600,000726975
Guyana800,000706773
Haiti11.5 million64.56267

*NB: Four other territories, Dominica, Turks and Caicos Islands, St Kitts and Nevis and Sint Maarten were included in the 2021 State of World Population report, however, the UNFPA indicated it had insufficient/zero data to give life expectancy estimates.

Comments

What To Read Next