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Dominican Republic POPULATION
Dominican Republic - Unavailable
Figure 3. Estimated Population Distribution by
Age and Sex, 1990
Source: Based on information from Dominican Republic, Oficina
Nacional de Estadística, La República Dominicana en Cifras,
1987, 14, Santo Domingo, 1987, 49, 51.
Size and Growth
It has been estimated that the country's total
population in
mid-1990 will total slightly more than 7 million
(see Dominican Republic - fig. 3).
Growth had been high since official census taking began in
1920.
The rate peaked during the 1950s at 3.6 percent per year.
During
the 1960s and the 1970s, the population grew at 2.9
percent
annually; by the mid-1980s, the rate was thought to be
roughly
2.5 percent.
The total fertility rate, although still relatively
high,
declined substantially in the 1970s. Official estimates
indicated
that half of all married women used contraceptives. Both
the
Dominican Republic's continued high population growth
rates and
field studies belied this figure, however.
The government began supporting family planning in
1967, but
clinics were concentrated in the cities and larger towns.
Both
the Secretariat of State for Public Health and Social
Welfare
(Secretaria de Estado de Salud Pública y Asistencia
Social--
SESPAS) and the National Population and Family Council
(Consejo
Nacional de Población y Familia--CNPF) offered family
planning
services. By the 1980s, both organizations were trying to
make
their programs more responsive to the needs of rural
families.
Birth control encountered strong resistance from both
sexes,
especially in the countryside and the smaller cities.
Although
women did use a variety of substances believed to be
contraceptives or abortifacients, there was considerable
misinformation about family planning. Many men believed
birth
control threatened their masculinity; some women refused
to use
contraception because some methods produced nausea and
other side
effects. International migrants were more aware of the
available
options, and some women migrants did use modern
contraceptives.
The traditional (non-administrative) subregions of the
country included Valdesia and Yuma in the southeast,
Enriquillo
and Del Valle in the southwest, and the Central Cibao, the
Eastern Cibao, and the Western Cibao in the north. The
subregion
of densest settlement was Valdesia on the southern coast,
which
contained the nation's capital and more than 40 percent of
the
population. Roughly one-third of all Dominicans lived in
the
National District. The other major area of settlement was
the
Central Cibao, which accounted for more than 20 percent of
total
population (see
table 2, Appendix A).
Administrations had attempted to control both
population
growth and its distribution since the 1950s. The Trujillo
regime
fostered agricultural colonies scattered throughout the
countryside and strung along the western frontier with
Haiti.
Some were coupled with irrigation projects.
Beginning in the late 1970s, the government also set up
industrial free zones around the country. Although the
desire to
increase employment was the government's primary
motivation, the
establishment of free zones had as a secondary goal the
dispersal
of industrialization, and thus migration, away from Santo
Domingo
(see Dominican Republic - Manufacturing
, ch. 3). Intercensal growth rates on
the subregional and the provincial levels reflected these trends.
Puerto
Plata grew at more than twice the rate of the nation as a
whole
in the 1970s. The southeast, especially the National
District,
expanded much faster than most of the country, as did La
Romana.
Data as of December 1989
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