Winona Ryder (originally aired May 18, 2002)
Cuba (last updated May 19, 2002) (back to top)
Ruled by Fidel Castro as a communist state since 1959, the island country of Cuba has had tense relations with the United States for most of the past four decades. With the loss of Soviet Union support during the Cold War, Cuba suffered recession and has taken steps to open its economy, though Cuba continues to blame its troubles on the U.S. sanctions that have been in place since 1960.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Cuba for five days in mid-May 2002, marking the first visit by any current or former high-level American leader during Castro's reign (the last sitting president to visit Cuba was Calvin Coolidge in 1928, and the last Secretary of State to visit was Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. in 1945). During his visit, Carter gave a May 14 speech in which he called for democratic reforms and a normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States.
Shortly before Carter's visit, a Bush administration official said in early May 2002 in a speech that Cuba had developed some biological warfare capabilities. Secretary of State Colin Powell subsequently backed away from such statements, and Carter said he had not been briefed about any such developments before his trip. Similarly, while the State Department has called Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism due to its declining support of Latin American insurgents, the Central Intelligence Agency did not mention Cuba at all in its January 30, 2002 report to Congress on countries developing weapons of mass destruction; it did mention Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, India, Pakistan and Egypt.
Cuba survived for many years due to Soviet economic and military support, and its economy, which is still largely state-operated, has been hit hard by the loss of that support. The country reportedly suffered a decline in gross domestic product of at least 35 percent between 1989 and 1993 due to the loss of Soviet subsidies. To alleviate its economic crisis, Cuba has taken steps such as opening the country to tourism, legalizing the dollar, and seeking foreign investment. Cuba had an estimated GDP per capita of $1,700 in 2000 and its economy was mostly service-based. Its major sources of foreign money now are tourism and sugar.
As a consequence of Cuba's economic troubles, more Cubans have tried immigrating to the United States in recent years, which has resulted in an end to the more or less open-door policy the United States had towards Cuban refugees in the Cold War. The United States now interdicts Cuban migrants and has returned many. During a mass migration emergency in 1994, the Coast Guard interdicted about 30,000 Cubans through its Operation Able Vigil in a roughly one-month period, interdicting a high of 3,253 would-be refugees in one day.
On September 10, 1994, the United States then reached an agreement with Cuba. First, the United States reaffirmed its earlier decision to stop accepting refugees automatically, and Cuba agreed to prevent unsafe departures using mainly persuasive means. Both governments also agreed to take measures against Cuban hijackers of ships and aircraft. Finally, the United States agreed to issue 20,000 entry visas a year, thus providing a regular means of leaving the country for the United States.
By the beginning of 1995, the number of departures from Cuba by sea had fallen dramatically, but there were still more than 30,000 rafters still held at the two U.S. facilities. The two governments then argeed in May 1995 to admit most of the rafters still detained and to return subsequent rafters to Cuba following a brief screening procedure.
The United States admitted about 10,000 Cuban immigrants a year in the early 1990s, with a high of 33,587 in 1997, and then a decline by half in 1998. From 1992 to 1994, the United States admitted about 3,000 refugees from Cuba a year, peaking at 6,133 in 1995, and then falling down to 1,587 in 1998. Even in 1995, Cubans received only a small part (roughly 6 percent) of the allotted spaces for refugees brought to the United States; the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Vietnam and Somalia all provided two to 15 times as many refugees each.
Cuba has softened its position on religion over the course of Castro's tenure. The Cuban state under Castro was officially atheist until the early 1990s, but has allowed Cuban people to practice their religion somewhat more freely since then. Pope John Paul II's visit in 1996 symbolized a major recognition of the Catholic Church's presence in the country.
The United States recognized the Castro government in 1959 but withdrew in steps once Cuba began its move towards communism; President Dwight Eisenhower first imposed sanctions in 1960 and broke diplomatic relations in 1961. The Bay of Pigs incident followed in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
For more on immigration policy, go here.
Sources: The State Department has a background note on Cuba on-line here. The CIA's World Factbook entry on Cuba is on-line here and its January 30, 2002 report to Congress is on-line here. A World Bank report on Cuba's economy in the late 1990s is on-line here. The State Department's Historian has information on foreign visits by the President and the Secretary of State on-line here. The 1998 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (available on-line here). Michael J. McBride, The evolution of U.S. immigration and refugee policy: public opinion, domestic politics, and UNHCR, Working Paper No. 3, published in May 1999 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Centre for Documentation and Research (available on-line here). An overview of the Coast Guard's marine interdiction is available here and statistics are available here. President Jimmy Carter's May 14, 2002 speech in Cuba is available via the Carter Center, on-line here.
Fertility and Age (last updated May 19, 2002) (back to top)
At least 20 percent of women now wait to have their first child until after age 35, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. The median age for a woman having her first child has gradually gone up over recent decades and was 24.3 in 1998, compared to 22.0 in 1972.
Birth rates for women aged 30 have risen since the early 1980s. In 1998, women aged 30-34 had a birth rate of 87.4 births per 1,000 women, women aged 35-39 had a birth rate of 37.4, and women aged 40-44 had a birth rate of 7.3. About three-quarters of the births in 1998 were to mothers aged 15-29; 15.8 percent of the births that year were to mothers aged 30-34 and 5.9 percent were to mothers aged 35-39.
A recent book by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, "Creating a Life," has drawn new attention to women's decisions to delay pregnancy in order to establish more financial stability or careers before becoming mothers. Her book is based on a study conducted in January 2001 by the National Parenting Association, a non-profit group Hewlett founded in 1993.
According to the NPA study, 33 percent of "high-achieving" women are childless at ages 41-55, compared to 25 percent of "high-achieving" men. The figure rises to 42 percent in corporate America and 43 percent in academia. The study also showed that 60 percent of women in the older age group who were "high-achieving" are married, compared to 76 percent of men. (The study defined "high-achieving" as those earning over $55,000 or $65,000, depending on age.)
Younger women, according to the study, have misconceptions about their abilities to delay having a child. According to the survey, 89 percent of young "high-achieving" women believe they will be able to get pregnant into their forties, which is possible but with increasing risks.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine warns that age may affect a woman's ability to conceive, even with the help of recent advanced infertility treatments. As a woman ages, her ovary may become less responsive to the hormones critical for developing the uterus to which an embryo must attach, the remaining eggs in her ovaries may become less capable of fertilization by sperm (women have about 300,000 eggs in their ovary at puberty and usually have only a few thousand remaining by menopause), and she has more time to develop gynecological disorders that may decrease fertility. According to the ASRM, about one-third of couples in which the woman is age 35 or older will have problems with fertility, and about two-thirds of women will not be able to get pregnant spontaneously by the age of 40.
Age can also affect a woman's ability to bring a healthy child to birth. With age, women have greater risks of miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) and of giving birth to a child with a chromosomal abnormality, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
For information on teen pregnancies, go here. For information on general health topics, go here.
Sources: Statistics as to birth rates from 1970 to 1998, births in 1998, and the median age in 1998 for a woman having her first child are drawn from a National Vital Statistic Report published on March 28, 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control, "Births: Final Data for 1998," available on-line here. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine is on-line here; a 1996 fact sheet and a 1996 patient information booklet on the connection between age and fertility are available on-line here and here. The April 15, 2002 press release announcing the findings of the NPA survey that Hewlett's book is based on is on-line here.
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