Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton has again warned that the country must find ways to encourage more people to have children before the population shrinks to dangerous levels.  “We need to encourage more births in whatever way, shape, or form,” Tufton said, adding that a plummeting birth rate is threatening “life as we know it”. The minister was speaking at a Maternal and Child Health Forum hosted by the Rotary Club of Kingston at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston. He said the issue goes far beyond fertility and has become a major socio-economic concern. “We’ve heard the clinical discussion around fertility… but we have a very critical socio-economic challenge that we actually need to pay more attention to,” the minister said. Tufton noted that Jamaica’s birth rate has been falling steadily for decades. He noted that annual births have dropped from between 60,000 and 70,000 during the 1960s and 1970s to about 40,000 in 2010, 33,000 in 2020, and fewer than 30,000 last year. He said the country’s fertility rate is now below the population replacement level and, when combined with migration, could result in Jamaica’s population declining over the next decade. “The reason why it has to be dealt with this way, from a planning perspective, and why we need to encourage more births in whatever way, shape, or form, is because it does threaten life as we know it,” Tufton said. “If you look at the data, that’s the trajectory, that’s the direction in which it’s going,” he added. The minister disclosed that the Government is developing a broad strategy to tackle the problem and promote long-term demographic and economic sustainability. Earlier this year, Tufton said in Parliament that the country’s fertility rate has now fallen to approximately 1.3 children per woman, significantly below the replacement level of 2.1.  He said that over the next two years, the ministry will lead conversations aimed at increasing reproduction on the island. “The Government is not asking Jamaicans to have children for statistical reasons. It is committed to building conditions where family formation is genuinely affordable, structurally supported, and celebrated,” he said.