População: a mutante dinâmica da população brasileira

Abstract

The Brazil of 2018 undergoes a socioeconomic turbulence of a considerable dimension at the same time it goes through demographic changes, present here for more than half a century. Indeed, there is a relationship between both phenomena that, when made explicit, can contribute to better understand the current Brazilian context. The demographic changes in the country, as it is known, have started a little before the second decade of the 20th Century, when medical and technological breakthroughs exerted an impact on health, especially in child health, making mortality levels start falling slowly. A little later, fertility declination began, at a greater pace than predicted by specialists. The estimate, today seen as conservative, of achieving the population replacement level, with couples having enough children to recompose the generations – something around 2.1 children per women – was as well surpassed before expected.