GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Be­hind the head­line promise of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) new ba­by grant ini­tia­tive lies a sober­ing eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty.

Far from be­ing a rou­tine wel­fare boost, the grant re­flects the se­vere fi­nan­cial hur­dles—from soar­ing prices for ba­sic sup­plies to stag­nant wage growth and per­sis­tent un­der­em­ploy­ment—that make start­ing a fam­i­ly an in­creas­ing­ly daunt­ing prospect.

These macro-lev­el pres­sures mir­ror the per­son­al choic­es.

“Liv­ing in this econ­o­my is hard enough as it is. When you fac­tor in soar­ing food costs and ed­u­ca­tion, bring­ing up a child is a life­time com­mit­ment that I am just not pre­pared to take on,” shared a young To­bag­on­ian woman on her de­ci­sion to re­main child­free.

Her sen­ti­ment cap­tures the skep­ti­cism sur­round­ing the pro­posed fi­nan­cial life­line.

While the month­ly stipend of­fers re­lief for par­ents strug­gling with the ris­ing costs of di­a­pers, health­care and ba­sic child­care, econ­o­mist Dr Dave Seer­at­tan, for­mer THA pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus and chair­man of the To­ba­go Cham­ber of Com­merce Cur­tis Williams—warn that a check in the mail can­not sin­gle-hand­ed­ly in­spire con­fi­dence in the fu­ture.

In­stead, they ar­gue that re­vers­ing this deep de­mo­graph­ic shift re­quires more than a tem­po­rary safe­ty net; it de­mands af­ford­able hous­ing, ac­ces­si­ble com­mu­ni­ty sup­port sys­tems, and sta­ble ca­reer paths so young fam­i­lies could tru­ly af­ford to lay down roots.

On Tues­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine an­nounced the ba­by grant formed part of the THA’s Uni­ver­sal Child Ben­e­fit Pro­gramme of $500 a month, which could on­ly be ac­cessed by To­bag­o­ni­ans and would be avail­able un­til the child is five years old.

It is al­so retroac­tive to Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

It seeks to ad­dress the is­land’s de­clin­ing birthrate, which has fall­en by more than 50 per cent as Sec­re­tary of Health and Well­ness Dr Faith Breb­nor told Guardian Me­dia that the is­land cur­rent­ly av­er­ages be­tween 30 and 40 births per month.

The ba­by grant was a cam­paign promise by the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) ahead of the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions.

On a po­lit­i­cal plat­form last year, Au­gus­tine had said To­ba­go’s birthrate had dropped by over 50 per cent, de­clin­ing from over 900 an­nu­al­ly to just over 400.

With a mean of 35 births per month, the pro­gramme would cost the THA $17,500 each month and $210,000 an­nu­al­ly.

Struc­tur­al de­mo­graph­ic de­cline

The sharp drop in lo­cal births re­flects a much broad­er and more en­trenched cri­sis grip­ping the re­gion as a whole as Seer­at­tan echoed grow­ing con­cerns sur­round­ing the phe­nom­e­non of age­ing pop­u­la­tions, point­ing out that a com­pound­ing mix­ture of low birth rates and ris­ing life ex­pectan­cy is fast be­com­ing one of the most se­ri­ous chal­lenges con­fronting na­tions world­wide.

He not­ed that alarm raised by Far­ley re­gard­ing this de­mo­graph­ic tran­si­tion is not on­ly time­ly, but deeply war­rant­ed.

Cit­ing da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions’ World Pop­u­la­tion Prospects 2024, Seer­at­tan ob­served that T&T’s birth rate dropped from 5.4 chil­dren per woman in 1960 to 1.5 in 2024.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this dy­nam­ic once en­trenched is near­ly im­pos­si­ble to re­verse since it nor­mal­ly takes decades to de­vel­op and is dri­ven by so­ci­etal norms which be­come es­tab­lished over long pe­ri­ods,” he ex­plained.

Seer­at­tan al­so cau­tioned that the neg­a­tive im­pact of this pop­u­la­tion drag spans mul­ti­ple crit­i­cal ar­eas, threat­en­ing the coun­try’s labour mar­ket, broad­er eco­nom­ic growth, gov­ern­ment bal­ance sheets and the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of pen­sion sys­tems.

Be­yond di­rect pay­outs

With these sys­temic dri­vers run­ning so deep, Tsoiafatt An­gus ar­gued that state in­ter­ven­tions must ex­tend far be­yond ba­sic fi­nan­cial stipends, call­ing for a clear as­sess­ment of what it takes to have a child to­day.

“When you look at the cost of hav­ing chil­dren, I don’t know if $500 tru­ly is enough for any fam­i­ly to go out there and say, okay, I am start­ing, I’m go­ing to have a new child or an ad­di­tion­al child to the house­hold with this $500,” she ex­plained.

She not­ed that the eco­nom­ic tim­ing makes the ini­tia­tive even more chal­leng­ing for strug­gling house­holds.

“Es­pe­cial­ly at a time when the econ­o­my is in a nose­dive and per­sons are be­ing laid off left, right, and cen­tre,” she said adding, “We just saw the 1,000 per­sons be­ing laid off. So are we ex­clud­ing those per­sons from want­i­ng to do this?”

High­light­ing the dis­par­i­ty be­tween the stipend and wide­spread em­ploy­ment un­cer­tain­ty, Tsoiafatt An­gus stressed the need for a more re­al­is­tic pol­i­cy ap­proach say­ing, “Be­cause $500 ver­sus not hav­ing a job, I re­al­ly don’t know how we equate in the num­bers. Any­thing we do, we must have it make sense.”

Fur­ther she said the out-of-pock­et re­al­i­ties fac­ing mod­ern par­ents must al­so be reco­go­nised.

“In terms of dri­ving per­sons as an in­cen­tive, I would be very cau­tious to go out and pop­u­late with just the $500, know­ing how many oth­er things that are af­fect­ed in the mean­time,” Tsoiafatt An­gus stat­ed.

Point­ing di­rect­ly to crit­i­cal gaps in pub­lic ser­vices, she ques­tioned whether di­rect fi­nan­cial sup­port alone could pro­tect fam­i­lies from long-term ex­pens­es.

“For in­stance, grant­ed you’re giv­ing the $500, but is that the on­ly thing you’re do­ing? What about our health­care sys­tem? What about ear­ly screen­ing for these chil­dren?” she asked not­ing, “Many chil­dren now are com­ing out with a lot of med­ical chal­lenges. How are we sup­port­ing them in terms of their spe­cial needs so that the par­ents are not out of pock­et now deal­ing with these med­ical is­sues and al­so ed­u­ca­tion­al is­sues for the chil­dren in the fu­ture? So it can­not just be we give you $500.”

Her per­spec­tive points to the broad­er re­al­i­ty that ba­sic month­ly stipends are quick­ly swal­lowed up by the soar­ing costs of med­ical care, spe­cialised ther­a­py, and ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion, leav­ing par­ents with­out sus­tained struc­tur­al safe­ty nets.

Fis­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and clear bench­marks

Be­yond so­cial pol­i­cy ad­vo­cates, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is equal­ly skep­ti­cal of di­rect cash trans­fers, in­sist­ing that any state ex­pen­di­ture be tied to strict fis­cal over­sight and clear de­vel­op­men­tal goals as Cur­tis Williams, pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, called for strict ac­count­abil­i­ty, fis­cal pru­dence and a fo­cus on core eco­nom­ic fun­da­men­tals.

“I would sup­port the pro­gramme be­ing pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly re­viewed and mea­sured against clear out­comes,” Williams em­pha­sised say­ing, “We should de­ter­mine whether it is ac­tu­al­ly af­fect­ing birthrates and im­prov­ing fam­i­ly wel­fare. If it is not achiev­ing those ob­jec­tives, then the pol­i­cy should be ad­just­ed rather than be­com­ing an open-end­ed ex­pen­di­ture.”

Williams stressed that state re­lief must be linked to gen­uine eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, job cre­ation and hous­ing on the is­land.

“Sup­port­ing fam­i­lies is im­por­tant, but a $500 grant can­not sub­sti­tute for jobs, af­ford­able hous­ing and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty. The pro­gramme must be sus­tain­able, mea­sur­able and part of a wider strat­e­gy for To­ba­go’s pop­u­la­tion and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” he added.

In­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence with pro-na­tal poli­cies

The doubts raised line up with lessons drawn from oth­er coun­tries that have tried sim­i­lar strate­gies with lit­tle suc­cess as Seer­at­tan’s eco­nom­ic analy­sis re­in­forces Tsoiafatt An­gus’s and Williams’ as­sess­ments that pro-na­tal cash in­cen­tives glob­al­ly have con­sis­tent­ly failed to al­ter birthrate trends.

“At­tempts to in­crease the birth rate have gen­er­al­ly been un­suc­cess­ful be­cause the in­cen­tives of­fered to have more chil­dren pale in com­par­i­son to the in­cen­tives for women to have few­er chil­dren,” Seer­at­tan point­ed out, adding, “The in­cen­tives to have less chil­dren are dri­ven by long term so­ci­etal trends such as gen­der norms, work life bal­ance, the cost of ed­u­ca­tion and health­care and eco­nom­ic prospects gen­er­al­ly.”

He fur­ther ex­plained that poli­cies that have worked to some ex­tent in­clude af­ford­able child­care and paid parental leave, where­as di­rect cash pro­grammes, like the one be­ing in­tro­duced, have large­ly been un­suc­cess­ful in re­vers­ing the trend de­cline in birth rates.

He not­ed that the Asian ex­pe­ri­ence in par­tic­u­lar has demon­strat­ed how rel­a­tive­ly in­ef­fec­tive these po­ten­tial­ly ex­pen­sive pro­grammes have been.

High­ly de­vel­oped Asian economies, in­clud­ing South Ko­rea, Japan, and Sin­ga­pore, have spent bil­lions in di­rect cash gifts, ba­by bonus­es, and hous­ing sub­si­dies over the past two decades, yet con­tin­ue to record his­toric lows in to­tal fer­til­i­ty.

De­spite the chal­lenges ahead, Seer­at­tan agrees that rais­ing the is­sue at the high­est lev­els of gov­er­nance rep­re­sents an es­sen­tial turn­ing point for T&T.

“Giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of this is­sue, greater pri­or­i­ty on the part of pol­i­cy­mak­ers and lead­ers on this is­sue is the first step and, in this re­gard, prob­a­bly the Chief Sec­re­tary’s in­ter­ven­tion can be the cat­a­lyst for the coun­try to ad­dress this is­sue frontal­ly,” he added.