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CUBA FACTS

Issue 43- December 2008

Cuba Facts is an ongoing series of succinct fact sheets on various topics, including, but not limited to, political structure, health, economy, education, nutrition, labor, business, foreign investment, and demographics, published and updated on a regular basis by the Cuba Transition Project staff.

• In the 1950's Cuba was, socially and economically, a relatively advanced country, certainly by Latin American standards and, in some areas, by world standards.
• Cuba's infant mortality rate was the best in Latin America -- and the 13th lowest in the world.
• Cuba also had an excellent educational system and impressive literacy rates in the 1950's.
• Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in Latin America in per capita food consumption.
• Cuba ranked first in Latin America and fifth in the world in television sets per capita.
• Pre-Castro Cuba had 58 daily newspapers of differing political hues and ranked eighth in the world in number of radio stations.
  

• Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th lowest in the world, according to UN data. Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, and Spain.
• In 1955, life expectancy in Cuba was among the highest at 63 years of age; compared to 52 in other Latin American countries, 43 in Asia, and 37 in Africa.
• In terms of physicians and dentists per capita, Cuba in 1957 ranked third in Latin America, behind only Uruguay and Argentina -- both of which were more advanced than the United States in this measure. Cuba's 128 physicians and dentists per 100,000 people in 1957 was the same as the Netherlands, and ahead of the United Kingdom (122 per 100,000 people) and Finland.

• The 1960 UN Statistical yearbook ranked pre-Revolutionary Cuba third out of 11 Latin American countries in per capita daily caloric consumption. This was in spite of the fact that the latest available food consumption data for Cuba at the time was from 1948-49, almost a decade before the other Latin American countries' data being used in the comparison.

• The statistics on the consumption of nonfood items tell a similar story. The number of automobiles in Cuba per capita has actually fallen since the 1950's, the only country in the hemisphere for which this is the case. (Unfortunately, due to Castro’s unwillingness to publish unfavorable data, the latest available data for Cuba are from 1988.) UN data show that the number of automobiles per capita in Cuba declined slightly between 1958 and 1988, whereas virtually every other country in the region -- with the possible exception of Nicaragua -- experienced very significant increases in this indicator. Within Latin America, Cuba ranked second only to Venezuela in 1958, but by 1988, had dropped to ninth.
  

• Telephones are another case in point. While every other country in the region has seen its teledensity increase at least two fold -- and most have seen even greater improvements. Cuba has remained frozen at 1958 levels. In 1995, Cuba had only 3 telephone lines per 100 people, placing it 16th out of 20 Latin American countries surveyed and far behind countries that were less advanced than Cuba in this measure in 1958, such as Argentina (today 16 lines per 100 inhabitants), Costa Rica (16), Panama (11), Chile (13), and Venezuela (11). More recently, as a result of a joint venture with an Italian firm, there has been considerable investment, but current data is still unavailable from standard sources.
  
• Cuba also has not kept pace with the rest of Latin America in terms of radios per capita. During the late 1950's, Cuba ranked second only to Uruguay in Latin America, with 169 radios per 1,000 people. (Worldwide, this put Cuba just ahead of Japan.) At that time, Argentina and Cuba were very similar in terms of this measure. Since then, the number of radios per capita for Argentina has grown three times as fast as for Cuba. Cuba also has been surpassed by Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and Brazil in this indicator.
  
• In terms of television sets per capita, 1950's Cuba was far ahead of the rest of Latin America and was among the world's leaders. Cuba had 45 television sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1957, by far the most in Latin America and fifth in the world, behind only Monaco, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In fact, its closest competitor in Latin America was Venezuela, which had only 16 television sets per 1,000 people. By 1997, Cuba had increased from 170 televisions to 239 per thousand, behind Mexico (272 per capita) and tying Uruguay for second place. Of these two countries, Uruguay in 1957 had fewer than one television per 1,000 people.

• Cuba ranked fourth in the region in production of rice in 1958. Two of the countries ranking ahead of Cuba in rice production in 1958, Venezuela and Bolivia, have since seen their rice production grow by more than 28 fold through 2000. Cuba's Caribbean neighbor, the Dominican Republic, has increased its rice production by five fold since 1958. Perhaps even more telling are Cuba's yields per hectare in rice production. Whereas the Dominican Republic has increased rice yields from 2100 kg per hectare in 1958 to 5400 kg per hectare in 1996, Cuba's yields stagnated at 2500 kg per hectare, a negligible increase from the 2400 kg per hectare registered in 1958, according to UN FAO data.

• In the 1950s, Cuba milled an average of 43.9 million metric tons of sugarcane at a rate of 507,000 metric tons per day to produce 5.63 million metric tons of sugar per year. Today, Cuba's sugar production ranges from 1 to 1.5 million metric tons per year.

• Cuba's exports have not kept pace with other countries of the region. Of the 20 countries in the region for which comparable IMF data are available, Cuba ranks last in terms of export growth -- below even Haiti. Mexico and Cuba had virtually identical export levels in 1958 -- while Mexico's population was five times Cuba's. Since then, Cuba's exports have merely doubled while Mexico's have increased by almost 226 fold, according to IMF statistics for 2000. Cuba's exports in 1958 far exceeded those of Chile and Colombia, countries that have since left Cuba behind. The lack of diversification of Cuba's exports over the past 35 years also is remarkable, when compared with other countries in the region.
  
• Cuba's enviable productive base during the 1950's was strengthened by sizable inflows of foreign direct investment. As of 1958, the value of U.S. foreign direct investment in Cuba was $861 million, according to United States government figures published in 1959. Adjusting for inflation, that foreign investment number amounts to more than US 3.6 billion in today's dollars.
  
• Cuba also had a very favorable overall balance of payments situation during the 1950's, contrasted with the tenuous situation today. In 1958, Cuba had gold and foreign exchange reserves -- a key measure of a healthy balance of payments--totaling $387 million in 1958 dollars, according to IMF statistics. (That level of reserves would be worth more than 3.6 billion USD in today's dollars.) Cuba's reserves were third in Latin America, behind only Venezuela and Brazil, which was impressive for a small economy with a population of fewer than 7 million people. Unfortunately, Cuba no longer publishes information on its foreign exchange and gold reserves.
  

The CTP can be contacted at P.O. Box 248174, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3010, Tel: 305-284-CUBA (2822), Fax: 305-284-4875, and by email at ctp.iccas@miami.edu. The CTP Website is accessible at http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu.