Peace Without Poison

By the end Abel Pacheco’s term the total fertility rate had reached replacement level and hissuccessors have only needed to maintain it, which is why the concentration of fluoride in saltwas lowered and the total fertility rate has leveled off at 1.9 children per woman during thepresidencies of Óscar Arias (second term in office, 2006-2010) and Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014).It is too early to tell how the current president, Luis Guillermo Solís, who took office in May2014, will deal with what is now a depopulation program since the total fertility rate is at subreplacementlevel.Costa Rica’s history of contraceptives shows that the country’s fertility began dropping rapidlyin the sixties before contraceptives were available. By the time contraceptives became availablein the late 1970s the fertility rate had already dropped from more than 7 to less than 4 childrenper woman; a decline that could have only been accomplished through covert and thereforeinvoluntary sterilization.Since the 1980s, Costa Rica’s government has raised the contraceptive prevalence rate in thehope of being able to cover up the anticipated drop in fertility due to fluoridated salt, which wasintroduced in 1987. From 2002 to 2006, thus during Abel Pacheco’s presidency, the governmentmade great and genuine efforts to raise the contraceptive prevalence rate to 96% (the highestlevel in the world) to see if contraceptives could replace covert chemical poisoning.The experiment must have failed, which is why the contraceptive prevalence rate has sincedropped to 80% and fluoridated salt is still the only kind of salt available in Costa Rica.Costa Rica’s economic growth shows that per capita GDP growth did not start growing untilfertility began declining in the 1960s and that when fertility plateaued in the 1980s economicgrowth stalled too only to begin to ascend again in the 1990s as soon as fertility began to dropagain. Clearly, fertility and economic growth are inseparably linked. Just as clearly, affluencefollows declining fertility and not vice versa.189 | P a g e