In 1988−9 alone, an astounding 70,600 people left the country – 2 per cent of the entire population. Most of these were young – those aged between fifteen and twenty-four made up 69 per cent of the total.16 The slow demographic recovery that validated the revolution of 1958 was going into reverse. By 1986, there were fewer people in the Republic than there had been in 1981.
