Kristine Jevne Berge - Assignment #3: Birth rate and ideology

For this assignment we were going to look at statistics to see if there is a correlation between birth rates and ideology. I have chosen 6 catholic nations, all with a percentage of catholic citizens higher than 80%. The countries are chosen from all over the world, with different economic and social basis, only thing in common is a high percentage of catholic citizens: Italy, Poland, Colombia, Guam, the Philippines and the Seychelles. I have also included three nations, Norway, Niger and Russia, with a very low percentage of catholic citizens or other ideology or religion that may have prohibitions for or against birth control.

In this analysis I will look at statistics of birth rates and see if there is a correlation between these and Catholicism, or if there is other factors that can be used to explain different birth rates, such as the level of education and access to health care, or social and economic conditions.

Table 1. People and Society

Country	% of catholic citizens	Birth rates, of 1,000 population	Infant mortality rates, of 1,000 live births	Life expectancy at birth	Population growth rate
Italy	80	8.95	3.33	81.95	0.34 %
Poland	89.8 (75 practicing)	9.88	6.3	76.45	- 0.9%
Colombia	90	16.98	15.46	75.02	1.1 %
Guam	85	17.23	5.61	78.66	0.34 %
Philippines	82.9 (80.9 roman catholic)	24.62	18.19	72.21	1.84 %
Seychelles	82.3	14.85	11.06	74.01	0.9 %
Norway	1	10.8	3.47	80.44	0.33 %
Niger	Less than 1	46.84	87.89	53.34	3.32 %
Russia	Less than 1	12.11	7.19	69.85	- 0.02 %

Considering the Catholic Church has a prohibition against birth control one would assume that nations with a high percentage of catholic citizens would have a high birth rate. Based on the statistics on table 1, we cannot see any obvious correlation. Among the catholic nations we have Italy and Poland, who both has a birth rate even lower than Norway, a country with no ideology prohibiting birth control. On the other end of the scale, with high birth rates, we have catholic nations such as the Phillippines but also non-catholic nations such as Niger. So if there is no clear relation between the fact that Catholicism has prohibition against the use of birth control, and the birth rates in different countries, what other factors can we look at to explain this?

Table 2. Human Development Index*

Country	Human Development Index	Birth rates, of 1,000 population
Norway	0.955	10.8
Italy	0.881	8.95
Seychelles	0.86	14.84
Poland	0.821	9.88
Russia	0.788	12.11
Colombia	0.719	16.98
Phillippines	0.654	18.19
Niger	0.475	46.84

*Numbers for Guam is not available.

 In this second table we see the list of countries and how they score on the human development index (a way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income into a composite human development index. The HDI sets a minimum and a maximum for each dimension, called goalposts, and then shows where each country stands in relation to these goalposts, expressed as a value between 0 and 1).  If we look at the statistics, there is at least a closer correlation between high HDI and lower birth rates. 

As seen, the HDI index is a composition between many indicators. It shows in a way how well it is to live in a country. This could perhaps be linked to the r/K selection theory. The higher a country scores on the HDI, the higher education people have, more welfare considering health care, and more stability and security in their life. In countries with high HDI, such as Norway and Italy, they focus more on having fewer kids, use longer time to reproduce, have greater parental investment, and they can do so because of a stable environment and good health care which gives a low infant mortality rate, this is the “K-selection/strategy”. On the other hand you have the “r-selection/strategy” were one has more kids, use shorter time to reproduce, lesser parental investment in the kids, due to a unstable environment and a high infant mortality rate, in such as Niger, Colombia or the Philippines. 

Of course there are other factors that play an important role in family planning and birth rates in different countries. As we see in the third table, countries such as Italy and Russia has a quite high urban population, and many years of education, and not that many living under poverty line (note that poverty is defined by the nation itself, so its relative poverty measures), tend to have a lower birth rate. On the other hand we have nations such as the Philippines and Niger who has a lower urban population, less years of education and more people living below the poverty line, there is a tendency to have a higher birth rate. In the middle we have other nations such as Colombia that has a quite high urban population, about the same years of education as Russia, but a way higher population living below the poverty line.

Table 3. Urbanization, education, poverty and birth rates

Country	Urban population	School life expectancy, years	Population below poverty line	Birth rates, of 1,000 population
Guam	93 %	NA	23 %	17.26
Norway	79 %	Female: 18 Male: 17	NA	10.8
Colombia	75 %	Female: 14 Male: 13	34.1 %	16.98
Russia	73.8 %	Female: 15 Male: 14	12.7 %	12.11
Italy	68 %	Female: 17 Male: 16	19.6 %	8.95
Poland	60.0 %	Female: 16 Male: 15	10.6 %	9.88
Seychelles	53.6 %	Female: 14 Male: 13	NA	14.85
Phillippines	48.8 %	Female: 12 Male: 11	26.5 %	18.19
Niger	17.8 %	Female: 5 Male: 6	63 %	46.84

 

Access to birth control is obviously crucial, and could be linked to perhaps both education and urbanization. Education because you have to learn about family planning, and also in highly educated countries women tend to want to finish their education before having children, which would effect how early they start having kids. Also urbanization is important for people to have access to information about family planning at places such as the hospital or a health clinic. But as we see there is no obvious correlation between one of the factors and countries birth rates.

To understand birth rates we see that there is no correlation between Catholicism (and their ideology prohibiting the use of birth control) and birth rates. I have pointed out some factors that might be used to explain birthrates, such as how developed a country is, urbanization, education, stability or instability considering infant mortality and poverty. To extend the study more one could include data over female employment, the cost of raising kids / kids used as labor force, age at marriage (or first child born) and many other factors. I would argue that to understand birth rates completely one would have to include many other factors and do a deeper study.