Henny Baareim

Assignment #3: Birth rate and Ideology

6 Nations with Roman Catholic Ideology

Italy Roman Catholic: 80% Birth rate: 8.94 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 3.33 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 81.95 years Average Income: $30,600 Average Education Level: 16 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 62.7%	Brazil Roman Catholic: 73,6% Birth Rate: 14.97 births /1000 Infant Mortality: 19.83 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 73.02 years Average Income: $12,100 Average Education Level: 14 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 80.3%
Spain Roman Catholic: 94% Birth Rate: 10.14 births/1000 Infant Mortality 3.35 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 81.37 years Average Income: $31,100 Average Education Level: 17 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 65.7%	Ecuador Roman Catholic: 95% Birth Rate: 19.23 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 5.03 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 76.15 Average Income: $10,200 Average Education Level: 14 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 72.7%
Mexico Roman Catholic: 82,7% Birth rate: 18.61 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 16.26 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 76.86 years Average Income: $15,600 Average Education level: 14 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 70.9%	Luxembourg Roman Catholic: 87% Birth Rate: 11.72 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 4.33 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 79.88 years Average Income: $81,100 Average Education Level: 14 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: Unknown

3 Nations not opposed to birth control

Norway Roman Catholic: 1% Birth Rate: 10.8 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 3.47 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 80.44 years Average Income: $55,900 Average Education Level: 18 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 88.4%	Estonia Roman Catholic: 1,4% Birth Rate: 10.38 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 6.82 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 73.82 years Average Income: $22,100 Average Education Level: 16 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 63.4%
Malawi Roman Catholic: 0% Birth Rate: 39.98 births/1000 Infant Mortality: 76.98 deaths/1000 Average Lifespan: 52.78 years Average Income: $900 Average Education Level: 11 years Contraceptive prevalence rate: 46.1%

Conclusion

In my study on the countries with high percentage of Roman Catholic ideology I included birth rate, infant mortality, average lifespan, income and education level. Also I included the rate of contraceptive prevalence. I chose Italy, Brazil, Spain, Ecuador, Mexico and Luxembourg, all with catholic percent over 70%. With these numbers one can see, despite high percentage of Roman Catholics, there is also a moderate high contraceptive prevalence. The lowest rate, when it comes to usage of contraceptive is 62.7%, which proves that there are no correlation between the technological conservative prohibition against birth control and the practicing of Roman Catholic ideology in these countries. Mexico and Ecuador is the only two countries that correlate with high catholic practicing and high birth rate. However, at the same time they both have a high rate of using birth control.

Further I added three more countries which do not practice an ideology which oppose birth control; Norway, Estonia and Malawi. All in all there are four countries with significant higher birth rate than the others; Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and Malawi. Three of these countries are practicing catholic ideology and are, surprisingly, among the highest birth control rates. This shows that the practice of Roman Catholic Ideology does not affect the contraceptive prevalence, thus not birth rate either.

There seems to be a correlation between the countries with high birth rate, and a low income. All the four countries have a low income, if we define low income everything under $25,000, which is reasonable when we compare them to the other countries. Along with this, the education level is at its lowest here. Also typical when high birth rate is the high infant mortality. This goes especially for Brazil, Mexico and Malawi, which also have the lowest average lifespan, when we include Ecuador.

An exception from all of this, we have Estonia. They are not Catholic, have a low birth rate and low infant mortality, along with low average lifespan. In addition, they have, after defining above, a low income. This country is an example of how one would think it works, low income – low birth rate, when it is actually opposite looking at the statistics. They are also among those with the lowest usage of birth control.

When we look at the numbers all together, we can view similarities among the countries with low poverty level. They produce many children, and have a high infant mortality. In theory this is called r-selection. Also they have low income, which provides an unstable environment for the children. In addition they have low average lifespan. The opposite of this is the k-selection, which have high income, low birth rate, low infant mortality and high average lifespan, as well as higher education level. This proves that the more unstable environment, the more children will be produced.