Kriss-Elin Meidell Haldorsen

Though there is a technologically conservative prohibition against birth control among Catholic populations, does this prohibition really exist in behavior?

Though there is a technologically conservative prohibition against birth control among Catholic populations, it does not seem to exist in behavior in all countries. Based on the countries I have chosen there seem to be a high percentage contraceptive prevalence rate, and there seem not to be any correlation between birth rate and the use of birth control.

Does Catholic prohibition really have an influence on birth control use (reflected in a high birth rate) or do other factors appear to play a greater role in birth rate (poverty, education, infant mortality rate, short average life span, etc.)?

 

Catholic prohibition does not have an significant influence on a these nations use of birth control, but there exist other factors that correlate more closely with high birth rates. These are factors like fertility, GDP - per capita, education and infant mortality.

There seem to be a trend that countries with high birth rate have low education which place them at a low poverty level, also in these countries the women have the lowest mean age at their first birth. Because of the short amount of school years they tend to start a family at a young age.

High infant mortality have a close correlation to high birth rates. Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Jamaica and Indonesia are the nations with the highest birth rates and the highest infant mortality rate. These five nations are also the poorest and the one with the lowest education level. Of these five countries only three of them have a high percentage of Catholic citizens.

From the statistics we can view that the nations with highest total fertility have the lowest education level and the highest percentage of infant mortality. These countries are also among the poorest countries. This can indicate that there are an unstable environment in the countries and that they do not have the wealth to build up a decent health system.

Based on these nine countries I found no significant correlation between the Catholic religion and the high birth rate. There seem to be other factors that tend to affect the birth rate instead.