Elise Horn

ELISE HORN - ASSIGNMENT #3
Six nations with a high percentage of Catholic citizens (65% or more)

 Three nations that do not have a notable Catholic population (less than 5%)

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

Conclusion

I have collected data from six nations with a high degree of Catholic citizens, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Poland, Philippines and Mexico and three nations with a low degree Norway, Iceland and Egypt. You might think that nations with a high percentage of Catholics would have high birth rates, because of the Catholic Church`s prohibition against artificial contraception. But this is not the observable reality. Based on the data collected from these countries there are no significant correlation between the existing behavior of people and the technologically conservative prohibition against birth control in Catholic populations. An overall trend is that Catholic nations have a high or moderate use of contraceptive, the only exception is Philippines with a contraceptive prevalence rate at 48.9%. 

Catholic prohibition of birth control doesn’t have a significant influence on a nations birth rate. However, based on the data collected there are other factors that appear to correlate more closely with high birth rate. These factors are poverty level, infant mortality rate, contraceptive prevalence rate and average education level. In the data collected there are a strong correlation between birth rate and infant mortality rate. The four nations with highest birth rate, Philippines, Egypt, Mexico and Brazil all have the highest infant mortality rate as well. There seems to be a trend that nations where infants have a high probability to die there are born more children. Philippines, Egypt, Brazil and Mexico are the nations with the lowest degree of education. There exist a correlation between poverty and high births rates. High level of education shows a correlation to high birth rate. In nations where people spend few years in school, there exist a trend of higher birth rates. The two nations with the highest birth rate are the two nations with the lowest contraceptive prevalence rate, Egypt 60.3% and Philippines 48.9%. These nations are also the poorest nations and the nations with the lowest education level in this data collection. There seems to be a correlation between a nations low income, low education level, low contraceptive prevalence rate and high birth rate. Low education and low income influences the use of birth control and leads to higher birth rate.

The result of the data collected is consistent with the r/K selection theory. The rich nations are a typical example of K selection. They have a stable environment, use longer time to reproduce, have a low infant mortality rate and few offspring. On the other side you have r selection. Consisting of the poor nations. They have a less stable environment, high infant mortality rate, use shorter time to reproduce and have more offspring.