Assignment #5 Tina Jensen

ARGENTINA:

Population: 42,610,981

Religion: nominally roman catholic 92%, (less than 20% practicing) protestant 2%, Jewish 2%, other 4%

Population growth rate: 0,997%

Birth rate: 17,34 births/1000 population

Death rate: 7,36 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 2,27 children born/women

Population below poverty line: 30%

Literacy: 98,1%

BELGIUM:

Population: 10,444,268

Religions: Roman Catholic 75%, other (includes protestant) 25%.

Population growth rate: 0,061%

Birth rate: 10,03 births/ 1000 population

Death rate: 10,63 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,65 children born/woman

Population below poverty line: 15,2%  

Literacy: 99%

COLOMBIA:

Population: 45,745,783

Religions: Roman Catholic: 90%, other 10%

Population growth rate: 1,128%

Birth rate: 17,23 births / 1000 population

Death rate: 5,29 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 2,1 children born/woman

Population below poverty line: 34,1%

Literacy: 90,4%

CROATIA:

Population: 4,475,611

Religions: Roman Catholic 87,8%, orthodox 4,4%, other Christian 0,4%, muslin 1,3%, other unspecified 0,9%, none 5,2%

Population growth rate: -0,092%

Birth rate: 9,57 births / 1000 population

Death rate: 11,99 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,45 children born/women

Population below poverty line: 21,1%

Literacy: 98,8%

ITALY:

Population: 61,482,297

Religion: Christian 80% (overwhelming roman catholic with very small groups of Jehovah witnesses and protestants), Muslims NEGL (about 700,000 but growing) Atheists and Agnostics 20%

Population growth rate: 0,38%

Birth rate: 9,06 births/1000 population

Death rate: 9,93 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,41 children born/women

Population below poverty line: 19,6%

Literacy: 98,5%

MALTA:

Population: 411,277

Religion: Roman Catholic (official) 98%

Population growth rate: 0,359%

Birth rate: 10,31 births / 1000 population

Death rate: 8,72 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,53 children born/woman

Population below poverty line: 15,4%

Literacy: 92,8%

ALGERIA:

Population: 38,087,812

Religion: Sunni Muslim (state religion) 99%, Christian and Jewish 1%.

Population growth rate: 1,92%

Birth rate: 24,4 births/1000 population

Death rate: 4,3 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 2,78 children born/woman

Population below poverty line: 23%

Literacy: 69,9%

BULGARIA:

Population: 6,981,642

Religion: Eastern Orthodox 59,4%, Muslim (Sunni) 7,4%, Muslim (Shia) 0,4%, other (including catholic, protestant, Armenian apostolic orthodox and Judaism) 1,7%, other (unknown) 27,4%

Population growth rate: -0,796%

Birth rate: 9,2 births/1000 population

Death rate: 14,32 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,45 children born/women

Population below poverty line: 21,8%

Literacy: 98,4%

DENMARK:

Population: 5,556,452

Religion: Evangelical Lutheran (official) 95%, other Christian (includes protestant and roman catholic) 3%, Muslim 2%.

Population growth rate: 0,239%

Birth rate: 10,22 births/1000 population

Death rate: 10,19 deaths/ 1000 population

Total fertility rate: 1,73 children born/woman

Population below poverty line: 13,4%

Literacy: 99%

In this assignment I have chosen 6 countries that have a high percentage of Catholic citizens (over 65%), and 3 countries that have few Catholic citizens (less than 5%).

The assumption that nations with large Catholic populations have a birth rate that reflects the absence of birth control measures can be true, but by looking at the information above, it seems like it can be other reasons as well. The first point I would like to make is the percentage of literacy; all of the countries I have selected have a percentage of over 90%, except from Algeria. When I then compare the numbers of population growth rate and the literacy in each country, I can see that Algeria is the country with the lowest percentage of people over 15 who can read, and also they have the highest population growth rate and the highest birth rate. With this I would say that education could have an effect on the birth rate in the countries.

I think that the absence of birth control have an effect on the birth rate based on the numbers, but I also think that a lot of other factors have a say in determining whether or not the Catholic populations have a higher birth rate than other countries. 

Assignment #5 Simon Fossheim

To find out if Catholic prohibition has an influence on birth rates around the world, I have selected 6 countries with a percentage of catholic citizens above 65% in a random order from different parts of the world. These countries are Belgium, Portugal, France, Porto Rico, Columbia and Ireland. I have also selected 3 countries where the percentage of Catholicism is below 5% of the countries population. I have compared the birth rate of these countries, and also added more variables (Life expectancy, Infant mortality, Literacy, poverty and average GDP per capita) to see if there is other variables that could effect the rate of birth.

First, I would say that having a limit of only 9 countries would not be a representative selection for this analysis. After analyzing the different countries, I found that most of the countries from both the catholic countries and the non-Catholic countries hade very similar birth rates, and I can see that religion is not the most obvious variable that influence the birth rate. In fact, the country with the highest birth rate was a country from the non-Catholic category, and the country with the lowest birth rate was a country of the catholic category. In addition, the average birth rates of the non-Catholic countries were in fact higher than the catholic countries. 

Catholic:         (10.03+9.76+12.7+11.3+17.23+15.81) / 6 = 12.805

Non-Catholic:  (10.8+13.23+24.22) / 3 = 16.083

By looking at the other variables, I can see that the two countries with the highest birth rate (Columbia* and Egypt*) have a very low percentage of literacy compared to the others, they had the highest scores of infant mortality, they have the lowest GDP per capita, and they had among the highest percentage of the population falling below the poverty line (behind Puerto Rico).

In Conclusion; based on the findings in this analysis of these 9 countries I would say that religion does not have an effect on the rate of birth, and that the wealth of the country (GDP+ and poverty-) and education (literacy+) are more effective variables. This could be a result of the security and value of family in poor societies. Furthermore I would say that these results are limited in the sense that there could be other variables, which is not included here, and that the selection for this analysis is limited to only 9 countries. Despite this limitation I conclude here that the Catholic prohibition of birth control seem to have a low impact on birth rates, and that this prohibition may not follow through in behavior.

 Resources: 

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

http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr11-01.pdf

By Simon Fossheim

Assignment #5 Marte Christine Bakken

The Catholicism society does have a negative attitude against and have even prohibited artificial birth control.

“One might make a reasonable assumption that nations with large Catholic populations would have birth rates, which reflect an absence of birth control measures (less birth control = higher birth rate). And likewise, nations which do not have a significant population that is prohibited from using artificial birth control measures would have lower birth rates (more birth control = lower birth rate).“

I will be examining this statement, based on the facts and statistics collected for this research, below.

6 nations with a high percentage of Catholic citizens (65% or more)

1. BRAZIL

Percent of Catholics:                           73.6%

Population:                                         201,009,622

Birth rate:                                           15.2 births/1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                           20.5 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  72.79 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                         $ 12,000

Average years of education:                 4.9 years

Population below poverty line:               21.4%

Unemployment rate:                             6.2%

Internet users:                                     75.982 million (37% of population)

2. MALTA

Percent of Catholics:                            98%

Population:                                          411,277

Birth rate:                                            10.31 births/1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                           3.65 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  79.85 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                         $ 26,000

*Compulsory years of education:          11 years          

Population below poverty line:              15.4%

Unemployment rate:                             6.1%

Internet users:                                      240,600 (58.3% of population)

3. MONACO

Percent of Catholics:                           90%

Population:                                          30,000

Birth rate:                                            6.85 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                           1.8 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  89.68 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                         $ 70,000

*Compulsory years of education:          10 years

Population below poverty line:              NA%

Unemployment rate:                            0%

Internet users:                                     23,000(76.6% of population)

4. CROATIA

Percent of Catholics:                            87.8%

Population:                                          4,475,611

Birth rate:                                            9.57 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                           6.06 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  72.99 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                          $ 18,100

*Compulsory years of education:            8 years

Population below poverty line:                21.1%

Unemployment rate:                              20.4%

Internet users:                                      2.234 million (49.9% of population)

5. POLAND

Percent of Catholics:                            89.8%

Population:                                          38,383,809

Birth rate:                                            9.96 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                            6.42 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  76.25 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                         $21,000

Average years of education:                 9.8 years

Population below poverty line:              10.6%

Unemployment rate:                            12.6%

Internet users:                                     22.452 million (56% of population)

6. AUSTRIA

Percent of Catholics:                            73,6%

Population:                                          8,221,646

Birth rate:                                            8.69 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                           4.26 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                  79.91 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                         $42,500

Average years of education:                 8.4 years

Population below poverty line:              6.2%

Unemployment rate:                            4.3%

Internet users:                                     6.143 million (75% of population)

*The years of compulsory education is used in some cases, instead of the average years of education.

3 nations with a low percentage of Catholic citizens (less than 5%)

1. NORWAY

Main religion(s):                                   Evangelical Lutheran (85.7%)

Percent of Catholics:                            1%

Population:                                          5 051 300

Birth rate:                                            10.8 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                            3.5 deaths/1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                   80.32 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                          $55,300

Average years of education:                  11.8 years

Population below poverty line:                NA%

Unemployment rate:                              3.1%

Internet users:                                      4.431 million (88% of the population)

2. JAPAN

Main religion(s):                                    Shintoism (83.9%). Buddhism (71.4%)**

Percent of Catholics:                              0.4%

Population:                                           127,253,075

Birth rate:                                              8.39 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                             2.21 deaths/ 1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                    83.91 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                           $36,200

Average years of education:                   9.5 years

Population below poverty line:                16%

Unemployment rate:                              4.4%

Internet users:                                      99.192 million (80% of the population)

3. INDIA

Main religion(s):                                    Hindu (80.5%)           

Percent of Catholics:                             <1.9%

Population:                                           1,220,800,359

Birth rate:                                             20.6 births /1000 population

Infant mortality rates:                            46.07 deaths/ 1000 live births

Life expectancy:                                   67.14 years

GDP per capita (PPP):                          $3,900

Average years of education:                  5.1 years

Population below poverty line:               29.8%

Unemployment rate:                             9.9%

Internet users:                                      61.338 million (50% of the population)

** Total adherents exceeds 100% because many people belong to both Shintoism and Buddhism. 

When looking at the statistics and facts that was found in this research, there is easy to see that whether or not there is a high percent of Catholicism in the country does not seem to have an actually correlation with high or low birthrate. The six nations that were researched with a high Catholic percentage were mostly concentrated in the middle (when ranging the countries from high to low birthrate). The three nations with low Catholicism percentage were spread out, to be on top (with the highest birthrate), number three and second last out of the total of nine countries. Therefor there must be other variables with a higher correlation to high birthrate.

To make the connections and relations easier to address I have put the most important numbers into a table. Ranking from the highest to lowest birthrate (top to bottom).

TABLE 1:

Out of the nine researched countries there were two that stand out from the rest, with a very high birthrate; India and Brazil. There were a few other factors that seemed to be very similar within these two nations, and therefore might be better ways of explaining the high birthrate. First of all they are both nations with an extremely high population, but for this to be a reason of itself the pattern should have continued to be shown with the there nations as well, but by looking at Norway, as the country with the third highest birthrate, but also on of the smallest population size, as well as Japan as the second lowest birthrate, but still a great population, there would not be reasonable to continue to use population size as a valid reason. If we continue to look at for example infant mortality rate, this could have a greater impact on the high rate of birth. With India and Brazil having a significantly higher rate of infant death mortality, and Monaco as the country with the lowest birthrate the infant mortality is also at its absolute minimum among these countries, at 1.8 per 1000 live births. This could be seen an important factor when explaining the high birthrate. 

When looking at GDP/capita, India and Brazil also stands out, and hand in hand goes also the amount of people below poverty line. So there is a high reason to believe that a low GDP/Capita will increase the rate of birth. But although this might be true, this also leads us to the fact that Croatia (with the 6^th highest birthrate, in the middle of the clustered nations in terms of birthrate) also has a quite low GDP/capita as well as a high percentage of people below poverty line. This should by the previous statement of correlation not be the case, but if we then take a look at the average year of education/compulsory education, the correlations are clearer. With few years of education, the rate of birth seems to increase, at least when it comes to very few years of education. When there is around 8-12 years of education, this doesn’t seem to make a very large difference, and might not have a huge impact on the birthrate, but up till around 8 years can seem necessary to have a low birthrate. 

The life expectancy does also seem to correlate with the birthrate to some extent, and could be something that does have an impact on the rate of birth. Maybe people in countries with lower life expectancy do tend to have more children, to make the chance higher that there will be a child there to take care of them if they grow old and need help. A last element that I will bring into light in this research is the amount of people that uses the Internet within each nation. By looking at how many percent of the population that are Internet users, there is actually a possible connection with the birthrate. The less people that are Internet users, the higher the birth rate seem to be. This could be a result of information about contraception and so on, which will result in a lower birthrate. 

Although there is a higher chance that both the amount of people below poverty line, unemployment rate and Internet users are more connected with the GDP/Capita and economy in the country, there is also a possibility as we have seen in this short research that there is a correlation between birthrate and some of these factors themselves. Or at least does this show us that the economy and GDP/capita in a country are more connected with the birthrate, than the percent of Catholicism. 

From the findings in this research I would not see the examined assumption as highly valid. The findings do not show any correlation between high birthrate and high percentage of Catholicism. Therefor there is highly likely that the prohibition against birth control among Catholic populations, doesn’t work very well in the real life. I do believe that especially among the younger generations, this is not seen as a valid rule and are not valued in their everyday life.

The variables that I would say have the most impact are the GDP/capita, as well as education. 

Recourses:

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

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/country/sc1.html

http://www.ssb.no/en/folkendrkv

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_ave_yea_of_sch_of_adu-education-average-years-schooling-adults

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/mt-malta/edu-education

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/mn-monaco/edu-education

http://public.mzos.hr/Default.aspx?sec=2499