Assignment #5 Chang-Min (Kevin) Park

Assignment #5 by Chang-Min (Kevin) Park

Conclusion:
1.     Does Catholic prohibition really have an influence on birth control use or do other factors appear to play a greater role in birth rate?

Based on the data, Catholic prohibition does not seem to have any influence on birth control/rates. Although Spain, Portugal, and France have relatively lower birth rates, Argentina, Mexico and Philippines have close to or higher birth rates even comparing to the global average of 19.14. On the other hand, Finland and Japan, non-Catholic nations which have lower than 1% of Catholic population, had much lower birth rates than most of the Catholic nations discussed.

On the other hand, there are several aspects of the nations which seemed to have much higher correlation to the birth rates:

(1)  Infant Mortality Rate: Among all the nations discussed, when the infant mortality rate was high, the birth rate was also high. It has a positive correlation with the birth rate. It seems that in a country where infants are more likely to die, people give more births to compensate the loss.

(2)  Life Expectancy: When people are expected to live longer, they had lower birth rate. It has a negative correlation with the birth rate.

(3)  Health Expenditure: Health expenditure from the government also affected birth rates because it directly affected the life expectancy. When the health expenditure was higher, life expectancy was also longer. In that sense, birth rate was higher when health expenditure was lower.

(4)  Literacy: Another notable factor was the literacy rate, or it could be translated to the general education level of the population. Nations with high birth rates such as Mexico, Philippines and India had much lower literacy rate than the other nations with lower birth rates. (Japan, Finland, France, Portugal) Possible explanation could be that when general public is educated well, they are more aware of how to control births.

(5)  Economy (GDP per Capita, Poverty Level): It also stood out that nations which had higher income (GDP per capita) and lower poverty level had lower birth rates than the others with lower income and higher poverty level. A nation’s wealth may have significant impacts on both health infrastructure (thus infant mortality rate, life expectancy) and education (literacy).        

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

Based on the data, the birth control prohibition seems not to be reflected in Catholic population behavior. Otherwise, the Catholic prohibition should have taken effect in the birth rates in all the Catholic nations.

Sources:  

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country