Assignment #3

I examined 6 countries with a Catholic Population of over 65% and three countries with a small Catholic population. The general trend seemed to be that Catholicism was not the most important factor when determining birth rates in each country. By only examining a handful of countries, it is hard to say exactly what is the most determining factor, although it seems and makes sense that there are many factors that influence this. The factors I examined were:

-birth rate

-fertility rate

-GDP per capita

-literacy

-life expectancy

For each variable I tried to look at the top 4 countries with the lowest or highest numbers. Birth rate and feritlity rate were obviously strongly correlated but a pattern became clear when looking at the poorest, least literate and where average life expectancy was lowest. These countries tended to have higher birth rates than countries with a higher GDP per capita, higher literacy rates, and higher life expectancies. The pattern for Catholicism and birth rates was less apparent as the countries tended to fall almost evenly under predominantly Catholic and non-Catholic when looking at these countries and variables.

The four countries with the highest birth rates: Phillipines, South Africa, Mexico and Indonesia were both predominantly Catholic and non-Catholic countries. 5 out of the 7 countries with the highest birth rates also had a high Catholic population. We could say that Catholicism (and it's restrictions against birth control) have a positive influence on birth rates but other factors needed to be examined in order to see whether or not Catholicism was the strongest variable.

Three of the four countries with the lowest GDP per capita also were part of the top 4 highest birth rates, (Brazil, Philippines, South Africa, Indonesia) so it could be said that affluence of a country and birth rates have a strong correlation.

It seems logical that the higher the birth rate in a country, the higher the fertility rate per woman. One interesting thing I found was that in relation to life expectancy, three of the four countries with the highest birth rates (Phillipines, South Africa, Indonesia) also were part of the four countries with shortest life expectancy. This likely means that women are having children younger, when they're more fertile, and this effects the literacy rates of the country. If women are having children young, they are spending less time in school, and these four countries also have the lowest literacy rates.

Out of all 9 countries, one thing is very clear: The 4 European countries I examined are the most affluent, literate, have a higher life expectancy and most importantly have the lowest brith rates compared to the other countries in this table. When Catholicism is examined in relation to the other factors, it seems to be that it is not a strong variable in birth rates. Other factors seemed to have a much stronger influence, and it would take statistical analyses to understand how strong the correlation is. By examining all these factors my hypothesis would be that Catholicism is not the strongest variable out of all of these.