HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #3 - BIRTH RATE, BIRTH CONTROL, and TECHNOLOGICAL CONSERVATIVISM

Margaret Grover

Italy

Religion: Roman Catholic: 90%

Birth rate: 9.18 births/1,000 population

Infant mortality rate: 3.39 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 98.4%

Brazil

Religion: Roman Catholic: 78.95%

Birth rate: 17.79 births/1,000 population

Infant mortality rate: 21.17 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: total population: 88.6%

Spain

Religion: Roman Catholic 94%

Birth rate: 10.66 births/1,000 population

Infant mortality: 3.39 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 97.9%

Portugal

Religion: Roman Catholic 84.5%

Birth Rate: 9.94 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: total: 4.66 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 93.3%

Venezuela

Religion: Catholic 96%

Birth Rate: 20.1 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: 20.62 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 93%

France

Religion: Roman Catholic 83%-88%

Birth Rate: 12.29 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: 3.29 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 99%

Out Group:

China

Religion: (Christian 3%-4%)

Birth Rate: 12.29 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: total: 16.06 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy Rates: 92.2%

India

Religion: (Christian 2.3%)

Birth Rates: 20.97 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: 47.57 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 61%

Kenya

Religion: Roman Catholic 33%

Birthrate: 33.54 births/1,000 population

Infant Mortality: 52.29 deaths/1,000 live births

Literacy: 85.1%

Despite the fact that the Catholic Church has publicly condemned the use of contraceptives like birth control, there appears to be very little proof that this has impacted the birth rates of catholic countries. What these statistics for these nine countries seem to show is that there is actually almost no correlation between how Catholic a country’s population is and its’ birthrates. For instance, countries like Kenya, India and China have almost a negligible Catholic population, but they still have significantly higher birthrates than countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, which have a high percentage of Catholic citizens. Furthermore, among the predominantly Catholic countries there appears to be other factors that contribute to a difference in birth rates. Brazil, for example, has a much higher birthrate than Portugal but they are both extremely Catholic nations.

One possible correlation that I was able to find is that countries with lower literacy rates, like India and Brail, have much higher birth rates. France, which has the highest literacy rates among the nine countries that I examined, has a very low birthrate. While a correlation can be seen between these two factors there is no way to determine a casual relationship. Other variables like infant mortality also seem to also significantly impact a countries birthrate—like with the case of Kenya, which has extremely high birthrates, but also very high infant mortality. Other counties in these two groups that have lower infant mortality rates have lower corresponding birthrates. Although, even with this compression, there is still no way to determine if high infant mortality rates contributes to a countries birth rates.