Boerje Fonn Skaar

ASSIGNMENT #3 - BIRTH RATE CORRELATES

Written by Boerje Fonn Skaar

Six countries with Catholic population over 65 percent:

Region:                    Country:                         Total population:                 %:          Total:

Southern Europe   Andorra                          71,201                                   94%          66,928

South America       Argentina                       39,537,943                            92%          36,374,907

Central Europe     Croatia                            4,495,904                              87,8%       3,947,403 

Southern Europe   Vatican City                    921                                        100%        921

Southern Europe   Italy                                59,102,112                            90%          53,191,900

Caribbean               Aruba                           103,065                                 80,8          83,276

Three Countries with a lover catholic percentage of 65:

Northern Europe    Norway                           4,593,041                             5%            229,652

Northern Europe    Sweden                         9,001,774                             1,62          145,828

Northern Europe    Denmark                         5,432,335                             2%            104,867 

As the theses say that there is a technologically conservative prohibition against birth control among Chatolic populations and nations, it seems that this prohibition does not exist in behavior.

Although u might seem to find an higher birth rate in some of the countries with a high population of Catholics like Argentina with 17,34 birth rate among every 1000 people, italy only has 9,06. So Italy as a Catholic countrie - unlike Norway, Denamrk and Sweden who all has a birth rate around 10,00 may prove that the catholic percentage dosent make any real cathment on the birth rate of the countries.

Sex education are forced in countries as Norway, Denmark and Sweden and i find that Catholics dont enbrase or enforce this as important as other well educated countries.

As the Catholic Education Resource Center says:

The Catholic Church’s traditional teaching about sex education, especially as formulated by Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, is that it should not be primarily a matter of giving explicit “information” at all, but rather it should be a matter of inculcating modesty, purity, chastity, and morality, a matter of teaching the sixth and ninth commandments. Moreover, it should also be primarily a matter for the parents to impart privately in the home, not something to be purveyed and discussed in mixed classrooms of boys and girls at impressionable ages.

As we have seen the Catholic countries compared with the none Catholic dosent seems to have any impact on the birth rate, i would belive this may be more compared to the poverty issue and countries with less education. Therefore will a countrie like Argentina have a higher birth rate couse of the missing sex education, compared to Croatia and Andorra with a birth rate of 9,57 and 9,26.

In my conclution i would say that atleast European Catholic countries are having a lower birt rate compared to my three Scandinavian countries. I belive that working women has a large impact on this. In the later years working women and women with children are not exclusive. As 62% of women in Norway is working and 59 percent in Sweden, nowadays they can support children better eventhough they are working and that seems to make more women choosing to have a child or more, even at later age. Before it was a well known fact that working women had fewer children.

Argentina is the only countrie with a relative higher birth percentage than my other studied countries and i find that to be becouse of the high poverty percentage which is over 30 percent in the countrie.