Mads Waatland Jakobsen

Mads Waatland Jakobsen

For this assignment I’ve used these variables, who I initially thought might have some correlation with birth rate (birth pr 1000): Percent of population which is Roman Catholic, Life expectancy, Death rate, GDP pr. Cap adjusted for purchasing power, urbanization, literacy (percent), gini coefficient,  expected school life (years) and state expenditure on education.

The countries I used are Mexico, Spain, Italy, Venezuela,  Brazil, Ireland, Norway, Finland and Estonia. The first six have a roman catholic population over 65% and the three last have a roman catholic population under 5%.  The data used is primarily from CIA - World Fact Book, the OECD database and some from the World Bank.

I’ve used the software SPSS to predict significance and correlation between the independent variable and the dependent ones through regression analysis and bivariate           correlation analysis. One problem is that the population is so small, that I might not get results with enough significance, so some of my findings may have a higher significance than what the scientific norm presupposes.

Firstly, to examine whether less birth control equals higher birth rate, I have checked birth rate up with catholic population and it is clearly a trend that the countries with the lowest population of catholics have in general lower birthrates. It seems that the catholic countries have a higher birthrate, with the exception of Italy and Spain. I believe that the 14% significance would be lower with a higher number of countries.

I also found a correlation between years in school and birth rate. More years in school equals lower birth rate. The outlier is Ireland with both a high birthrate and school life. The significance is almost at the scientific norm, and given I have a too few countries I consider this significant.

There is also a correlation between literacy and and birthrate. The more literate the population are, the lower the birthrate. Ireland is again a bit of an outlier. With high literacy and rater high birthrate.

The gini coefficient, with describe income equality, also correlates with birthrate. The higher gini, (income inequality) the higher the birth rate.

The regression analysis shows that all variables but Catholicism and School life lowers the birthrate (with all other variables at 0, birthrate would be 262.896. For every value increase of 1, the birth rate increases or decreases with the values of Beta). Since the population don’t represent the universe in any way,I think School life expectancy significance is way too high, I would not include it in my findings. With a comprehensive database of all nations I’m sure that I would find that more years in school lowers birthrate, as shown in the bivariate analysis.