Doorip Sang; Birth Rate and Birth control; Country comparisons

<Ecuador>

Roman Catholic: 95%

Population growth rate: 1.443%

Birth rate: 19.96/1,000 population

Death rate: 5.00/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 75.73 yrs

School life expectancy: 14 yrs

<Spain>

Roman Catholic: 94.0%

Population growth rate: 0.574%

Birth rate: 10.66/1,000 population

Death rate: 8.80/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 81.17 yrs

School life expectancy: 16 yrs

<Argentina>

Roman Catholic: 92%

Population growth rate: 1.017%

Birth rate: 17.54/1,000 population

Death rate: 7.38/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 76.95 yrs

School life expectancy: 16 yrs

<Italy>

Roman Catholic: 90.0%

Population growth rate: 0.42%

Birth rate: 9.18/1,000 population

Death rate: 9.84/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 81.77 yrs

School life expectancy: 16 yrs

<Paraguay>

Roman Catholic: 89.6%

Population growth rate: 1.284%

Birth rate: 17.48/1,000 population

Death rate: 4.57/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 76.19 yrs

School life expectancy: 12 yrs

<Mexico>

Roman Catholic: 76.5%

Population growth rate: 1.102%

Birth rate: 19.13/1,000 population

Death rate: 4.86/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 76.47 yrs

School life expectancy: 14 yrs

-Out of Group-

<Singapore>

Roman Catholic: 4.8%

Population growth rate: 0.817%

Birth rate: 8.50/1,000 population

Death rate: 4.95/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 82.14 yrs

School life expectancy: 13 yrs

<Barbados>

Roman Catholic: 4.2%

Population growth rate: 0.366%

Birth rate: 12.35/1,000 population

Death rate: 8.39/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 74.34 yrs

School life expectancy: 13 yrs

<Indonesia>

Roman Catholic: 3.0%

Population growth rate: 1.069%

Birth rate: 18.10/1,000 population

Death rate: 6.26/1,000 population

Life expectancy at birth: 71.33 yrs

School life expectancy: 13 yrs

I chose 6 nations; Ecuador, Spain, Argentina, Italy, Paraguay, Mexico, Singapore, Barbados, and Indonesia. In 6 nations, which have high percentage of Roman Catholic, all of nations have over 1.0% of population growth rate except Spain (0.574%) and Italy (0.42%) while out of group nations have less than 1.0% of population growth rate except Indonesia (1.069%). Meanwhile, birth rate, death rate and life expectancy seem that they are not really correlated with percentage of Roman Catholic in population. Because as we can see the data above, Ecuador has the highest percentage of Roman Catholic (95%) and birth rate (19.96%), but also, Indonesia has second highest birth rate (18.1%) while it has the lowest percentage of Roman Catholic (3.0%). In addition, the data shows that the nations that have high percentage of Roman Catholic does not have exactly high death rate and life expectancy at birth. However, it seems that there is some correlation between the percent of Roman Catholic and School life expectancy. All of 6 nations have longer school life expectancies than out of group’s ones (Singapore, Barbados and Indonesia).

To figure out this correlation(r), I used more statistical method with Excel. (We can calculate the correlation by excel.)

With this method, I got the five correlations. (Catholic and Population growth: r=0.2804, Catholic and Birth rate: r=0.2592, Catholic and Death rate: r=0.0905, Catholic and Life expectancy at birth: r=0.3096, Catholic and School life expectancy: r=0.5660)

Correlations are always between -1 and 1, but can take any value in between. A positive correlation means; as one variable increases, so does the others. A negative correlation means; as one variable increase, the other decreases. Generally, in statistics, if there is absolute value of r is less than 0.2, we say that there is no correlation between variables. If it is around 0.4, there is some correlation. And if it is over 0.4, there is a considerable correlation. Finally, if it is over 0.7, we call that there is a very strong correlation between two variables. 

Therefore, statistically, I can say that there is no correlation between the percent of Catholic and Death rate, there is some (or a little) correlation between the percent of Catholic and Population growth rate, the percent of Catholic and Birth rate, the percent of Catholic and life expectancy rate at birth. And finally, there is a strong correlation between the percent of Catholic and School life expectancy. In other words, as the nation has higher percent of Roman Catholic, the school life expectancy is longer.

On the other hand, I also got the correlation between birth rate and life expectancy at birth, birth rate and school life expectancy. The correlation between birth rate and life expectancy is -0.7486, which is negative but also very strong. So we can say that higher birth rate, lower life expectancy at birth. Another correlation between birth rate and school life expectancy is -0.2490, which means there is some correlation between them. (However, we use total only 9 nations for this correlation, which is too small number of variable that means the result of calculation could be different if we use more number of variables such as 100, 200, and etc.)