Comparison of Birth Rates and Contraception Use
In looking at world data on the percent of married women 15-49 using contraception (all methods) there are some predictable patterns that emerge, there is a larger amount of use in more heavily developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. There was also a lower usage rate in more underdeveloped areas, such as parts of Africa and some middle eastern areas like Afganistan. While looking at this data I was curious about another set of data I was looking at which was international birth rates, I was curious as to how these to sets of data would line up with each other. My original assumption before comparing the two was that places with lower rates of contraception use would likely have higher birth rates. I got both maps of data from the Population Reference Bureau website.
In looking at world data on the percent of married women 15-49 using contraception (all methods) there are some predictable patterns that emerge, there is a larger amount of use in more heavily developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. There was also a lower usage rate in more underdeveloped areas, such as parts of Africa and some middle eastern areas like Afganistan. While looking at this data I was curious about another set of data I was looking at which was international birth rates, I was curious as to how these to sets of data would line up with each other. My original assumption before comparing the two was that places with lower rates of contraception use would likely have higher birth rates. I got both maps of data from the Population Reference Bureau website.
This map shows the birth rates per 1,000 in population in 2019 internationally, the darker blue showing higher rates, and the lighter the blue the lower the rates.
This map shows the percent of married women 15-49 using all methods of contraception internationally, the darker blue showing higher rates of usage and the lighter the blue the lower the rate.
As you can see from the maps above this assumption is true for some of the countries I had named like the United States, the higher rate of contraception the lower birth rates for the country. However, there were some areas that did not follow this pattern that caught my attention. One of these areas was certain countries in South America, such as Brazil. In Brazil, their rate of contraception use was just as high if not higher than the United States, but they had higher birth rates than the United States. Also, if you look further east to the countries of Iran and Turkey you see the same effect, very high rates of contraception as well as high birth rates documented in the countries. I found this interesting because it would seem to me that there are some other factors at play that may have caused this. Now, I figured that a possible reason for this could be that the contraception usage was cataloged only upon married women and not unmarried women, this could be a contributing factor for countries that have maybe a higher rate of childbirth out of wedlock whether or not they use contraception. This explanation may be able to contribute to some of the discrepancies in the data shown above.
My second thought was maybe how the region, whether based on tradition or maybe religion, values childbirth. Some areas value or even put pressure on women to have many children, this may also be a contributing factor but I could not find any data on this.
I also thought that this information may be skewed simply by the size of the population and the way these data points were measured, but that to me still doesn't explain places like Brazil.
I think this is important because I am curious to know what the health status of different countries around the world is and I am a strong believer in contraception being apart of health care and I know that not everyone has access. I find it interesting to see how often children are being born in relation to how readily available contraception is. This information could always just be regional in how readily available other resources were in the country as well that made people feel more comfortable having a child right not despite having access to contraception. I suppose to make any real inferences on this data I would need many more points of data, including some data that may not exist at the moment. All in all, I found it to be an interesting topic.
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