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Countries by birth rate in 2008

The birth rate is typically the rate of births in a population over time.^[1] Generally, the rate of births in one population is calculated using live birth counts from a universal system of registration of births, deaths, and marriages, and population counts from a census or using estimation through specialized demographic techniques. Birth rate, along with death rate and migration rate, are commonly used to calculate population growth.

Crude birth rate is the number of childbirths per 1,000 people per year. ^[2] Another term used interchangeably with birth rate is natality.^[3] When the crude death rate is subtracted from the crude birth rate, it reveals the rate of natural increase (RNI).^[4] This number is equal to the rate of population change (not factoring in migration).^[4]

It is important to distinguish between a total or crude birth rate, which uses all births, typically indicated as births per 1,000, versus an age-specific rate which is typically indicated as the number of births per 1,000 persons in this age group.^[5] The first known use of the term "birth rate" in the English language was in 1859.^[6]

As of 2009, the average birth rate for the whole world is 19.95 per year per 1,000 total population, a 0.48% decline from 2003's world birth rate of 20.43 per 1,000 total population.

Political issues[link]

The birth rate is an issue of concern and policy for a number of national governments. Some, including those of Italy and Malaysia, seek to increase the national birth rate using measures such as financial incentives or provision of support services to new mothers. Conversely, other countries have policies to reduce the birth rate, for example, China's one-child policy. Measures such as improved information about and availability of birth control have achieved similar results in countries such as Iran.

There has also been discussion on whether bringing women into the forefront of development initiatives will lead to a decline in birth rates. In some places, government policies have been focused on reducing birth rates by improving women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. Typically, high birth rates have been associated with health impairments and low life expectancy, low living standards, low status of women, and low levels of education. There are claims that as countries go through economic development and social change, population growth such as birth rate declines.

In 1974, at the World Population Conference in Bucharest, women's issues gained considerable attention. Family programs were seriously discussed and 137 countries drafted a World Population Plan of Action. In the discussion, many countries accepted modern birth control, such as the pill and the condom, but opposed abortion. In 1994, another action plan was drafted in Cairo under the United Nations. They discussed the concern on population and the need to incorporate women into the discourse. They agreed that improvements in women's status, and initiatives in defense of reproductive health and freedom, the environment, and sustainable socio-economic development were needed.

Birth rates ranging from 10–20 births per 1,000 are considered low, while rates from 40–50 births per 1,000 are considered high. There are problems associated with both an extremely high birth rate and an extremely low birth rate. High birth rates can cause stress on government welfare and family programs. Additional problems faced by a country with a high birth rate include educating a growing number of children, creating jobs for these children when they enter the workforce, and dealing with the environmental effects that a large population can produce. Low birth rates can put stress on the government to provide adequate senior welfare systems and can also impose stress on families that must support the elders themselves. There will be less children or working age population to support the constantly growing aging population.

Birth rate in different countries[link]

According to the CIA's The World Factbook, the country with the highest birth rate currently is Niger at 51.26 births per 1000 people. The country with the lowest birth rate is Japan at 7.64 births per 1,000 people. (Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, is at 7.42 births per 1,000 people.)

As compared to the 1950s (birth rate was at 36 births per 1,000 in the 1950s^[8]), birth rate has declined by 16 births per 1000 people. In July, 2011, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that the adolescent birth rate continues to decline.^[9]

Birth rates vary even within the same geographic areas. In Europe, as of July 2011, Ireland's birth rate is 16.5 per cent, which is 3.5 per cent higher than the next-ranked country, the UK. France has a birth rate of 12.8 percent while Sweden is at 12.3 percent.^[10]

In July, 2011, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced a 2.4% increase in live births in the UK in 2010 alone.^[11] This is the highest birth rate in the UK in 40 years.^[11] However the UK record year for births and birthrate remains 1920 when the ONS say there were over 957,000 births to a population of "around 40 million"^[12]
By contrast, the birth rate in Germany is only 8.3 per 1,000, which is so low that both the UK and France, which have significantly smaller populations, produced more births in the last year.^[13]

Birth rates also vary within the same geographic area, based on different demographic groups. For example, in April 2011, the U.S. CDC announced that the birth rate for women over the age of 40 in the U.S. rose between 2007 and 2009, while it fell among every other age group during the same time span.^[14]

In August 2011, Taiwan's government announced that its birth rate declined in the previous year, despite the fact that the government implemented a host of approaches to encourage its citizens to have babies.^[15]

United States[link]

Per U.S. federal government data released in March 2011, births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the largest drop in the U.S. for any two-year period since the 1970s.^[16] Births have declined for three consecutive years, and are now 7% below the peak in 2007.^[17] This drop has continued through 2010, according to data released by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics in June 2011.^[18]

Numerous experts have suggested that this decline is largely a reflection of unfavorable uneconomic conditions.^[19] This connection between birth rates and economic downturns partly stems from the fact that American birth rates have now fallen to levels that are comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s.^[20] A state- level look at fertility, based on a report published by the Pew Research Center in October 2011, points of the strong correlation between lower birth rates and economic distress. In 2008, North Dakota has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate at only 3.1% and was the only state to show an increase (0.7%) in birth rates. All other states either remained the same or declined.

The research center’s study also found evidence of a correlation between economic difficulties and fertility declines by race and ethnicity. Hispanics, who are particularly affected by the recession have experienced the largest fertility declines, especially compared to whites who have smaller economic hardships and smaller declines in fertility. Statistically, from 2008–2009, birth rates declined 5.9% for Hispanic women, 2.4% among African American women and only 1.6% among white women. This may be linked to the fact that Hispanics have suffered the most loses of wealth since the beginning of the recession and are overly represented in terms of unemployment rates.

Other factors such as women’s labor force participation, contraceptive technology, and public policy make it difficult to determine how much, exactly, economic changes are causing fertility changes. Research suggests that much of the fertility decline that occurs during economic downturns is a postponement of childbearing, not a decision to have fewer children or no children at all. Most people plan to “catch up” to their plans of bearing children once the economic conditions turn around. Younger women are more likely than older women to postpone pregnancy because of economic factors since they have more time of biological fertility remaining.^[21]

Teen birth rates in the U.S. are at the lowest level in U.S. history.^[22] In fact, teen birth rates in the U.S. have consistently decreased since 1991 through 2012, except for a brief increase between 2005 and 2007.^[22] The other aberration from this otherwise steady decline in teen birth rates is the 6% decrease in birth rates for 15–19 year olds between 2008 and 2009.^[22] Despite these years of decrease, U.S. teen birth rates are still higher than in other developed nations.^[22] Racial differences prevail with teen birth and pregnancy rates as well. The American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic black teen pregnancy rates are more than double the non-Hispanic white teen birth rate.^[23]

Methods of measuring birth rate[link]

The crude birth rate is the number of births in a given population during a given time period (such as 1 January – December 31) divided by the total population and multiplied by one thousand.

According to the United Nations' World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision Population Database, crude birth rate is the number of births over a given period divided by the person-years lived by the population over that period. It is expressed as number of births per 1,000 population. CBR = (births in a period / population of person-years over that period).

Another indicator of fertility that is frequently used is the total fertility rate, which is the average number of children born to each woman over the course of her life. In general, the total fertility rate is a better indicator of (current) fertility rates because, unlike the crude birth rate, it is not affected by the age distribution of the population. Fertility rates tend to be higher in less economically developed countries and lower in more economically developed countries.

Factors affecting birth rate[link]

• Government population policy, such as Pro-natalist policies and antinatalist policies - for instance tax on childlessness
• Availability of family planning services, such as birth control and sex education
• Availability and safety of abortion and safety of childbirth
• Infant Mortality Rate – A family may have more children if a country's infant mortality rate is high as it is likely some of those children will die.
• Existing age-sex structure
• Typical age of marriage
• Strength if Divorce/Child Support Industries for breaking up families
• Social and religious beliefs - especially in relation to contraception and abortion
• Industrialization - in a pre-industrial agrarian economy, unskilled or semiskilled manual labor was needed for production (Children can be seen as an economic resource in developing countries as they can earn money.) As people require more training, parents tend to have fewer children, invest more resources in each individual child - the higher the level of technology the lower the birth rate: the Demographic-economic paradox
• Economic prosperity/Economic difficulty - in difficult economic times, couples delay or decrease childbearing.
• Poverty levels
• Urbanization
• Television^{[citation needed]}
• Pension availability
• Conflict
• Illiteracy, unemployment and lack of awareness are also the factors affecting birth

Birth rate and the Demographic Transition Model[link]

The Demographic Transition Model describes how population mortality and fertility decline as social and economic development occurs through time. The two major factors in the Demographic Transition Model are Crude Birth Rate (CBR) and Crude Death Rate (CDR).

There are four stages to the Demographic Model. In the first and second stages, CBR remains high because people are still in agrarian cultures and need more labour to work on farms. In addition, the chances of children dying are high because medicine is not as advanced during that phase. In the third stage, CBR starts to decline due to women's increasing participation in society and the reduced need for families to have many children to work on farms. In the fourth stage, CBR is sustained at a very low level, with some countries having rates that are below replacement levels in other countries.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Birth and death rates

• Death rate
• Population ageing
• Population control
• Total fertility rate

Case studies:

• Aging of Europe
• Aging of Japan

Lists:

• List of countries by birth rate
• List of countries by fertility rate

Organisations:

• Population Matters, (formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• United Nations World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision Population Database
• Audrey, Clark (1985). Longman Dictionary of Geography, Human and Physical. New York: Longman. 
• Douglas, Ian; Richard Huggett (2007). Companion Encyclopedia of Geography. New York: Routledge. 
• Norwood, Carolette. "Re-thinking the integration of women in population development initiatives" Development in Practice. 19.7(2009):906 – 911.
• World Birth rate by IndexMundi
• Exert from Encyclopedia of Public Health

External links[link]

• CIA World Factbook Birth Rate List by Rank

Hans Rosling
Rosling at the 2012 Time 100 gala
Born	(1948-07-27) July 27, 1948 (age 63)
Institutions	Karolinska Institute
Alma mater	Uppsala University, St. John's Medical College
Known for	Gapminder Foundation and Trendalyzer

Hans Rosling (born 27 July 1948^[1] in Uppsala, Sweden) is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute^[2] and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.

Study and career[link]

From 1967 to 1974 Rosling studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1972 he studied public health at St. John's Medical College, Bangalore. He became a licenced physician in 1976 and from 1979 to 1981 he served as District Medical Officer in Nacala in northern Mozambique.

On 21 August 1981, Rosling discovered an outbreak of konzo, a paralytic disease,^[3][4] and the investigations that followed earned him a Ph.D. degree at Uppsala University in 1986. He spent two decades studying outbreaks of this disease in remote rural areas across Africa and supervised more than ten Ph.D. students^{[citation needed]}. Outbreaks occur among hunger-stricken rural populations in Africa where a diet dominated by insufficiently processed cassava results in simultaneous malnutrition and high dietary cyanide intake.^[4]

Rosling's research has also focused on other links between economic development, agriculture, poverty and health^[5] in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has been health adviser to WHO, UNICEF and several aid agencies. In 1993 he was one of the initiators of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sweden. At Karolinska Institutet he was head of the Division of International Health (IHCAR) from 2001 to 2007. As chairman of Karolinska International Research and Training Committee (1998–2004) he started health research collaborations with universities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. He started new courses on Global Health and co-authored a textbook on Global Health that promotes a fact-based world view.

Rosling presented the television documentary The Joy of Stats, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Four in December 2010.^[6]

Gapminder[link]

Rosling co-founded the Gapminder Foundation together with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund. Gapminder developed the Trendalyzer software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive graphics. His lectures using Gapminder graphics to visualise world development have won awards.^[7] The interactive animations are freely available from the Foundation's website. On 16 March 2007 Google acquired the Trendalyzer software with the intention to scale it up and make it freely available for public statistics. In 2008 Google made available a Motion Chart Google Gadget and in 2009 the Public Data Explorer.^[8]

Rosling is also a sword swallower, as demonstrated in the final moments of his second talk at the TED conference.^[9] In 2009 he was listed as one of 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine,^[10] and in 2011 as one of 100 most creative people in business by the Fast Company Magazine.^[11] In 2011 he was elected member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Awards[link]

Hans Rosling at the Swedish pavilion of Expo 2010 in Shanghai

• 2007 – Statistician of the Year Award from the Swedish Association for Statistics
• 2007 – Jubilee Prize from the Swedish Medical Society
• 2007 – Knowledge Prize from the National Encyclopaedia of Sweden
• 2008 – Speaker of the Year from the Swedish Event Academy
• 2008 – The Big Debate Award from Dagens Medicine
• 2009 – Georg and Greta Borgstrom Award from the Swedish Royal Academy of Agriculture and Forestry
• 2010 – Illis Quorum, Highest Award conferred by the Government of Sweden
• 2010 – The Grand Prize from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
• 2010 – Gold Medal from Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
• 2010 – World Technology Award in Design together with Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Rönnlund
• 2010 – The Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement (US)^[12]
• 2011 - Grierson 2011 Award for the Best British Science Documentary, presenter in "The Joy of Stats"
• 2012 - Time 100 most influential people list

Selected publications[link]

• Thorson, A.; Ragnarsson, A.; Rosling, H.; Ekström, A. (2010). "Male circumcision reduces HIV transmission. The risk of transmission from woman to man is halved". Lakartidningen 107 (46): 2881–2883. PMID 21197783.  edit
• Hanson, S.; Thorson, A.; Rosling, H.; Örtendahl, C.; Hanson, C.; Killewo, J.; Ekström, A. M. (2009). Husereau, Don. ed. "Estimating the Capacity for ART Provision in Tanzania with the Use of Data on Staff Productivity and Patient Losses". PLoS ONE 4 (4): e5294. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0005294. PMC 2667213. PMID 19381270. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2667213.  edit
• Von Schreeb, J.; Riddez, L.; Samnegård, H.; Rosling, H. (2008). "Foreign field hospitals in the recent sudden-onset disasters in Iran, Haiti, Indonesia, and Pakistan". Prehospital and disaster medicine : the official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the World Association for Emergency and Disaster Medicine in association with the Acute Care Foundation 23 (2): 144–151; discussion 151–3. PMID 18557294.  edit
• Schell, C. O.; Reilly, M.; Rosling, H.; Peterson, S.; Ekström, A. M. (2007). "Socioeconomic determinants of infant mortality: A worldwide study of 152 low-, middle-, and high-income countries". Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 35 (3): 288–297. DOI:10.1080/14034940600979171. PMID 17530551.  edit
• Von Schreeb, J.; Rosling, H.; Garfield, R. (2007). "Mortality in Iraq". The Lancet 369 (9556): 101. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60058-0. PMID 17223462.  edit
• Elrayah, H.; Eltom, M.; Bedri, A.; Belal, A.; Rosling, H.; Ostenson, C. (2005). "Economic burden on families of childhood type 1 diabetes in urban Sudan". Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 70 (2): 159–165. DOI:10.1016/j.diabres.2005.03.034. PMID 15919129.  edit
• Thanh, H. T. T.; Jiang, G. X.; Van, T. N.; Minh, D. P. T.; Rosling, H.; Wasserman, D. (2005). "Attempted suicide in Hanoi, Vietnam". Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 40 (1): 64–71. DOI:10.1007/s00127-005-0849-6. PMID 15624077.  edit
• Rosling, H. (2004). "New map of world health is needed. North and South is changed to healthy and ill and West to rich and poor". Lakartidningen 101 (3): 198–201. PMID 14763091.  edit

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hans Rosling

External links[link]

• Hans Rosling on Twitter
• Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen at the 2006 TED Conference in Monterey, CA highlighting novel ways of presenting global statistics.
• Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty, from TED2007, featuring a surprise ending. (video)
• Video of Hans Rosling speech at the OECD World Forum in Istanbul
• Hans Rosling's blog
• Ola Rosling giving a Gapminder presentation at Google (video)
• Motion Chart Google Gadget
• Hans Rosling: Global health expert; data visionary profile on TED.com