In this post we will be looking at meaning of birth rate, Death or mortality rate, its factors, difference between birth and Death rate and Mortality statistics.
INTRODUCTON
In the 20th century, several authoritarian governments sought either to increase or to decrease the birth rates, sometimes through forceful intervention. One of the most notorious natalist policies was that in communist Romania in 1967–1990, during the time of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, who adopted a very aggressive natalist policy which included outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, taxes on childlessness, and legal discrimination against childless people. This policy has been depicted in movies and documentaries (such as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and Children of the Decree). These policies temporarily increased birth rates for a few years, but this was followed by a decline due to the increased use of illegal abortion. Ceaușescu’s policy resulted in over 9,000 deaths of women due to illegal abortions, large numbers of children put into Romanian orphanages by parents who could not cope with raising them, street children in the 1990s (when many orphanages were closed and the children ended on the streets), and overcrowding in homes and schools. Ultimately, this aggressive natalist policy led to a generation who eventually led the Romanian Revolution which overthrew and executed him. In stark contrast to Ceaușescu’s natalist policy was China’s one child policy, in effect from 1978 to 2015, which included abuses such as forced abortions. This policy has also been deemed responsible for the common practice of sex selective abortion which led to an imbalanced sex ratio in the country. Given strict family size limitations and a preference for sons, girls became unwanted in China because they were considered as depriving the parents of the chance of having a son. With the progress of prenatal sex-determination technologies and induced abortion, the one-child policy gradually turned into a one-son policy. In many countries, the steady decline in birth rates over the past decades can largely be attributed to the significant gains in women’s freedoms, such as tackling forced marriage and child marriage, access to contraception, equal access to education, and increased socioeconomic opportunities. Women of all economic, social, religious and educational persuasions are choosing to have fewer children as they are gaining more control over their own reproductive rights. Apart from more children living into their adult years, women are often more ambitious to take up education and paid work outside the home, and to live their own lives rather than just a life of reproduction and unpaid domestic work. Birth rates have fallen due to the introduction of family planning clinics and other access to contraception.
WHAT IS BIRTH RATE?
Birth rate, also known as natality, is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration system for births; population counts from a census, and estimation through specialized demographic techniques. The birth rate (along with mortality and migration rates) is used to calculate population growth. The estimated average population may be taken as the mid-year population. The 2021 average of 18.1 births per 1,000 total population equates to approximately 4.3 births per second or about 259 births per minute for the world.
Factors affecting birth rate
- Existing age-sex structure
- Availability of family planning services
- Social and religious beliefs – especially in relation to contraception and abortion
- Female employment
- Economic prosperity (although in theory when the economy is doing well families can afford to have more children in practice the higher the economic prosperity the lower the birth rate).
- Poverty levels – children can be seen as an economic resource in developing countries as they can earn money
- Infant Mortality Rate – a family may have more children if a country’s IMR is high as it is likely some of those children will die.
- Conflicts
- Typical age of marriage
Death or mortality rate
Mortality rate, or death rate is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1,000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1,000) in a population of 1,000 would mean 9.5 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.95% out of the total. It is distinct from “morbidity”, which is either the prevalence or incidence of a disease, and also from the incidence rate (the number of newly appearing cases of the disease per unit of time). An important specific mortality rate measure is the crude death rate, which looks at mortality from all causes in a given time interval for a given population. As of 2020, for instance, the CIA estimates that the crude death rate globally will be 7.7 deaths per 1,000 people in a population per year.
Factors affecting death rate
- Medical facilities and health care
- Nutrition levels
- Living standard
- Access to clean drinking water
- Hygiene levels
- Levels of infectious diseases
- Social factors such as conflicts and levels of violent crime
Mortality statistics
Causes of death vary greatly between developed and less developed countries. According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: “In the world, approximately 62 million people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 million died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients” Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes. In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher, reaching 90%
Difference between birth and Death rate
There are two statistics that are fundamental in the study demography – birth rate and death rate. They serve as the building blocks for understanding more complex population concepts like growth rate, doubling time, and more. Luckily, understanding these two stats is fairly simple: birth rate refers to the number of births that occur per thousand people, per year. Similarly, death rate refers to the number of deaths per thousand people, per year. Comparing the birth rate and death rate of a given area provides insight into whether that population is increasing or decreasing. When the birth rate is larger than the death rate, we know that more people are being “added” to the area than are being “taken away”, meaning the population is growing. Logic follows then that if the birth rate and death rate are equal, the population is not changing and if the birth rate is less than the death rate, the population would be shrinking (ie. more people are being “taken away” than are being added to the area). Knowing this, we could compare the birth rates and death rates of any two countries, and tell which one has a faster growing population.