Global Birthrate Factors

Hans Rosling's presentation on world population begins with him trying to discover the impact religion has on the number of babies born per women. He soon discovers that there are other factors at play.

Rosling begins by breaking down the many religions of the world into three categories: Christianity, Islam and Eastern Religions. His data shows that surprisingly enough, the number of babies per women has been decreasing for the past 50 years for all religions, however other patterns in the data emerged. He discovered that babies per women decrease when four things happened: there were low mortality rates, children were not needed for work, women were educated and joined the labor force, and access to family planning was available.

The medium number of babies born per women is now two, and this is expected to hold for the foreseeable future. While there are many factors associated with birthrates, overall we as a global society are moving in the right direction, as Hans Rosling's presentation on world population clearly shows.