Mathematical Exploration Of Demographics

Rationale

I have decided to focus this mathematical exploration around the topic of demographics and its statistical value. I decided to base it on demographics because I had never thought there could be such crucial mathematical links in geography. Instantly, it had my mental juices flowing as the link between geography could be the key to unlocking problems that people thought could never solve such as world hunger. Living in sub-Saharan Africa issues of this nature concern me deeply in that we are part of the generation faced with taking Africa to super power status, however that cannot be achieved if we cannot tackle such issues.

There seems to be a fundamental correlation between the number of children women give birth to, and the level of education they have received (i.e. tertiary, middle or elementary level). In more developed countries, birth rates have been falling drastically however they continue to flourish economically. It is a recurring trend throughout the globe that the more educated women are, the less likely they are to have multiple kids. In China, the one child policy stands out as an exception to all other countries in that women are bound by law to have no more than one child. However, in sub-Saharan Africa birth rates continue to rise with little or slow growth.

The aim of this exploration is to explicate the correlation between the number of children women give birth to, and the level of education they have received. I plan to achieve this through using various mathematical representations to highlight the underlying relationship these two factors have on each other.

Introduction

Country demographics are an integral part of statistics as they help, not only statisticians but a general public understan...

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...se of various mathematical processes I was able to confirm that there is a correlation between birth and literacy rates through the correlation coefficient whose results as aforementioned, stood at -0.805, implying that there is a strong negative relationship between the two variables. The significance of the strong negative relationship is that as literacy rates increase, the birth rates decrease which inevitable corroborates the idea of there being a linkage. However, to look at things in perspective, there could be a correlation due to the fact that when women are more educated, they have more knowledge regarding family planning and as a result choose not to have as many kids as they are aware of the implications, also educated women tend to focus on their professions which means that they have less time to have children and as a result, the birth rate decreases.