Comments on: A LITTLE PLEASANT DEMOGRAPHIC ARITHMETIC

By: kevin denny

kevin denny — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:53:06 +0000

Whether one is “pro-life” or “pro-choice” [tendentious terms, if ever] it seems highly likely that abortions reflect unwanted pregnancies and hence the fall is probably a good thing, reflecting a fall in demand [unless the supply curve has shifted somehow].

By: Antoin Daltún

Antoin Daltún — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:42:43 +0000

Is there enough information to have an educated guess at whether migration patterns have influenced the data?

By: Gerard O'Neill

Gerard O'Neill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:07:52 +0000

Also worth putting the Irish trends in an international context. Table 5 in Eurostat’s report The EU-27 population continues to grow - Issue number 31/2009 (link below) shows a similar levelling off in a number of countries, including Denmark and Iceland.

What is even more striking is the variance in the incidence of births outside marriage in 2008: from 6.5% of all births in Greece to 64.1% in Iceland (down from a peak of 65.2% in 2000). So is the Irish trend just ‘resting’ on its way to Scandanavian/Nordic levels? Or might we go Greek if a prolonged recession/depression forces a collapse in social welfare payments for lone parents (even if said payments weren’t necessarily a cause of the previous increase in births outside marriage)?

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_code=KS-QA-09-031

By: James Conran

James Conran — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:31:06 +0000

Definitely not the place to be debating the morality of these issues but I’ll add that whether a smaller proportion of teen pregnencies ending in abortion is a good thing or not depends firstly on whether your pro-choice or pro-life and secondly, if you are pro-choice, on whether the reduction is due to an increase or reduction in the range of choices and opportunities available to pregnant teens. (In this instance I presume it was due to an increase in opportunity and therefore likely to be a good thing from both pro-choice and pro-life viewpoints).

By: Garo

Garo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:26:40 +0000

Good point tommy. It would be instructive to have a graph showing the proportion of Irish population that are teenagers for each data point.

Also, I don’t see the first figure as representing anything uncontroversially pleasing. People have differing views on whether births outside marriage are “non-pleasing”.

By: tommy tighe

tommy tighe — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:08:40 +0000

Are the teen birth figures adjusted for the lower proportion of teenagers in Ireland at present and the increasing national birthrate as a high proportion of our population enter their late 20s/early 30s? If not, this apparent fall-off in teen birthrates might simply be a function of the demographic cycle rather than a societal shift that reduces the percentage of teenagers who become pregnant.

Sorry to be a doom-monger, but I thought it was a salient point