Monday, October 16, 2006

Demographics and the future

I just picked up and read the first few pages of Mark Steyn's America Alone. He talks about the Islamic Baby Boom. I cannot even begin to guess how this Grauniad article, Different Planets, I found linked to at Arts & Letters Daily relates in any meaningful way, but here are some statistics the article provides:

...Dahara, who is 26, has a one-in-seven chance of dying during her reproductive years as a result of a pregnancy-related complication or infection, or childbirth injury. Her baby son, lying here on the table, has a 15% chance of not reaching his first birthday and a one-in-six chance of not making it to the age of five. And Dahara is fortunate to have had the skills of a midwife like the cheerful Insa: across the country, only 16% of deliveries are attended by anyone with any training at all...

Carmen Helwig... is older - 38 - but Tess is her first baby. She was was born by caesarean section because of worries over a uterine scar, the result of previous surgery... Carmen's chance of dying as a result of childbirth over her lifetime is one in 29,800 (Dahara's, remember, was just one in seven). The risk of Tess dying in her first year is one in 333. In Sweden, 100% of births are attended by a skilled, trained midwife. Overall, it is the safest place in the world to become a mother.

No comments: