Annie Elledge 4th Period Poverty Rate vs.

Total Fertility Rate Have you ever wondered why some countries are poorer than others? Have you ever wondered what factors affect a countrys poverty level? I have always wondered why certain groups of people are wealthier than others and this interest was intensified when I took Human Geography last year. Geography was one of my favorite classes so I decided to incorporate the material I learned in Mr. Warrens class into my linear regression project. As a Girl Scout and secretary of the volunteer club, I think about poverty a lot and I am interested in why countries or groups of people have more poverty than others. There are many reasons that a country could have a higher poverty rate than another and through my research, I discovered that the total fertility rate of a country can affect the poverty rate of a country. The poverty rate is the percentage of people in a country that live below the International Poverty Line, which is $1.25 per day and the total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have in a certain country. My linear regression equation was y = 7.0409 + 0.9853 and this means that every time my poverty rate increases by 1, my total fertility rate increases by 7.0409. My r-value or correlation coefficient was .808 and that means that my graph was pretty linear, because .808 is close to 1, which indicates a perfect linear regression. I wanted to predict some other fertility rates using my linear regression equation. I looked at if a country had a poverty rate of 35%, then its fertility rate would be about 3.45. If another

country had a poverty rate of 55%, then its fertility rate would be about 4.86. Lastly, I wanted to see how many children a woman would have in her lifetime if the poverty rate was 90% and I found that a woman would have about 7.32 children! There are several careers that I believe could use this data to help their line of work. The first one is the leader of a country, because they might want to find a reason that their poverty level is high and they could see that the total fertility rate in their country could be a factor. Another professional that could benefit from my data is a human geographer, because many human geographers study population growth and how it affects a countrys economic status. This could provide great insight on why certain populations are poorer than others. A final profession that would benefit from my research is that of a charity worker. Many charities work to help women in underdeveloped countries become more educated and be able to have jobs and these charities could see that the higher the total fertility rate in a country, the higher the poverty rate. These charities could possibly work towards solutions to decrease the total fertility rate in a country. The data I collected proved to be very valuable, because it helped me discover that one of the reasons why certain countries have more people living below the poverty line is because their total fertility rate is higher. If countries want to lower their poverty rate (which they most likely would love to do), they should look into educating more women and allowing women to work in jobs that are equivalent to a mans so that their poverty rate will go down. If women are able to work and become educated, they will start having fewer kids, which will in turn reduce the countrys poverty level. I believe that my data is very interesting to look at, especially as an AGS student, because this helps me see possible causes of poverty. If we can see what causes poverty, then we will have a better chance of being able to prevent it in the future.

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/

Total Fertility Rate vs. Poverty Rate

8 Niger

Ethiopia

Afghanistan 5

Mozambique

Rwanda

Total Fertility Rate

Kenya

4 Iraq

y = 7.0409x + 0.9853 R = .808

3 India Mexico 2 France United States Costa Rica Peru Brazil Argentina Venezuela South Africa

Chile

China Taiwan 1

Thailand Canada Switzerland Germany Russia

0 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% Poverty Rate (%) 50% 60% 70% 80%