Compare your class's Moms to those in Ranquitte, Haiti

Activity:

Objective: To compare your class's weighted average birth-rate with that of the women of Ranquitte, Haiti.

Data: We collected data on the women of Ranquitte, Haiti by asking women who visited the health clinic for their age, and for the number of children each has, living or dead, and then the number still living.

To make a useful comparison, we need the ages of your group of mothers, and the number of children they have now.

Questions/Comments/Problems:

1. If every woman in a population always had five children, but none of them ever survived to adulthood, what would happen to the population? Could it still grow? What would you expect to see happen to this population, if the trend continued?

   For this reason, we need to compare mortality rates (that is, numbers of dead children), as well. If your class doesn't want to ask this sensitive question, that's okay! Talk it over, and see what you want to do.

2. We need to consider the age distribution of the parents, in order to make a fair comparison. For example, young mothers obviously tend to have fewer children than older mothers on average (since they have had less time to produce children!). As a general rule, the more time a woman has had to produce children, the more children she will have. Here's a graph of the situation in Ranquitte:
   

   We want to find out how many children your mothers have, and how many children your mothers would have if they were Haitian. Maybe some of your mothers are Haitian! Use this table to compare the total number of kids your mothers would have (on average) if they lived in Ranquitte, Haiti. Add up the numbers in the fourth column and compare it with your class total.

   • Who's got more kids?
   • Based on your knowledge of your own communities resources, and Haitian resources as described in the CIA World Factbook for Haiti, how do the resources for supporting these children compare between communities?
   • For discussion
     "Money isn't everything": many of the people in Ranquitte are subsistance farmers, and, although they don't have much money, they manage to put food on the table. Health care is sub-standard by US standards: there's no doubt about that: infant motality is high. Education is catch as catch can. How many kids should a family have in such a situation?