Although yesterday was my wrap up of the trip to Portugal, today I want to add a few statistical thoughts that surprise me. For one, the divorce rate in Portugal is the highest in Europe, with over 60% of marriages ending in divorce. This is a fairly widely reported number and I am not sure I have an explanation. One possibility that I have seen discussed is that the marriage rate is lower in Portugal and since the divorce rate is measured not by looking at individual marriages but by comparing marriage and divorce numbers, when the marriage rate is low, the divorce rate becomes correspondingly high. I don’t know if this is a good answer or not, but at least it does make some sense. By the way, the marriage and divorce rates in neighboring Spain are not that different, and both countries are more extreme than the rest of Europe. To me, in that both of these countries are highly Catholic, the statistics are a surprise. Perhaps someone reading this knows more than I do.

Not surprising, considering marriage and divorce statistics, is another number. The average Portuguese woman has 1.43 children. This is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 (this is the replacement rate for advanced countries, where children normally outlive their earliest years by a large margin), and is a reason why, without immigration, the population of the country (now only 10 million, almost a third of whom live in metropolitan Lisbon) would fall to about 8 million over the next 50 years.

This is one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe today, and has in recent years been falling. A corollary to this statistic is another. The age of the average Portuguese mother at the birth of her first child is approximately 30.4 years. You can imagine how different it must have been back in the day. By the way, the low fertility rate means that, last year, there were 11 deaths in Portugal for every 8 births, and that the average age in Portugal is over 40.

(As a matter of comparison, the average age of a mother at first birth in the United States is 27.3, and the fertility rate – still below replacement rate – is 1.64 children.)

I have read that the average age at death of a Portuguese man is about 78 years and of a Portuguese woman about 86, averaging out (I think I read) to about 81. In the U.S., these figures are 76 for a male, and 81 for a female. As you probably know, U.S. life expectancy has been dropping; I do not know about Portugal. Generally, in the E.U., it is 77 for a male, and 83 for a female, so Portugal comes out a bit ahead here. But the difference of 8 years between males and females in Portugal are striking.

Then, there is abortion. Apparently abortion has been legal in Portugal since 2007. Before that, and to an extent after, good statistics are hard to come by. But it does appear that Portugal has one of the lowest rates of abortion in the E.U., and that it is true that the number of legal abortions has increased since 2007, it has actually been declining a bit in recent years.

I have seen nothing to tell me why Portugal’s abortion rate remains fairly low. But I did see a description of the law in Portugal. As I recall, abortion on demand is available for 10 weeks, and that after that (and according to a complex formula) it continues to be available for the heatlh of the mother, in cases of rape and incest, and where there are serious fetal abnormalities. Again, a highly Catholic country (although religion here, like elsewhere, has trouble holding on to the masses), and I see no evidence of the vitriol we have seen on the subject.

Earlier this week, I spoke about race in Portugal. Because the inhabitants of all Portuguese colonies were considered citizens of Portugal up until 1975, there are many people from these colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Macao, Goa, Sao Tome, and the Cape Verde Islands) had moved to Portugal proper before 1975 and they, and their descendants continue to live there. The official statistics on the number, say of Black Portuguese, are suspect because they are kept differently and with less rigor than we keep such statistics, and are seemingly quite understated – you see many people of colonial ethnicity throughout the country and especially in Lisbon.

I don’t know about racism in Portugal, but if you get your information through Wikipedia, you would think it less a problem than in many or most other countries. On the other hand, Wikipedia speaks of ongoing prejudice of the Portuguese to immigrants from Brazil, accusing them of contributing to prostitution and various forms of crime, but that this prejudice is not racially based, but based on nationality. There have been a fair number of Brazilians who have immigrated to Portugal. (Another aside – when I was in Portugal in 1972, it still maintained its colonial empire, and it had treated its colonies as integral parts of the country. I remember driving into Portugal from Spain and seeing a welcome billboard which stated that Portugal was the world’s only multi-continental, multi-racial country. Maybe this mentality has helped tamped down racism?)

Finally, I looked at worlddata.info, and have come up with th. e following additional statistics about Portugal.

1. Approximately 1100 miles of coast line
2. The 18th biggest country in Europe and 111th biggest in the world.
3. Land area is about 88% of the land area of Kentucky.
4. The tallest mountain in Portugal is in the Azores (the Azores and Madeira are considered parts of the Portugal proper)
5. The population density compared to the U.S. is 4:1
6. The average age in Portugal is 44.6 years old; in the U.S. 38.5
7. The cost of living in Portugal is only about 2/3 that of the United States, but the average income in Portugal is about 1/3 of that in the U.S.
8. Inflation rates, tax rates, size of government debt – all comparable to the U.S.
9. Energy consumption and CO2 emissions are worlds higher per person in the US.
10. Portugal has more hospital beds and more physicians per person than the U.S. does. It has fewer cases of H.I.V. and diabetes, but more tuberculosis (the tuberculosis cure rates are the same in both countries)

Now, my usual disclaimer (whether I say it or not). I have pulled all these statistics out of thin air (i.e., the internet). I am assuming that they are pretty accurate…..but what do I know?