Category Archives: Other

Posts of topics other than health and health-related issues

Abortion restrictions and maternal mortality

Posted on May 20, 2022 by colinmathers

In my previous post, I estimated that 47% of pregnancies are unintended, and of these, 43% occur in countries where abortion is illegal or severely restricted. Globally, 60% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.  In countries where abortion is widely available, … Continue reading →

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Global estimates of abortion rates by legality and region

Posted on May 16, 2022 by colinmathers

A little under two months ago, the Guttmacher Institute and WHO released first-ever country-level estimates of unintended pregnancy and abortion (see here). The new study analyzed data for 150 countries for the period 2015-2019 and found that: Almost half of … Continue reading →

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Values and religion in 2020: an updated map

Posted on December 15, 2021 by colinmathers

In my previous post, I presented results for an updated version of the latent variable analyses I carried out last year on data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study [1-4]. I have re-estimated a latent variable for … Continue reading →

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Modern and pre-modern religious values: an update

Posted on December 9, 2021 by colinmathers

In a previous post, I developed a continuous latent variable for pre-modern/modern religious values based on data for waves 5 to 7 country surveys in the  World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS). I used this data to … Continue reading →

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Religiosity and atheism: revised estimates for 1980-2020

Posted on November 9, 2021 by colinmathers

In previous posts, I have summarized various analyses of the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS), altogether including more than 110 countries, and focusing on trends and differences religious affiliation, religious beliefs and practices, as well … Continue reading →

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Age Patterns of Religiosity and Atheism in the USA, Europe and Australia

Posted on May 29, 2021 by colinmathers

It is well known that the proportion of people who are atheist or non-religious in high income countries is generally higher in younger people than older people and rising over time.  So is the decline in religiosity mainly a cohort … Continue reading →

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Global trends in religiosity and atheism 1980 to 2020

Posted on September 30, 2020 by colinmathers

Ronald Inglehart has recently published an article in Foreign Affairs called “Giving up on God: the global decline of religion” in which he uses data from the most recent wave of the World Health Surveys (WVS) to claim that between … Continue reading →

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Are the Lancet authorship criteria adequate?

Posted on September 27, 2020 by colinmathers

In May, the Lancet published a peer-reviewed study claiming to analyse data from nearly 15,000 patients who had received the drug hydroxychloroquine for treatment of Covid-19. The study concluded that patients who received the drug were dying at a higher … Continue reading →

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Religiosity and atheism in 2020

Posted on September 5, 2020 by colinmathers

The World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS) include questions on religious affiliation, religious beliefs and practices, as well as on the influence of religion on attitudes to government, politicians and science [1-4].  These questions played a … Continue reading →

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The climate crisis has not gone away

Posted on August 23, 2020 by colinmathers

The return of the summer wildfires in California reminds us that the climate crisis has not gone away just because there is a pandemic. The USA has recently recorded the hottest ever measured temperature of 54.1 C (130 F) in … Continue reading →

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