Children & Hope

So, the other day my mom called to tell me about a new study of hopefulness around the world, and she was surprised that "developed" countries like France and the UK had very little hope, while the most hopeful country was Nigeria. I theorized that the reason for this was, in part, that Nigeria has a lot of children, and thanks to recent sanitation and health developments, these children don't die very often. On the flip side, wealthier countries have been declining in fertility for decades, so those societies don't have a lot of kids anymore. The USA is right in the middle, since immigration and fertility of recent immigrants has kept our reproduction just above replacement.

To prove my theory, I got my hands on the "Net Hope Score" for each of the 53 countries studied in the Gallup poll my mother read, and plotted that data against the percent of each country's population under the age of 14. As you can see in the chart above, there is a clear correlation between young people and the Net Hope Score, seeming to prove that having children around allows people to believe that their lives are getting better.

Of course, the correlation isn't perfect, because things like war, government upheavals, and cultural ideas about hope can affect the responses as well. For example, China was in the top ten most hopeful countries, even though their population of young people is about average. While China is moving ahead economically, it makes sense that the Chinese people would feel hopeful about their financial futures, as well as the power their government is gaining on the world stage. France, on the other hand, was the absolute least hopeful country, though they didn't have the absolute lowest percentage of children. I hypothesize that this is because the French are jerks : )