Surviving the World

A Photocomic Education by Dante Shepherd

Lesson #189 - Fertility Rate

Now, none of us are Charlie Eppes, but based on our calculations, there is a .33 correlation factor that not having children leads to a higher satisfaction of life. And this doesn't come from our crazy rankings - no, they come from the University of Leicester and the United Nations. In fact, you can set a pretty nice parabola right through the graph above (chart was done by international ranking and not actual values, in order to actually be able to write half the names in the upper left quadrant).

What's our point? Either that not having children makes you more satisfied with your life, or that you can use numbers to make any kind of false comparison you like, and possibly have it make sense!

On a side note, if you had told us that the two hundredth comic we did (189 lessons, 7 recitations, and 4 crosswords) would focus on the international fertility rate, we'd just have been glad we still existed 200 comics in. The real round-number celebration will be coming with Lesson #200.