Unwed Mothers – a Cross-Country Comparison

I was thinking of my post from earlier this week looking at the difference in costs and outcomes of European and American healthcare. And it occurs to me that there’s a certain segment of Americans, call them socially conservative Republicans for lack of a better term, who are scared we’ll end up like Europeans. Apparently one of the symptoms of being one of them damn foreigners is immorality.

Just on a hunch, I opened up my copy of the Statistical Abstract of the United States and rummaged around for a table that might be definable as dealing with moral issues. What I found was data on births to unwed mothers.

According to the table, by this measure, we’re collectively less immoral than the band of perverts making up the collective population of Denmark, France, Sweden, and that most US-like of European countries, the UK. However, relative to Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain, it would seem we’re the band of perverts. Relative to those socialist bastards up in Canada, not to say the heathen Japanese, the fewer comparisons the better.