placestats

Abortion rate (legal, reported) vs. CO2 per capita

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Abortion rate (legal, reported) and CO2 per capita rise and fall together at r = +0.40 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = +0.41, q = 0.020, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed.

Comparing countries across the middle half of abortion rate (legal, reported), 5.79 to 13.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, co2 per capita is worse by 0.853 t CO2e per capita at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.796 t CO2e per capita.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.404p = 0.006 · 45 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.410p = 0.006 · likely range [+0.13, +0.63]
p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.032 · 4 regions
Check for luck (q)0.020across 14,952 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Abortion rate (legal, reported) · per 1,000 women aged 15-49link with income -0.03 · independent
CO2 per capita · t CO2e per capitalink with income +0.82 · proxy

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Abortion rate (legal, reported) · per 1,000 women aged 15-49 →CO2 per capita · t CO2e per capita →1.2365.40.038414Albania: 1.23 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 1.79 t CO2e per capitaArmenia: 11.9 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 2.47 t CO2e per capitaAzerbaijan: 29.1 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.81 t CO2e per capitaBelgium: 7.75 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.31 t CO2e per capitaBulgaria: 14.2 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 5.31 t CO2e per capitaBelarus: 7.03 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 5.94 t CO2e per capitaSwitzerland: 5.79 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.75 t CO2e per capitaCzechia: 6.36 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.13 t CO2e per capitaGermany: 6.47 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 6.94 t CO2e per capitaDenmark: 12.1 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.28 t CO2e per capitaSpain: 9.79 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.51 t CO2e per capitaEstonia: 10.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.76 t CO2e per capitaFinland: 7.09 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 5.54 t CO2e per capitaFrance: 15 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4 t CO2e per capitaFaroe Islands: 3.76 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 0.0384 t CO2e per capitaUnited Kingdom: 13.2 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.22 t CO2e per capitaGeorgia: 13.5 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.53 t CO2e per capitaGreenland: 65.4 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 10.5 t CO2e per capitaHong Kong SAR, China: 3.61 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.6 t CO2e per capitaCroatia: 3.82 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.83 t CO2e per capitaHungary: 9.65 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.46 t CO2e per capitaIceland: 12.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 8.52 t CO2e per capitaItaly: 5.62 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 5.08 t CO2e per capitaJapan: 5.39 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.84 t CO2e per capitaKazakhstan: 13.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 12.6 t CO2e per capitaKyrgyz Republic: 11.2 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 1.49 t CO2e per capitaLithuania: 3.91 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.49 t CO2e per capitaLatvia: 6.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.65 t CO2e per capitaMoldova: 12.7 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.42 t CO2e per capitaNorth Macedonia: 7.54 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4 t CO2e per capitaMongolia: 14.8 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.85 t CO2e per capitaNorway: 13.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.18 t CO2e per capitaNew Zealand: 13.7 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 6.01 t CO2e per capitaPortugal: 7.75 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.32 t CO2e per capitaRomania: 7.28 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.72 t CO2e per capitaRussian Federation: 28.2 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 14 t CO2e per capitaSingapore: 3.31 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 9.75 t CO2e per capitaSlovak Republic: 4.78 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 5.51 t CO2e per capitaSlovenia: 7.08 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 6.27 t CO2e per capitaSweden: 15.7 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.57 t CO2e per capitaSeychelles: 14.7 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 7.24 t CO2e per capitaTajikistan: 5.82 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 0.922 t CO2e per capitaUkraine: 4.96 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 3.13 t CO2e per capitaUruguay: 12.9 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 2.57 t CO2e per capitaUzbekistan: 4.14 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, 4.09 t CO2e per capitaALBAZEFROGRLJPNKAZKGZRUSSGPTJK

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.4040.00645
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.2060.17445
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.4100.00645
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.2560.09345

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 45 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.006 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.335 (without RUS) to +0.439 (without SGP). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: RUS (-0.075).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
Europe & Central Asia38+0.45

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third15+0.18
Middle third15+0.75
Richest third15+0.53

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians30+0.55

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.148 after dropping 4 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 17years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.083, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose abortion rate (legal, reported) moved did not tend to see their co2 per capita move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.410for comparison
Within countries+0.246each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.083q = 0.648 · 46 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.123q = 0.493
Read with care.
  • Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

657 country-years (one country in one year), 46 countries, 2008–2024, about 14 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 8% for Abortion rate (legal, reported), 7% for CO2 per capita. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.30−0.3-100+10years CO2 per capita trails Abortion rate (legal, reported) →lag -10: r = 0.102 (n = 657)lag -9: r = 0.092 (n = 657)lag -8: r = 0.034 (n = 657)lag -7: r = -0.047 (n = 657)lag -6: r = -0.058 (n = 657)lag -5: r = -0.107 (n = 657)lag -4: r = -0.099 (n = 657)lag -3: r = -0.057 (n = 657)lag -2: r = -0.012 (n = 657)lag -1: r = 0.030 (n = 657)lag +0: r = 0.083 (n = 657)lag +1: r = 0.077 (n = 642)lag +2: r = 0.166 (n = 605)lag +3: r = 0.206 (n = 573)lag +4: r = 0.258 (n = 537)lag +5: r = 0.242 (n = 500)lag +6: r = 0.206 (n = 463)lag +7: r = 0.158 (n = 418)lag +8: r = 0.139 (n = 374)lag +9: r = 0.128 (n = 330)lag +10: r = 0.093 (n = 290)

Same year (lag 0): +0.083. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.26 at lag +4) is higher than the same-year one by 0.17. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


per 1,000 women aged 15-49
t CO2e per capita		Years
Greenland GRL65.410.52021, 2024
Azerbaijan AZE29.13.812024
Russian Federation RUS28.2142013, 2024
Sweden SWE15.73.572024
France FRA1542019, 2024
Mongolia MNG14.87.852024
Seychelles SYC14.77.242024
Bulgaria BGR14.25.312021, 2024
Kazakhstan KAZ13.812.62021, 2024
New Zealand NZL13.76.012023, 2024
Georgia GEO13.53.532024
Norway NOR13.37.182011, 2024
United Kingdom GBR13.24.222016, 2024
Uruguay URY12.92.572022, 2024
Iceland ISL12.88.522018, 2024

United Nations Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, 2017 to 2024 editions: tables of marriages and crude marriage rates, of divorces and crude divorce rates, by urban/rural residence, and of legally induced abortions. Women aged 15 to 49 from the World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0).
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Abortion rate (legal, reported)

Legal abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-49

United Nations Statistics Division · UNdata terms of use · updated annual (each edition covers the latest five years)

Legal abortions reported to the UN Demographic Yearbook, per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 (women of childbearing age, counted by the World Bank). Only countries where abortion is legal on broad grounds and the national count covers the whole country are included. That is mostly Europe, the former Soviet Union and a few others, such as Japan, Cuba and New Zealand. Countries whose counts cover only hospitals, only medical reasons or only complications are left out, and so is any year a footnote says is missing part of the country (several years for Italy). Abortions outside the official system, such as pills bought online, are not counted anywhere. So the figure is a floor, not a full count. Where abortion is banned, there is no figure at all, which is not the same as no abortions. No "better" direction is set.

CO2 per capita

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions excluding LULUCF per capita (t CO2e/capita)

Climate Watch / World Resources Institute · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Replaces the retired EN.ATM.CO2E.PC series. The two cannot be directly compared, and they are deliberately not joined together.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 4 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 14,952 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Abortion rate (legal, reported) and CO2 per capita

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Abortion rate (legal, reported) changes CO2 per capita, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Abortion rate (legal, reported) or CO2 per capita