Do Abortion rate (legal, reported) and Education score go together across countries?

Across 45 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.20, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.22.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Abortion rate (legal, reported) cause Education score?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Abortion rate (legal, reported) vs. Education score

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 45 countries, Abortion rate (legal, reported) and Education score rise and fall together at r = -0.20 (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 = -0.23, q = 0.0095, allowing for the many pairs tested). Caution: leave-one-out range spans 0.15 in r.

Comparing countries across the middle half of abortion rate (legal, reported), 5.62 to 13.2 per 1,000 women aged 15-49, education score is worse by 0.0528 typical gaps at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.0458 typical gaps.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.197p = 0.195 · 45 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.227p = 0.139 · likely range [-0.49, +0.08]

p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.011 · 4 regions

Check for luck (q)0.010across 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

Education score · typical gaps (standard deviations)link with income +0.81 · proxy

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

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.197	0.195	45
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.221	0.145	45
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.227	0.139	45
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.306	0.044	45

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: -0.030 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.317 (without NZL) to -0.163 (without AZE). 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: NZL (-0.090).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.

leave-one-out range spans 0.15 in r

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.

	n	r
Europe & Central Asia	38	-0.25

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.

	n	r
Poorest third	15	-0.54
Middle third	15	+0.13
Richest third	15	-0.25

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.

	n	r
Christians	32	-0.10

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 = -0.257 after dropping 3 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 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	per 1,000 women aged 15-49	typical gaps (standard deviations)	Years
Azerbaijan AZE	29.1	0.629	2024
Russian Federation RUS	28.2	0.85	2013, 2023
Sweden SWE	15.7	0.968	2024
France FRA	15	0.907	2019, 2024
Mongolia MNG	14.8	0.749	2024
Seychelles SYC	14.7	0.782	2024, 2023
Bulgaria BGR	14.2	0.794	2021, 2024
Kazakhstan KAZ	13.8	0.74	2021, 2025
New Zealand NZL	13.7	1.44	2023
Georgia GEO	13.5	0.697	2024
Norway NOR	13.3	1	2011, 2024
United Kingdom GBR	13.2	1.19	2016, 2023
Uruguay URY	12.9	0.9	2022, 2023
Iceland ISL	12.8	1.26	2018, 2023
Moldova MDA	12.7	0.734	2023, 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).
uis; undp_hdr; wdi

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.

Education score

PlaceStats · via PlaceStats · Derived work; each member keeps its own licence · updated recomputed with the panel

The average of 10 measures from 3 publishers. Each measure is first put on a common scale: 0 is the average country in an average year, and 1 is a typical gap between countries (a standard deviation). Each is turned so that higher is better. Measures are averaged within each publisher first, so a publisher with many measures does not count for more. Members: Primary completion, Expected schooling, Mean years of schooling, Adult literacy, Pupil-teacher ratio, Primary enrollment, Out of school, primary, Secondary enrollment, Tertiary enrollment, Researchers.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2011–2025. 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 Education score

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