{"id":1003,"date":"2004-07-30T09:31:41","date_gmt":"2004-07-30T17:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/07\/30\/gypsies-tramps-and-thieves\/"},"modified":"2004-07-30T09:31:41","modified_gmt":"2004-07-30T17:31:41","slug":"gypsies-tramps-and-thieves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1003","title":{"rendered":"Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently posted “It’s the economy”<\/a>, a rather lengthy article showing the association between Dutch unemployment and the rising non-marital birthrate in the Netherlands. I also showed the non-marital birthrates in numerous European countries rose as quickly and even more quickly than those in the Netherlands. This indicates the rate of change in the Netherlands does not stand out from changes in Europe as a whole.<\/p>\n

In a response<\/a>, Dr. Stanley Kurtz fixated on my discussion of Bulgaria. Previously, he claimed Bulgaria doesn’t count because Bulgarians have the lowest access to birth control in the Europe. I showed they have the highest rate of birth control use in the world<\/i>. Kurtz now claims the fact Bulgarians use birth control at the highest rate in the world is irrelevant. Why? Because, poor teen Gypsy girls (those of the Roma minority) do not have access to contraception. Their behavior has caused a nationwide explosion in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate. In contrast, he says, the rise in the Netherlands is due to women choosing cohabitation over marriage (as a result of legalized same sex marriage.)<\/p>\n

Can’t you just hear Cher singing “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” in the background?<\/p>\n

I do not wish to give the impression that my argument hinges on Bulgaria; it does not. Even without considering Bulgaria, there are plenty of European countries <\/a>whose non-marital birth rate rose as rapidly, or much more rapidly, than in the Netherlands. The rise in all those countries can be explained by factors other than legalized same sex marriage. In fact, Dr. Kurtz suggested economic distress contributed to the rise in many of these other countries, including Bulgaria. Yet, he ignores economic distress in the Netherlands. Logically, economic distress would be expected to have similar effects in any two countries. If it explains rising nonmarital births in European countries, including Bulgaria, then the greater severity of distress in Bulgaria explains why the Bulgarian out of wedlock birth rate rose more quickly than in other European countries, including the Netherlands. My argument is thus entirely consistent.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s kind of fun to address the notions, and evidence, in Dr. Kurtz’s response.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kurtz provided two hyperlink references to support his teen Gypsy girl theory. One is an anectdote<\/a> posted on a geocities web page describing the wretched conditions of poor married and unmarried mothers in Bulgaria. The article provides absolutely no statistics explaining why the nonmarital birthrate has exploded.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kurtz also refers to a report by Jaklina Tzvetkova Anguelova written in 2000. That report mentions that some of its contents are based on preliminary analysis of available data; some information is based on contents of earlier reports. The specific items Dr. Kurtz picks out are not based on Anguelova’s analysis or data, but are speculations<\/i> cited from reports written well before Anguelova performed her analysis.<\/p>\n

More recently, Anguelova wrote a report containing conclusions based on the final analysis of data collected by the Bulgarian government. It is available here: Anguelova 2001<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On page 11 you will find that Anguelova, after examining the data and reviewing the literature, attributes the growing non-marital birthrate to “consensus marriage”, i.e. cohabitation. In a 2004 study, The South Eastern European Legal Initiative<\/a> (SEELINE) also attributes the rise in non-marital births to rising Bulgarian cohabitation. How much cohabitation do we find in Bulgaria relative to the Netherlands? Batalova and Cohen<\/a> reported that a larger number of adults cohabit in Bulgaria than in the Netherlands. Of adults surveyed in 1994, 18.1% of Bulgarians reported they had cohabited; in contrast, 15.1% of Dutch respondents reported they had cohabited. Yet, despite the greater prevalence of cohabitation in Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz attributes the rising Dutch non marital birth rates to cohabitation, yet insists it has a negligible effect in Bulgaria!<\/p>\n

Reading further in Anguelova, you will find she laments that no special statistics<\/i> are available to describe the demographics of unmarried mothers. So the characteristics of unmarried mothers cannot be described. The fact that Anguelova specifically states she cannot describe the characteristics of unmarried mothers because no data are available suggest the older speculations taken from dated reports by others were not based on reliable data. (Many others have reported strong prejudice against the tiny Roma population, noting that Bulgarians often unfairly blamed the tiny Roma population for nationwide problems. Published speculations have sometimes been based on nothing more than prejudice.)<\/p>\n

In any case, members of the Roma minority account for 2.6%<\/a> of the Bulgarian population. Can anyone really believe the nationwide explosion in the nonmarital birth rate is dominated by their behavior? Could the 18.1% of adults who had cohabited all<\/i> be members of the tiny Roma minority? Could nonmarital birthrates possibly rise to 42.9% because of the behavior of 2.6% of the population?<\/p>\n

As in “Dutch Debate,” Dr. Kurtz suggests that women in Bulgaria cannot avoid giving birth. He does this by substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” and then providing some statistics on contraception to explain lack of birth control. As I showed in “It’s the economy”<\/a>, he used this same verbal trick in “Dutch Debate”. The communist government did indeed limit contraception. In Bulgaria, abortion has always been, and unfortunately still is, a widely used method of birth control. (The abortion rate is falling as contraception becomes available.) Abortion is available to all Bulgarian women, married, unmarried, young, old and even members of the tiny Roma population. (Interestingly, the anecdote Dr. Kurtz cited describes conditions in a major hospital that acts as a combined maternity ware and abortion facility; this highlights abortion’s widespread availability in Bulgaria.)<\/p>\n

Even when trying to side step the issue of birth control by substituting contraception statistics, Dr. Kurtz makes unsupported claims. He now claims that unmarried women have more limited access to contraception than married women. Yet, Klijzing, who Kurtz cited in “Dutch Debate”, indicated that married<\/i> women in Bulgaria have much greater “unmet contraceptive needs” than unmarried women! (Klijzing noted that all Bulgarian women have access to birth control — in the form of abortion. Citing Klijzing to suggest Bulgarian women have limited access to birth control is another example of Dr. Kurtz substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” in attempt to create the illusion that his thesis is supported by data. )<\/p>\n

I think I have disproven Dr. Kurtz’s claims that Bulgaria is fundamentally different from the Netherlands because a) Bulgaria is filled with teen Gypsy girls and b) Bulgarians do not cohabit. Having done so, I need to emphasize that Bulgaria is not central to my argument. To draw away attention from other points, Dr. Kurtz tries to make it seem my argument hinges on Bulgaria. Next, Dr. Kurtz tries to say Bulgaria doesn’t count, because eliminating Bulgaria is necessary to support his<\/i> thesis. In his attempt to find a reason to eliminate Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz must repeatedly mislead readers by substituting statistics for contraception<\/i> to describe access to birth control<\/i>, which includes access to abortion. He further “buttresses” his argument by claiming the explosive rise in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate– to 42.9% –is due to the behavior of the tiny Roman minority, which makes up 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. To blame the problem on the Roma population he must ignore revised information in more recent reports by the very expert he cited.<\/p>\n

Dr. Kurtz’s verbal, logical and statistical sleight of hand, accomplished by substituting terminology and omitting numbers may trick some. That he must rely on these sorts of tricks testifies to the weakness of his argument..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently posted “It’s the economy”, a rather lengthy article showing the association between Dutch unemployment and the rising non-marital birthrate in the Netherlands. I also showed the non-marital birthrates in numerous European countries rose as quickly and even more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-same-sex-marriage","category-ssm-the-scandinavian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}