Thursday, October 14, 2010

Health Care Scare Tactics

In "Collapsing empire watch", Glenn Greenwald pointed to an alarming statistic:
As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.
Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It's now 49th. 
But, there is a big mistake in this ranking.  If you trace Glenn Greenwald's URLs, the 1999 figures come from here; the 2010 findings come from a paper, which when you trace the citation, comes from the CIA worldbook, here.

Sure enough, on first glance, the US has dropped from 24th to 49th place in just a decade.

First looks can be deceptive.  Ask yourself the question which countries overtook the US during this decade, and where did they rank a decade ago?

Then you find that the following countries/entities are in the 2010 list and do not figure **anywhere** on the 1999 list:

1. Macau
2. Hong Kong
3. Anguilla
4. Cayman Islands
5. Bermuda
6. Liechtenstein
7. Guernsey
8. Jersey
9. Faroe Islands
10. Saint Pierre and Miguelon
11. Virgin Islands
12. Isle of Man
13. European Union
14. Gibraltar
15. Puerto Rico
16. Wallis and Futuna.
17. Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha

When you remove these countries, which did not figure on the 1999 list, from the 2010 list, then the US goes to 28th place in 2010 from 24th place in 1999.  The countries that were behind the US in the 1999 list and overtook the US by 2010 are (having removed the  entities above from the 2010 list)
1. Singapore (#30 in 1999, #3 in 2010)
2. New Zealand (#31 in 1999, #12 in 2010)
3. Jordan (#102 in 1999, #17 in 2010)
4. South Korea (#51 in 1999, #27 in 2010)

It may be worth noting that e.g., Spain fell from #5 to #15; the UK from #14 to #25, so US's 4 place drop, while disappointing, is not terrifying.

PS: corrections:

Double checking my work, which I should have done before posting, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Bosnia Herzgovina are also ahead of the US now, so the US fell from 24th in 1999 to 32nd in 2010.

Ireland fell from 27th to 30th, Denmark fell from 28th to 29th, Portugal from 29th to 31st, answering the question I had started out with - namely whether drug legalization had improved Portugal's standings (too small an effect to tell is my conclusion).

Bosnia rose from 56th to 28th.

PPS:
The 1997 list:
  1. Japan
  2. Australia
  3. France
  4. Sweden
  5. Spain
  6. Italy
  7. Greece
  8. Switzerland
  9. Monaco
  10. Andorra
  11. San Marino
  12. Canada
  13. Netherlands
  14. UK
  15. Norway
  16. Belgium
  17. Austria
  18. Luxembourg
  19. Iceland
  20. Finland
  21. Malta
  22. Germany
  23. Israel
  24. United States
  25. Cyprus
  26. Dominica
  27. Ireland
  28. Denmark
  29. Portugal
  30. Singapore
  31. New Zealand

The 2010 list (minus the extra countries)
  1. Andorra
  2. Japan
  3. Singapore
  4. Australia
  5. Canada
  6. France
  7. Sweden
  8. Switzerland
  9. San Marino
  10. Israel
  11. Iceland
  12. New Zealand
  13. Italy
  14. Monaco
  15. Spain
  16. Norway
  17. Jordan
  18. Greece
  19. Austria
  20. Malta
  21. Netherlands
  22. Luxembourg
  23. Germany
  24. Belgium
  25. UK
  26. Finland
  27. Korea, South
  28. Bosnia and Herzgovina
  29. Denmark
  30. Ireland
  31. Portugal
  32. United States