More on Interpreting Statistics

by Don Boudreaux on March 17, 2007

in Data, Health

Here’s more, now from The Economist.com, on the need to be careful when interpreting statistics — such as that infant-mortality rates in the United States are higher than in many countries much poorer than America.  A snippet:

Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is fraught with
uncertainty—after all, it’s hard to argue that every country’s figures
are reliable. But it’s still worth asking what more we can do to stop
babies from dying. Defined as death before one year of age, infant
mortality frequently gets framed in the United States as a problem of
insufficient health-care funding. In December, for example, a New York Times column
blamed it on the lack of a single-payer health insurer. However, a
closer look reveals the counterintuitive possibility that high infant
mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.

Read the whole Economist.com post.

(HT: Liberty Alone)

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  • Paul

    One thing to remember when comparing infant mortality rates is that the US is the only country which adheres to OECD criteria for reporting. In some countries, any birth where the infant is <30cm in length is considered a stillbirth and hence not counted. Canada counts births to Canadians in other countries (such as the US), but not births to non-Canadians in Canadian hospitals. So these stats wind up comapring apples to oranges, with the odd grapefruit thrown in for good measure.

    There are some good reasons to criticize the US system of health insurance, but citing infant mortality is akin to using McDonald's as an excuse for government control of food distribution.

  • Popular Science had an article on statistics in the latest issue. It's a tad short but points to many of the things that have been discussed in the last two comment threads on stats

  • I remember overhearing a conversation years ago when these comparative infant mortality statistics began getting publicized over 10 years ago. The men were standing just behind me. They sounded like medical professionals.


    Here is what the one doctor said: "These statistics will end up killing babies in the U.S. They say that Americans have higher infant mortality than that of most European countries. They blame it on the lack of socialized medicine here. I looked at the statistics, and you know what I found? That people of German descent here have lower infant mortality rates than Germans in Germany. Italian-Americans have lower infant mortality than Italians in Italy. Even Swedish-Americans born here have a lower mortality that Swedes in Sweden! (Apparently, Sweden had an unusually low IM rate.) African-Americans have a way lower infant mortality than Africans children in Africa. With data I could find, there were few exceptions: most demographics in the U.S. had a lower infant mortality than their counterpart in their home country."


    So, why did U.S. infant mortality look lower overall than many European countries? He explained:


    "Its the demographic mix. Blacks in general, for some reason, have much higher infant mortality than whites or Asians. That appears to be true in most countries, but the U.S. has a higher percentage of blacks than most countries outside of Africa."


    His conclusion was stark.


    "The people waving these overall statistics around are pushing an agenda of socialized medicine. If we accept their solution to this 'problem,' we'll end up with the same, second-rate medical systems of those other countries that, group-for-group, have higher infant mortalities than we do."


    I turned around and asked them who they were. They were both professors at the University of Pennsylvania medical school. I don't know if the newer numbers control for that now.

  • Thomas Sowell addresses this very well in several ways in articles and books. Probably the most complete is his "Vision of the Anointed."

  • Good points, I've read that before.


    It's a bit like comparing the fielding % of two shortstops. SS A might have a much better fielding % than SS B. But B might be faster and getting to many more balls that turn out to be errors. Balls that SS A never even got close to.

  • cb

    ...and the fact that Slate failed to read the original. Come now!

  • cb

    The Economist did not get to the real meat of that article and grossly, very grossly misrepresents its argument. Presumably, the periodical was politically motivated. Total BS.


    The link is: http://www.slate.com/id/2161899/fr/flyout</p>

  • Sudha Shenoy

    It's not really simple. Have a look at Mike Martin's comment on the Economist site, comparing Oz & US data. There's something odd about the proportion of premature births in the US, relative to Oz.

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