The measures are notoriously tricky, and I do need to get on with my own
little life. But just to suggest how much salt must be taken with these
numbers, take a look at the table that is supposed to be about poverty
(and are from the site Brian directs us to). The numbers come from the
Luxembourg Income Study, which of course makes me immediately skeptical,
but nevertheless.: Scanning down the columns we do indeed get to about
17% poverty in the US, while Sweden has only about 6.5%. Oh dear! Are we
really that bad? But wait a second. In 1992 the poverty rate in the
Slovak Republic was only 2.1%? In Russia, where misery is an art form,
only 18% in 2000? I don't think so! What are these numbers, anyway?
Looking to the top of the chart we find the "poverty line" is defined as
a percent of the median income. If you are below 50 percent of the
median income, that's it, you're poor. Shut up and go back to watching
your color TV. In other words, if you come from a poor country, such as
Slovenia or Russia, you have a much better chance of not being poor.
Geez. I hope the angel that guards the veil of ignorance explains this
to people, or does s/he say, "No, really, you have a better chance of
not being "poor" in Slovenia!" I think we need a measure of the poverty
of poor people in the US that does penalize us for being so rich.
As to infant mortality, we don't look so bad on this UN chart from the
site Brian links to. We are a 7 compared to UK's 5, whatever that means.
The Central African Republic is about 100, which I take it is very, very
bad. More to the point, I'm not sure how one should compare US infant
mortalities with countries that seem to be getting out of the baby-
making business as fast as they can. Europe is going through a birth
rate collapse, a singularly odd and disquieting thing, I should think.
We know from long experience with the French that they know how to make
babies. So why don't they? Maybe humans are like other organisms that
don't reproduce well in captivity. (Oh, OK, just kidding. Mostly.)
The comparison is actually for median equivalent income, though that qualifier
probably does not affect Smith's complaint. Some of the difficulties in comparative
measures of poverty are discussed in this article, but the bottom
line is that a percentage of median equivalent income is the best measure, even if there
may be extreme cases in which the whole society is so poor, in absolute
terms, that relatively few turn out to be poor in relative terms (whether Slovenia is
such a case, I do not know. I'm less sure Russia is such a case; bear in mind that, as
this table makes clear, the
researchers included both private and public sector sources of income, which is surely
the correct way to measure how badly off people really are.) For the overwhelming
majority of countries, it will turn out that those who earn 50% of the median income in
that society will be recognizable as poor. Note, for example, that the poverty figure
for the U.S. in relative terms is roughly equivalent to the poverty figure for
the U.S. as measured in absolute terms, i.e., in terms of what income one needs to meet
basic needs (see, e.g., the most recent U.S. Census measures. I wonder
whether anyone in the blogosphere thinks they could actually meet "basic needs" on what
the U.S. Government treats as an income sufficient to do so?) But let's put this challenge the other way around: can Bernstein or Smith or someone
else on the right produce credible data showing that the U.S. fares better than the
social democratic nations on measures of per capita well-being? There are various ways
to measure poverty, and every way I've seen over the last 20 years gets the same result:
poverty is worse in the U.S. than in Canada or France or Germany. Does anyone, other
than Rush Limbaugh and his acolytes, really not know this? In a sense this is an odd debate, and only partly because only one side has adduced
pertinent evidence. It is odd because, on the terms set by Smith in his original
posting (the comparative well-being of the average or randomly chosen
person), the right can't even pretend to win--except by following the Bernstein route of
no facts, no pertinent evidence, and vague and not even prima facie plausible
speculations. The best bet for my friends on the right is to admit the facts, and point
to a different set of facts: to wit, that in a reactionary country like the U.S., it is
possible for an individual to accumulate greater wealth--at the expense, of
course, of per capita well-being. This, as best I can tell from the evidence, is true.
But it is a tougher sell to the public at large if one is candid about the
probabilities, of course.
1. Sweden (83/78)
2. Canada (82/77)
3. France (83/75)
4. Germany (81/75)
5. U.S. (80/74)
INFANT MORALITY (PER 1,000 births, avg for male and females)
1. Sweden (3.5)
2. Germany (4.5)
3. France (5.0)
4. Canada (5.5)
5. U.S. (7.0)
I should have known better than to have started an argument with
Professor Leiter about how to rank things, let alone about ranking the
relative luckiness of someone born into the US compared to someone born
into Norway, the Netherlands or Germany. Brian points to statistics that
suggest poverty, infant mortality, and various other measures make the
US worse off.
Professor
Leiter
here replies:
That's not much of a reply. Brian Leiter gives statistics such as these:
LIFE EXPECTANCY (female/male)
The place to start in international comparisons is income surely, rather than such
things as life expectancy. GDP per capita (ppp)
adjusting for price differences gives us this for the sorts of countries mentioned:
Canada 27,170
Sweden 23,970
Germany 24,920
France 24,420
Slovenia 17,310
Russia 8,010
Japan 27,080
USA $34,100
This is the mean rather than the median, and somebody might object that distribution
matters a lot. But the life expectancy and infant mortality figures were averages rather
than medians too. The median infant mortality is zero, for example-- more than 50% of
people avoid dying in their first year. And as Professor Smith pointed out, infant
mortality is vanishingly small in *all* the countries on the list. The US may be twice
Sweden, but the difference between the two countries is still only 3.5 births per 1000--
about 1 in 300. The difference in income per capita, on the other hand, is about
$10,000, which would be a 50% increase in income for a Swede. Would our hypothetical
person trade a 1 in 300 chance of death in his first year for a 50% increase in
annual income?
The numbers above strengthen Professor Smith's point about how silly the poverty statistic is. Suppose the average and medians are the same--not true, but a first approximation. Then the statistic counts an American earning less than $17,100 as "in poverty". That is twice the *average* income in Russia. It is reasonable to guess that over 3/4 of Russians would count as poor if they had the same purchasing power, but lived in America. And the someone in Russia who earns $4,500 per year is *not* in poverty, by the same measure.
Note that by this measure the average Swede is also not that far from being counted as "in poverty" as an American.
Money is not everything, of course. One could also look at crime, which until recently was one of the big disadvantages of living in the U.S. Nowadays, though, crime has risen so much in Europe that in many countries there it substantially exceeds crime in America, so that's evened out as far as the 1st World is concerned (it remains a huge advantage of Japan, though).
How about freedom? Well, Americans are a lot more free to spend their money the way they want to-- again, compared to Europeans (and, again, conservative Third World countries such as Korea and Turkey may start to look good when we move away from income comparisons). If you compare *after-tax* incomes, the American advantage soars. We have far more political freedom-- we can elect local as well as national officials, our national officials are much more responsive to voters' concerns, and we have more freedom of speech. I don't know how we compare when it comes to regulation.
How about education? That's a tough one. Our public schools seem to be worse, but more Americans than Europeans go to college, and our colleges are better than Europe's. Perhaps we have to call that a wash.
There's also something I always wonder about with this kind of comparison, and that's whether it really is best to compare the US with a country such as Slovenia or Sweden. The United States is made up of 50 states, and perhaps we should be comparing Slovenia, Sweden, Indiana, and California, rather than comparing dinky countries with all 50 states combined. This is especially true if we are trying to look at the influence of governments on quality of life. Recall that Professor Leiter attributed the higher infant mortality (7.0 per 1000) in the US to its reactionary government. Utah's infant mortality, however, is only 4.8, higher than Sweden (3.5) or Germany (4.5), but lower than France (5.0) or Canada (5.5). Yet Utah is one of our most conservative states. Maybe this kind of comparison would show that for the best combination of health and wealth, our hypothetical infant should be born in Salt Lake City!
[in full at 04.02.16a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
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