[Pophealth] Comparative International Statistics

[Stephen Bezruchka]

Many of you may have seen newspaper reports on the publication of the The 
2007 Statistical Abstract: The National Data Book by the US Census Bureau 
and learned that in the US we now drink more bottled water than beer, for 
example.

Section 30 of the compendium is titled Comparative International 
Statistics and has over 70 tables of useful information. The comparisons 
reflect world-wide standards in the same way that global standards exist 
for length, mass and time. Without comparing to the standard, we don't 
know how we are doing. What is someone's height? Without a standard for 
the meter or the inch, we could only say tall or short or so so.  Our 
health and other outcomes should be compared to the standard in the world 
at this time in the same way.

The portal is
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2007edition.html

You can get to the pdf's through it and can download Section 30 there. The 
actual tables are also variously available as excel spreadsheets allowing 
for tabulation and ranking on various parameters.

Table 1310 for example has Vital Statistics by Country for 2005 and not so 
useful 2010 projections. There you can rank countries with populations of 
12 million or more by life expectancy, infant mortality and total 
fertility. The US performance is disgraceful as you know.

Getting to the spreadsheets takes some effort as they are there in the 
left BROWSE SECTIONS of the website. Under Comparative International 
Statistics a few appear to be available this way. If you go under that 
section to Vital Statistics, Health, Education, you can download 1310 
there. By searching you can find others.

For those tables in the pdf that aren't available as spreadsheets, if you 
want to manipulate their data, you have to copy from the pdfs which 
involves more work.  Note that most statistics are rates, meaning per 
person or otherwise standardized.

Some other tables I've found interesting include:
Table 1312. Marriage and Divorce Rates by Country: 1980 to 2003, where we 
win the gold medal for both marriages and divorces (among those countries)

Table 1313. Single-Parent Households: 1980 to 2005, where again we win the 
gold.

Table 1317. Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Consumption of Fossil Fuels by 
Country: 1990 to 2004, where again we are the leader.

Table 1318. Health Expenditures as Percent of GDP by Country: 1980 to 
2003, where of course we lead in total health (care) expenditures but not 
in public health expenditures.

Table 1319. Medical Doctors and Inpatient Care--Selected Countries: 1990 
to 2003, shows that we don't lead in medical doctors per 1000 despite 
spending the most money, nor do we have the most hospital beds or the 
longest hospital stay.

Table 1321. Percentage of the Adult Population Considered to be Obese, 
shows we are the biggest, no surprise.

Table 1322. Educational Performance: 2002 and 2003, demonstrates that many 
countries do better than we do

Table 1333. Percent Distribution of Tax Receipts by Country: 1990 to 2003, 
where we win the gold in 2003 for the lowest taxes in goods and services.

Table 1373. Net Flow of Financial Resources to Developing Countries and 
Multilateral Organizations: 1995 to 2004, lists amount of aid in dollars 
as well as by percent of Gross National Income where the US looks more 
miserly over time as expected.

Some tables are only for sale, including Table 1372. International Tourism 
Arrivals, Expenditures, and Receipts--Leading Countries: 1990 to 2004, 
which is indicative of what some call the world's leading industry.

All this material gives us many ways to engage people on how well nations 
are doing.

STephen