We’re No. 1 — but only in some things

Parade Magazine, the supplement in Sunday’s Eagle, reported last week on where America is No. 1 in the world and where it is not. There are a lot of categories that could be on either list. But Parade’s No. 1 list for the United States included: number of Nobel Prize winners, number of billionaires, number of Internet users, military spending, economy, national debt, trade deficit, miles of road, number of airports, and gold reserves. Where the United States lags: health care (we spend more per capita on health care, but 43 countries have more physicians per capita and 33 countries have lower infant death rates), crime (we have the highest per capita rate of people in prison), women in legislatures (71 countries do better), and voting (United States is 139th of 172 nations).
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

3 Comments

  1. Clive
    Posted January 19, 2007 at 7:35 am | Permalink

    What was Twain’s famous quote? Something about lies, damned lies, and statistics? Seems to be the case here – once you break down the causality behind the figures, most of these rankings become meaningless. Our poor infant death rate, for instance, is largely due to the fact that women tend to give birth at younger ages here – teen mothers have higher infant mortality rates, and once you take that into consideration in your regression analysis, the infant mortality rate in the U.S. reaches a rough parity with other Western countries. (Of course, America’s large number of pregnant teenagers is another problem altogether…) Or voting, for example – a number of countries actually have compulsory voting (Australia, Argentina, Belgium, et al) which artificially inflate their numbers. Sure, their governments may better reflect the wishes of their constituencies, but that comes at the hand of governmental coercion…

    I could go on, but I just wanted to illustrate my larger point, which is that lists such this are examples of bad science, lack of context, and poor thinking.

  2. Wiseman
    Posted January 19, 2007 at 12:26 pm | Permalink

    Good comment there Clive, you really nip that one in the butt really good.

  3. Gentle Ben
    Posted January 20, 2007 at 1:16 am | Permalink

    And the city with the most corrupt prosecutors – envelope please, why yes, yes it is Wichita.

    Congratulations for a job poorly done.

    Oh my gracious, how embarrassing, Nola and Rebenstorf are wrestling over the award and Nola appears to be the most manly of the two.