If the USA moves to government-sponsored health care on the scale of Europe, death rates here (now 8.3 per thousand) are sure to increase to the trans-Atlantic level of 10.3 — that’s a fear which Economist Edward Lotterman rebuts in his newspaper column today. As you educated readers might guess, the discrepancy in death rates can be easily explained by differing demographics: Due differing post-WWII dynamics, Europe’s population is older than ours, which can be seen in these animated population pyramids on Europe versus the United States developed by Professor Gerhard K. Heilig.
Specific statistics like this, when used indiscriminately by strongly-biased people, give statistics as a whole a bad name. However, those who are not duly diligent in vetting inflammatory stats are just as much to blame as the originators misleading them.
“It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.” — Widely quoted as stemming from a PhD thesis by S. den Hartog (perhaps too good to be true!)