BBO Discussion Forums: We're #1! - BBO Discussion Forums

Vox is reporting on a Health Affairs research study that was released today concerning child mortality in developed countries. Guess which country had the best chance of having their kids die before reaching adulthood?

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Really, what else can you say but, We're #1! We're #1!

There's a famous speech from the TV series "The Newsroom" which already talked about this.

IIRC some American viewers were annoyed by the "unpatriotic" script instead of focusing on the factual information in that speech.

Here's the scene.

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82 times!

I wonder how that probability breaks down by race.

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Holy statistics, Batman!

jjbrr, on 2018-January-09, 10:16, said:

Thanks. I did not even know of the show.

Winstonm, on 2018-January-09, 09:19, said:

I wish the authors of this article had done a better job. For example, one of the boldface lines says "US leads OECD countries in childhood deaths" Right below that is a graph. But the graph is concerning deaths before the age of 1.

A little further down there is a bold face about US infant deaths being 76% higher than in other nations. Eyeballing the earlier graph, it looks as if that graph goes with the later boldface.

There is information in the article but it is not easy to get at. I tried to get the actual report from the Johns Hopkins site but somehow I could not download it.

It would be good to sort through just how the numbers break down. Apparently SIDS is more of a problem in the US than elsewhere. Gun deaths certainly are. The fact that mortality rates are lower now for kids than they used to be is good, even if the US has not been as successful as other countries. There is a lot that could be looked at, I think the cited story was put together without much thought.

Added; For example, we are told that teenagers are 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide than in peer countries.
But also
“It really seems to be the impact of our fragmented health care system,” Thakrar says.

A serious story might look at how these two statements can be reconciled. Is Thakrar saying that 82 times as many gun deaths here, compared with elsewhere, is not very relevant in understanding the overall death rates of the young? Perhaps that is so, but I doubt it. Anyway, it could be addressed.

kenberg, on 2018-January-09, 11:00, said:

My youngest daughter, Olivia, played Sloan Sabbith.

kenberg, on 2018-January-09, 11:38, said:

I agree but I couldn't find a working link for the original journal article so had to make do with either this of one from CNN.

Winstonm, on 2018-January-09, 15:24, said:

And this may well have been her best work yet...
(Though I found her character in "Perfect Couples" highly amusing)

Yes, well guess which states had the worst infant mortality rate? Mississippi then Alabama.
Of course in the last senate fiasco nobody cared Alabama was so poor.

hrothgar, on 2018-January-09, 15:46, said:

I think so, too.

Winstonm, on 2018-January-09, 15:24, said:

I was disappointed it only ran 3 seasons. Lots of very likeable characters.

kenberg, on 2018-January-09, 11:38, said:

There's lots of different statistics being talked about in that article, related to different groups of children, as well as all children taken together, with varying likely causes for each of them. The point it seems to be making is that we have serious problems across the board: gun violence impacts teenagers significantly, poor prenatal care affects newborns, etc.

kenberg, on 2018-January-09, 11:38, said:

The original article costs $15 - but here is the abstract:

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barmar, on 2018-January-10, 09:59, said:

Yes, I agree that there are lots of statistics and that the point is that we have a serious problem. Still, it would be helpful if the person writing the story took the time to organize the statistics. The high rate of death from guns is awful, everyone would agree. But perhaps, as awful as it is, it is only a small part of reason more young people are dying. Or perhaps it's a large part of the reason. From the article, you can't tell. It would probably be an exaggeration to say that I wrote term papers in high school that were better organized than this article, but maybe not that much of an exaggeration. Many authors seem to just throw up their hands when a news story involves statistics, and I think that's a shame. An author might not be an expert in statistics, I am not an expert in statistics, but with a little effort they could do better.

Suppose we want to do better in lowering the death rate. Which items are likely to be the toughest to address? Which items have the largest impact? Which items would be most responsive to changes in the law, and which items would be more responsive to workshops and other forms of community help? There are many questions, and a more organized presentation would be helpful.

More on this later, I have some tasks of my own to take care of.

I agree with Ken that the stats aren't really very well presented. For instance, the death rate was x% higher in the US than in peer countries. OK, I guess that is a comparison with the average of other countries (and we do learn eventually the sort of countries that the comparison is with). I wonder whether the average is weighted by population or not? But I also wonder whether being 57% higher than the average is an outlier or not? The US might not even be worst country on that particular statistic, and if it is (ie the #1 referred to in the thread title), is it only just worse than the second-worst country, or is it much worse than any other peer country?

The Weeds devoted the better part of a podcast to discussing this study.

The reason that America scored so poorly was pretty much due to a couple different issues

1. The number of American children who die of gun shot wounds is a couple orders of magnitude higher than in other developed countries

2. There are large numbers of children without any kind of health insurance.

Here is one report on teen-age deaths:
http://www.prb.org/P...g-us-teens.aspx


For the 15-19 age group
Death by accident seems to be about equal (2014 numbers) to the sum of death by homicide and death by suicide. It shows the that the rate for death by accident dropped substantially over the last 15 years. Death by homicide has dropped a bit, death by suicide has risen a bit.

Accidents, suicides and homicides are referred to as the three leading causes but it does not give figures for death by disease.

So accidents, as a category, have the largest effect of the three, and they also have had the largest decline. My guess is that the decline in accidents is strongly driven by a decline in automotive accidents.

The fact that accidents are the leading cause of death for teenagers does not surprise me at all. It probably doesn't surprise anyone.


Added: This has more age groups https://medlineplus....icle/001915.htm

For 5-10 years the ranking of causes reads: Accidents, Cancer, Suicide
I knew cancer was an issue, I hadn't thought of it as that large an issue.

hrothgar, on 2018-January-10, 11:15, said:

Don't these two areas pretty much describe the Republican agenda, guns and market-based insurance?