Greg Mankiw makes excellent points about comparative life-expectancy. He argues that if we standardize the data to correct for factors that determine life expectancy (such lifestyle differences, like obesity, and deaths from non-health injuries, such as deaths by car accidents), we will get a more accurate measure to compare life expectancies across countries.
Update: "Ironman" (great name, BTW) at Political Calculations notes in the comments that he wrote about this very topic back in September and has some very cool interactive tables to help him make this point: when you standardize the data, the US doesn't look all that bad compared to other countries.
This is so cool! I first posted Ohsfeldt's and Schneider's standardized life data in a dynamic table back on September 13th, pointed to it in a throwaway comment over at Mark Perry's blog, which he turned around and made into a regular post. Mankiw writes his NYT article and later points to Perry's repost of his graphic after his article is published. And today, the data is both here and standardized life data in a dynamic table back on September 13th, pointed to it in a throwaway comment over at Mark Perry's blog, which he turned around and made into a regular post. Mankiw writes his NYT article and later points to Perry's repost of his graphic after his article is published. And today, the data is both here (SCSU Scholars) and here (Market Power), where I left another throwaway comment....
What's my point? None, really. I just wanted to bring the thing full circle in the blogosphere while illustrating how new information gets spread around....
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/11/full-circle.html
Posted by: Ironman | November 13, 2007 at 07:48 AM
Wow - that got garbled!...
Posted by: Ironman | November 13, 2007 at 11:57 AM
No worries. I had not seen your original post, so I updated my post and linked to it. Thanks for the heads up!
Posted by: Phil | November 13, 2007 at 12:07 PM