{"id":11973,"date":"2023-05-02T18:48:33","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T17:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=11973"},"modified":"2023-05-02T18:48:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T17:48:33","slug":"actual-communism-is-bad-for-your-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2023\/05\/actual-communism-is-bad-for-your-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Actual communism is bad for your health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saw this anti-communism meme today:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11974\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/communism-life-expect.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"472\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/communism-life-expect.jpeg 680w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/communism-life-expect-300x208.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><small>(I couldn&#8217;t find a higher res version.)<\/small> Looks true enough, but perhaps cherry-picked. There were more than 6 countries in the ex-USSR. So I downloaded the data from OWID:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11975\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3400\" height=\"2400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block.png 3400w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block-300x212.png 300w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block-1024x723.png 1024w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block-768x542.png 768w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block-1536x1084.png 1536w, https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/life-expectancy-USSR-block-2048x1446.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 3400px) 100vw, 3400px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It holds up with the full set, only Kosovo is weird, presumably because these are <del>fake<\/del> imputed data. Next up, let&#8217;s see if we can get a real statistical result. First, a linear fit:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11976\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/linear_fit.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The fit isn&#8217;t terrible (R\u00b2=.63), but we can improve it with a linear spline:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11977\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/linear_segments_fit.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Much better fit (R\u00b2=.69). I had to manually specify the knots (locations where the slope changes) and these looked like about 1970 and 1990. Still, this is somewhat arbitrary. Here&#8217;s a natural spline:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11978\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/spline_fit.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The fit is about the same (R\u00b2 = .70). Sure enough, we get about the same result: improvement from 1950 to about 1970, then stagnation until the fall in 1990 and a bit later (capitalism takes some time to work). We can also allow each country its own spline, which will essentially give us what OWID did:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11979\" src=\"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/spline_fit_all.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"3000\" height=\"1950\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Of course the fit is now near perfect (R\u00b2=.97), but it also doesn&#8217;t as clearly show the effect of communism since every country has some other factors affecting their life expectancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saw this anti-communism meme today: (I couldn&#8217;t find a higher res version.) Looks true enough, but perhaps cherry-picked. There were more than 6 countries in the ex-USSR. So I downloaded the data from OWID: It holds up with the full set, only Kosovo is weird, presumably because these are fake imputed data. Next up, let&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1727,1946],"tags":[3026,1792,2029,3300],"class_list":["post-11973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine","category-political-science","tag-communism","tag-health","tag-life-expectancy","tag-ussr","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11984,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11973\/revisions\/11984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}