WHO statitics

I was searching the internet for statistics on traffic fatalities in Taiwan(a topic close to my heart) and found some interesting World Health Organization(WHO) statistics. Taiwan isn't a member of most international organizations like the United Nations (UN) because of mainland China's blockage. But Taiwan is a member of the WHO and dutifully submits health statistics.

Taiwan also publishes (in English) and annual report of the "Health of Taiwan". In the 2007 report of 130 pages it has appendices of comparative statistics accumulated by the WHO. Of course, the WHO doesn't collect those number, it relies on the member nations to submit them.

The table below has two interesting tables for the years 1995 to 2007:

"Life Expectancy"(for males and females) and the "Crude Birth Rate"





















What surprised me is that Taiwan now has a higher (slightly higher) life expectancy that the US! In a previous post, the per capita difference was like:


Country.....Ranking......Gross Domestic Product / Population
US...................13...................47.4K
Germany.........19...................44.7K
UK...................21...................43.7K
Japan...............24..................38.4K
South Korea....38..................19.1K
Taiwan............42..................17.0K

So it doesn't seem that health is directly correlated with wealth.


In the second table we see the "Crude Birth Rate", and we see that Taiwan has dropped into the same neighborhood as Japan. With no significant immigration (like Japan) that means, that Taiwan is now below the replacement rate and it's population will begin to decline. That has a lot of implications like empty schools, an aging population with fewer workers to support them, no growth, pressure for immigration, ...

I believe potential parents have children when their prospects for a better future are up. When babies seem a burden, they hold back. Especially in Confucius dominated societies where the burden of child rearing falls mostly on the mother. Long term trouble ahead.

The second second set of tables have:

We have the "Standardized Morality Rate" and the "Infant Mortality Rate"

I don't really understand the "Standardized Mortality Rate" but I know it is combined with the birth rate and the immigration rate to determine whether the population is increasing or declining.

What's interesting is that the US stopped providing statisitcs in the Bush Administation and the other nations just followed that example. When "Bush the Idiot" was president, the government routinely manipulated or hid data when it was unfavorable. Here's an example of the practice infecting the whole world. Probably in 10 years Taiwan will be the last country to provide a complete set of data to the WHO.

The other distrubing result comes out in the second part of the second table. The "Infant Mortality" in the number of newborns that die before their first birthday. That the US is behind Japan, Germany, Taiwan and the UK seems unconsciousable. But with Republicans blocking any Comprehensive National Health Plan that's to be expected. Republicans probably feel those infants are poor and will grow up to vote "democratic" so they don't care. It just burns me up when I think of those stopping the health plan. They got theirs and they think others are not their problem.


I'll have more on traffic fatalities in a future post.