Debunking popular myths about the U.S.

Listed below are 15 commonly-held myths about social, economic, health and environmental conditions in the United States, followed by facts that debunk the myths. The facts have been gleaned from the Pocket World in Figures 2005, published by the The Economist magazine.

Fact: On the Human Development Index, which measures literacy, life expectancy and income levels, the U.S. ranks above Japan, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and 38 other countries.

Fact: The U.S. is the world's biggest exporter, twice as big as Japan and three times as big as China. It also ranks first in manufacturing output, with 80 percent more output than Japan and more than twice as much output as either China or Germany. And it is surpassed in per-capita Gross Domestic Product by only Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland, all of which are tiny, lily-white countries. The social-welfare countries of Germany, France and Italy have a per-capita GDP that is only 66 percent, 67 percent and 57 percent, respectively, of the per-capita GDP of the U.S.

Myth #3: Because the U.S. doesn't produce enough scientists and engineers, it has lost its edge in innovation.

Fact: It ranks first on the Innovation Index, which is a measure of human resources skills, market incentive structures and the interaction between the business and scientific sectors. It also ranks first in the number of Nobel Prize winners in economics, medicine, physics and chemistry. The first-place rankings are in spite of the U.S. ranking fifth in R&D spending as a percentage of GDP and dropping to 10th place on the Index of Economic Freedom.

Fact: The U.S. ranks 42nd in the number of vehicles per kilometer of road. Germany, a country with a lot of mass transit, ranks third.

Fact: It ranks 12th in the number of cars per 1,000 people, surpassed by such countries as New Zealand, Luxembourg, Iceland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Australia.

Fact: It ranks 31st in the number of people injured per miles traveled. Italy, Canada, Belgium, Israel and Germany have more injuries.

Fact: Only one nation, South Korea, ranks higher than the U.S. in the percentage of the population enrolled in post-secondary education, in spite of the U.S. having a large number of immigrants from third-world countries.

Fact: It does not make the top-20 list in deaths per 100,000 people for breast cancer. The top five countries for breast cancer are Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, United Kingdom and Hungary. The U.S. ranks eighth in lung cancer, surpassed by the Netherlands, Italy, Croatia, United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium and Hungary. And it ranks 14th in diabetes, surpassed by such countries as Canada, Spain, Italy, Greece and Singapore.

Fact: The U.S. is tied with Singapore in fourth place for book sales per capita. Japan, Norway and Germany rank first, second and third, respectively. France is in 17th place.

Fact: The U.S. ranks tenth in the percentage of 15-year-old males who watch TV four or more hours a day on weekdays. Ukraine is in first place. The U.S. does not make the top-14 list in 15-year-olds who drink alcohol weekly.

Fact: The U.S. does not make the top-20 list in per-capita smoking. Greece is in first place. In beer consumption, the U.S. is in 11th place; and in alcohol consumption, it doesn't make the top-23 list. The Czech Republic ranks first in beer consumption, and Luxembourg ranks first in the consumption of alcoholic drinks.

Fact: The top ten countries for serious assaults per 100,000 people are in rank order: Australia, Sweden, South Africa, Belgium, Ghana, Swaziland, Fiji, Jamaica, Netherlands, United States. The top ten countries for theft are: Australia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, France, Austria, United States, Germany, Iceland.

Fact: When measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, the United States does not make the top-39 list. North Korea is first, Israel is tenth, and Singapore is nineteenth. Most Arab countries are on the list, and many rank near the top. For example, Saudi Arabia is fifth, Kuwait is sixth, and Jordan is eleventh.

Fact: It is in 21st place in mammal species under threat and in 10th place in bird species under threat. Indonesia, China, India and Brazil rank in the top five in both categories.

Fact: It ranks third in the amount of forested land and second in the amount of land under protected status. It doesn't make the top-48 list of nations with the highest rural population density. __________

Mr. Cantoni is an author and columnist. His new book, Breaking from the Herd: Political Essays for Independent Thinkers by a Maverick Columnist, retails for $18.95 but can be purchased directly from him for $10. You can contact him at either ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com.

Just got done reading a blog entry over at CafeHayek by a GMU Professor of Economics named Russell Roberts. I know that only less than a handful of the protectionist crowd would actually visit if I just left the link - that's why I'm leaving the whole thing thing below...hhehehe:

I want to close out this series on inequality by looking at one of the questions we started with—the question of opportunity in America. In the first post, I pointed out that there are many different ways to think of opportunity. One way is to look at whether people are getting ahead. A second is to look at whether everyone has the same chance of getting ahead. A third is whether than second measure is changing or constant over time—is it getting easier or harder to get ahead. In the previous posts [includes this one as well] I wrote about how hard it is to measure these things—various demographic changes distort the measurement, particularly changes in family structure and immigration. I want to try to tie up some loose ends in this post and give you some idea of why I'm more optimistic about the state of mobility and opportunity than the standard things you read or hear.
First question-is the average American doing better or doing worse? A surprising number of people argue that the average person is actually falling behind in absolute terms and not just relative terms. In this view, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In this view, while the average goes up over time, that's because the rich are getting all of the gains. The average person is not gaining. Most of the people who say this are talking about either household data that is confounded by the demographic issues I mentioned or they're looking at hourly wages for a subset of the population.
On the household issue, here's some cheerier data from the Census Bureau. This is median annual family income (for some reason, the Census Bureau doesn't have historical household data up on the web that is easily viewed, but the family data should be good enough for this purpose). Using median income purges the data of the possibility that the rich are getting all of the gains. Here's what we find, corrected for inflation, and rounded to the nearest thousand:
2000 $54,000
1990 $48,000
1980 $44,000
1970 $40,000
Between 1970 and 2000, real income for the median American family rose 35%, not great, but not too bad. Certainly the median family isn't falling behind. But as I pointed out in an earlier post, this number is distorted by changes in family structure. Let's hold family structure constant and look at the change in family income for just married couples where both spouses are working:
2000 $74,000
1990 $64,000
1980 $57,000
1970 $50,000
That's a 48% increase in real median family income over 30 years. What about female-headed households, the category that grew from 18% of all households in 1970 to 29% of all households in 2000:
2000 $27,000
1990 $23,000
1980 $22,000
1970 $21,000
Three things to point out. Female-headed families are a lot poorer than the average family. As I pointed out in an earlier post, a 50% increase in this poorer group will drag down the average even when everyone is actually doing better, merely from a compositional change. Second, even among this group there has been economic progress, though most of it was in the 90s.
By the way, the only type of family that has stagnated over the last 30 years is male-headed households with no spouse present. Median family income for this type of family is virtually unchanged over the last 30 years. Why? Could be demographics or it could be that male-headed without a spouse have a low level of education. The last 30 years have been tough on people without a high school degree.
All of these numbers purport to correct for inflation. But it's generally accepted that the inflation numbers overstate inflation by failing to correct for quality changes. So my guess is that these numbers understate how well we've done over the last three decades.
In what I expect to be the last post in this series, tomorrow, I'll write about the question of mobility within economic strata and the why this issue is less important than the media claims it is.

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