This beautiful
chart compares the world’s territories by income and
infant mortality as a proxy for “health” on a log-log scale. The
correlation between wealth and health is striking, with interesting
outliers: sprinkled below the main straight line, indicating a larger
infant mortality than other nations with similar economic resources,
are several African countries, such as South Africa, Angola, and
Nigeria. Floating above the line are countries that have managed to
achieve lower infant mortality than others with similar wealth:
Cuba, Sri Lanka, Malaysia. What are these countries doing right, and the
African countries doing wrong? Is it just the hazards of their
respective environments? Note that the U.S. is near the central cluster,
but distinctly at its bottom edge, a mediocre performance compared with
Japan and most of the E.U. Where would the U.S. fall if you excluded its
immigrant or minority populations, or only included them?