The Fraser Institute has released the 2008 Annual Report on the Economic Freedom of the World! This year's must-read essay by Seth Norton and James Gwartney: Economic Freedom and World Poverty. Some quick excerpts:

On the rates of poverty:

... poverty rates are substantially lower in persistently free economies compared to those with persistently lower levels of economic freedom. This is true regardless of whether poverty is measured by income or quality-of-life indicators.

On the role of increasing economic freedom as a means to reduce poverty:

... both the level of economic freedom and the change in economic freedom exert a strong impact on the poverty rate. Countries with higher initial levels of economic freedom achieved more rapid reductions in poverty....

The fact that both the initial level and the change in EFW rating reduce the incidence of poverty is strong evidence that, contrary to the views of Jeffery Sachs, economic freedom is a powerful weapon with which to combat world poverty.

Why is poverty so prevalent in Africa? (Emphasis ours...)

Once one thinks about the importance of gains from trade, entrepreneurship, and investment, it is easy to see why Africa is poor. The countries of sub-Saharan Africa are approximately the geographic size of the typical US state. Before resources and products can cross these national boundaries, they are subject to both taxes and the inspection of customs officials. This is a costly, time-consuming, and onerous ordeal that exerts a corrupting influence on both business and government. Most important, it is a major deterrent to gains from specialization, economies of scale, entrepreneurship, and investment. If trade restrictions of this type were present among the states, the United States would be a poorer country and poverty would be more wide-spread. The trade restrictions alone are enough to undermine prosperity but, when coupled with legal systems that fail to protect property rights and regulations that restrict entry and drive up the cost of doing business, the results are catastrophic.

Norton and Gwartney conclude their findings by proposing three steps that African nations can take toward reducing poverty by establishing positive economic growth:

1. Eliminating the trade barriers and business regulations that paralyze the economies of African nations.

2. A long term focus on improving and reforming the legal systems.

3. Establishing an interstate highway system.

The authors provide the following conclusion and, in the process, excoriate current aid programs intended to reduce poverty levels in sub-Saharan Africa:

Without such reforms, prior experience indicates that the Millennium Development Goals will not be met. Foreign aid, even in large doses, will not reduce poverty, at least not by much, unless institutions and policies consistent with economic growth are adopted. There is little evidence that the leading proponents of the Millennium Development Goals have any appreciation of this point. Jeffery Sachs has certainly made it clear that he does not.

Good intentions alone will not reduce poverty. As they reflect on their actions, the planners working towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals must focus on economic freedom and growth. If they fail to do so, the results, tragically, of the project are virtually certain to be disappointing.

Labels: africa, development, economics

- posted by Ironman at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Home |

Could the disparity between the life expectancies of the black and white population of the United States be largely accounted for by the greater incidence of Vitamin D deficiency within the black population? And would addressing this vitamin deficiency in the black population erase the gap in racial life expectancies?

We would hypothesize that the answer to both questions is yes, and we would caution that it's not quite as simple as it sounds.

To understand why, we'll take a closer look at Vitamin D's role in the human body, how it applies to the chronic diseases that disproportionately affect the black population of the U.S., and how the greater incidence of the deficiency among the black population would appear to account for the unusual features we've observed in the percentage of survivors of the black population for each 100,000 born alive. We'll also explain why the steps the U.S. government has instituted in mandating the fortification of dairy products with Vitamin D would appear to be largely ineffective for the adult African American population and ultimately discuss how the deficiency can be addressed more effectively.

How Vitamin D Deficiency Contributes to Shorter Lifespans

With higher levels of melanin in their skin, which absorbs high quantities of the UV-B radiation that stimulates natural Vitamin D production, the black population of the United States is much more likely than the white population to suffer the effects of Vitamin D deficiency, as well as the very closely related conditions associated with calcium levels, which Vitamin D regulates within the body.

In the table below, we've outlined the chronic diseases and health conditions that disproportionately affect the black population, above and beyond those already well-linked to Vitamin D or calcium deficiency, and linked to research supporting the connection if one has been established.

Chronic Diseases Linked with Incidence of Vitamin D Deficiency
Category	Chronic Disease or Condition	Linked to Vitamin D Deficency?
Infant Mortality	Premature Birth/Pre-eclampsia	Yes
	Low Birth Weight	Yes
Heart Disease	Cardiovascular Disease	Yes
Cancer	Breast Cancer	Yes
	Lung Cancer	No
	Colorectal Cancer	Yes
Cerebrovascular Disease	Hypertension	Yes
	Atherosclerosis	Potentially
Infectious Diseases and Conditions	HIV/AIDS	No
	Tuberculosis	Yes
	Septicemia	Unknown
	Kidney Disease	Yes
Negative Health Contributors	Overweight and Obesity	Yes
	Diabetes	Yes

We observe that the increased incidence of Vitamin D deficiency among African Americans would appear to contribute to the increased incidence of the chronic conditions that negatively affects the health the black population of the United States, which in turn shortens their longevity with respect to that of the white population.

Accounting for Disparities Between Black and White Life Expectancy

Now that we've identified the chronic diseases that act to disproportionately shorten the lives of the black population of the United States and confirmed that a deficiency of Vitamin D is a major contributing factor to nearly all of them, let's look again at our chart showing the difference in the percentage of survivors of every 100,000 born between the white and black population of the United States as we begin to hypothesize on why the disparities between races exists:

The grand hypothesis we're going to offer is that a deficiency of Vitamin D within the black population accounts for nearly all of the difference observed between the black and white population. Let's take a closer look to see how that might work:

1. We see that the difference in the percentage of survivors begins immediately in the first year of life. With black mothers far more likely than whites to have a deficiency in Vitamin D, we hypothesize that a large portion of this difference may be attributed to the resulting conditions of pre-eclampsia, which is the leading cause of premature birth, and low birth weight, both of which contribute to the increased rate of infant mortality observed in the black population.

2. There is little change in the years from 1 to 20 years old between the black and white population of the United States. We hypothesize that this is due to combination of increased exposure to natural sunlight for those in this age range as compared to either infants or adults and the effectiveness of the U.S. government's mandated Vitamin D fortification of dairy products for children. However, as we'll discuss shortly, we believe that the effectiveness of Vitamin D fortification of dairy products becomes ineffective for the black population with the onset of adult maturity.

3. Once the members of the black population reach adulthood and no longer consume vitamin-fortified dairy products, we hypothesize that the comparatively reduced effectiveness of natural sunlight exposure results in widespread Vitamin D deficiency among the population. As a result, all the chronic conditions for which a deficiency of Vitamin D contributes to the incidence or the severity of these disease begins to claim the lives of the black population in disproportionately large numbers as compared to the white population.

4. The greater incidence of Vitamin D deficiency among adult African Americans likely also explains why teenage mothers within this group are less likely to give birth to children prematurely or to have low birth weight babies as compared to older mothers. Since Vitamin D is fat-soluable, the teenage mothers, even if they've already stopped consuming dairy products, will have stores upon which their bodies can draw through their pregnancies. Older mothers will have long-since depleted their stores without supplementation through another dietary source.

5. While higher levels of UV-B absorbing melanin reduces the amount of Vitamin D produced through direct sunlight exposure for the black population, those members of the population living in urban areas are much less likely to have direct sunlight exposure as compared to those who live in suburban or rural areas. We hypothesize that this difference largely accounts for the reduced life expectancy of urban-living blacks.

6. We should also note that all blacks living in northern latitudes will be similarly negatively affected, as the curvature of the Earth reduces the intensity of the sunlight reaching these regions.

7. We suspect that a good part of the difference between the native black population of the United States and black immigrants may in part be accounted for by the immigrant black population being more likely to have significantly longer sunlight exposure than the average native-born black, but perhaps comparable to the members of the black population who live in rural areas. Combined with a lower incidence of consumption of tobacco products, this factor likely accounts for much of the foreign-born black immigrants' greater life expectancy.

8. Meanwhile, the longer lifespans for the members of the black population over the Age of 80 may in part be attributed to where they have primarily lived during the course of their lives, which we would anticipate to coincide with either suburban or rural regions of the United States, and suspect includes a dietary regimen that incorporates Vitamin D.

Why Dairy Doesn't Work For the Adult Black Population

We promised at the beginning that we'd figure out how to bring cattle herding into the picture, and here it is: the vast majority of the black population of the United States is descended from the peoples of western sub-Saharan Africa and, as a result, become lactose intolerant as they grow into adulthood as their genetic makeup doesn't permit the digestion of dairy products.

Not all peoples of African descent are in that boat. The peoples of eastern Africa do have the ability to digest milk products. The difference between each comes down to a genetic adaptation that takes hundreds of generations to develop that coincides with the practice of cattle herding. The peoples of eastern Africa have a very long history of cattle domestication, beginning anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 years ago. By contrast, the peoples of western Africa have a much shorter history with herding cattle and haven't developed a similar genetic adaptation.

And that's why the U.S. government's mandated fortification of dairy products with Vitamin D doesn't work for the adult black population! Except perhaps for black immigrants from eastern Africa, which may account for part of the observed greater life expectancy of foreign-born black immigrants to the U.S.

What Would Work Better

There are very few foods that naturally contain Vitamin D. The non-fortified dairy product portion of the menu includes items like: cod liver oil, salmon, mackerel, tuna, sardines, margerine, whole eggs, and beef liver. We know - except maybe for salmon, tuna, eggs and margerine, it's hard to look at that list and keep yourself from salivating! (Mmmm, cod liver oil....)

More seriously, there a number of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals are fortified with Vitamin D, which we would recommend be eaten as a dry snack. There are, of course, direct alternatives to dairy products. Of these, our first choice to see if it works would be those dairy products that have been formulated to accommodate those who are lactose intolerant. Other milk-substitutes such as soy milk (are you salivating again?) might work out, but we'll observe that it would work better for women than it would for men.

Meanwhile, there are always Vitamin D tablets. A quick trip to our local supermarket showed a 90-day supply of 400 IU Vitamin D tablets would cost about $4.00 (USD), which means that a year's supply for an individual might be purchased for anywhere from $12-$20 (USD) taking into account competition between stores, sale vs. non-sale prices, availability, etc.

All in all, a super-cheap way to potentially, and quite literally, add years to your life.

The trick would be to find what you wouldn't mind eating or consuming on a regular basis and go with it. Sooner or later, food producers will introduce improved, better tasting products that can meet the specific dietary needs of the black population.

Conclusion

Often, the toughest questions to answer are those that ask "why this, but why not this?"

Throughout this series of posts, that's been our challenge. Why do African Americans have higher infant mortality than whites, but then have a nearly equivalent todder-child-teenager mortality rates? Why do blacks then have a higher adult mortality rate, but then substantially lesser mortality for those over the age of 80 than the white population of the United States? Why do urban blacks, who have significantly greater access to health care facilities than their rural peers, have much lower life expectancies? Why are black teenage mothers less likely than older mothers to give birth either prematurely or to low birth weight babies, the leading cause of infant mortality? Why do black immigrants who statistics indicate would live much shorter lives in their native countries live longer than native-born African Americans if they immigrate to the U.S.?

To answer these questions, we asked and answered several of our own. What health conditions account for the disproportionate mortality of African Americans compared to whites at every stage of life? What factor or factors contribute to these disproportionate outcomes that might also answer "why this, but not this?"

That's how we came to this final post in this series, in which we've presented a single, unifying explanation that potentially accounts for what we observe in all the data we have and leads to our seemingly simple solution. In doing all this, we've linked to cutting edge medical research and breaking news covering some of the latest findings in genetic anthropology, spanning several millenniums of human history in the process.

And we have to note, it might not pan out as we see it. That's where we're at today, awaiting the results of scientific studies and research that confirms or rejects what we've hypothesized.

But we have to admit, it would be pretty cool if we turn out to be right!

All the Posts in the Series

For reference, here are all of the posts in the series:

Blacks Living Longer Than Whites

The post that started the whole thing! We were surprised to find that blacks over the age of 80 had longer remaining life expectancies than whites of the same ages in the U.S. We also used the opportunity to ridicule some pretty blatant rent-seeking behavior on the part of researchers seeking funding for their work.

Erasing the Gap in Racial Life Expectancies

We revisited the life expectancy figures between blacks and whites and took a closer look at the underlying data, which allowed us to reject racism as an explanation for what we observed. We also began asking "why this, but not this?" in comparing not just the survivorship of the black and white populations of the United States, but urban vs rural blacks, immigrant vs native-born blacks, and the effect of older vs younger mothers for African American infant mortality.

The Disproportionate Killers

You can't address racial disparities in life expectancies unless you know what chronic health conditions disproportionately affect the black population of the United States compared to other racial or ethic groups.

African Blessings, African Curses

Chronic diseases often have a very strong genetic or heredity component in determining who is vulnerable to them. In this post, we explored the idea that what doesn't kill you either softens you up for what will or makes you more vulnerable to other health hazards in comparing the black population of the United States to sub-Saharan Africans who share much the same genetic anthropology, while also discovering very recent research whose results potentially explain why all peoples of African descent are more vulnerable to the things that disproportionately kill African Americans.

A Seemingly Simple Solution

Does a chronic vitamin deficiency explain why the disparities between black and white life expectancies in the U.S.? We explore this possibility and why it may not as easy to address as you might think on first glance, as well as how individual African Americans might do so successfully.

Labels: africa, health, health care, medicine

- posted by Ironman at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Home |

"What does not kill you makes you stronger."

That observation was communicated to us more than once by e-mail after we found that blacks over the age of 80 are living longer than whites of the same age. And to be honest, there's a uplifting kind of logic about it. If an individual can overcome adversity in their life, the logic goes, they're much more likely to have developed the skills and the strength needed to cope with other adversities in the future and thus, be able to prevail over them as well.

But where the human biology is involved, things generally don't work that way.

Consider the chickenpox virus (varicella zoster), which is behind a relatively common childhood disease in the United States. Once a child has chickenpox, they're immune from having it again for the rest of their life. But rather than developing a stronger, healthier immune system, the virus instead lies dormant for years until it activates when the body is stressed from other conditions. Then the virus may re-emerge to only affect adults who have previously had chickenpox, but now in its more sinister form, shingles (herpes zoster.)

What does not kill you does not necessarily make you stronger. In biology, more often than not, what doesn't kill you instead softens you up for what will, or as is more often the case, what might protect you from a particular kind of harm (a blessing) also makes you more vulnerable to whatever it might be that will eventually kill you (a curse).

That insight will come into play again and again as we consider why people whose ancestors originate in sub-Saharan Africa are so much more vulnerable to so many different diseases than those whose ancestors originated in other parts of the world.

And as we'll soon see, African blessings and African curses are tightly intertwined.

The Challenges of Sub-Saharan Africa

Compared to just about everywhere else in the world, sub-Saharan Africa presents some of the greatest challenges to human health. Parasitic infections such as malaria and tuberculosis cause millions of deaths each year, while other lesser known infections such as shistosomiasis and onchoceriasis (river blindness), are endemic throughout most of the region and severely affect the health of millions of people.

Likewise, the highest concentrations of several virus-borne diseases anywhere in the world, such as HIV may found in sub-Saharan Africa.

The most vulnerable victims of the parasitic infections are children. The magnitude of infant and child mortality between birth and five years old from these kinds of conditions in sub-Saharan Africa is astronomical. In the following chart, we've incorporated the percentage of survivors by age for sub-Saharan African populations developed by the Givewell charitable organization with that for the African American population in the United States:

We see that the number of lives claimed by malaria, respiratory infections, diarrhea, perinatal conditions, measles and HIV/AIDS, as only 90% of those born alive survive to reach Age 5. Excepting under-5 deaths caused by these conditions, almost 96% of sub-Saharan Africans would reach their fifth birthday. Both figures are compared to the roughly 99% of African Americans who do reach Age 5.

We also see the gap between the percentage of people who reach any given age between sub-Saharan African and the black population of the United States opens wider and wider before beginning to narrow at Age 60, which roughly 28% of the sub-Saharan population reach as compared to nearly 65% of African Americans. The last comparison point for data is for Age 80, the age to which some 12% of sub-Saharan Africans survive, as compared to 41% of African Americans for every 100,000 born alive of each group.

Blessings and Curses

Surviving Malaria, Greater HIV Vulnerability

Longtime readers of Political Calculations may recall that we've previously created tools to assist in better targeting malaria prevention efforts in the regions of the world where it is endemic and kills more than 700,000 people a year. As such, there's no better place for us to begin showing how better biological defenses that developed to protect against one health condition opens up weaknesses against others.

Given the massive exposure to the various parasites of the Plasmodium family that cause various forms of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa over several thousand years of history, it may not be surprising to learn that surviving sub-Saharan Africans have developed genetic defenses against many of them. In research led by Weijing He that was just published in July 2008, Duffy Antigen Receptor for Chemokines Mediates trans-Infection of HIV-1 from Red Blood Cells to Target Cells and Affects HIV-AIDS Susceptibility, it would appear that a genetic mutation that served to protect sub-Saharan Africans from the form of a now nearly-extinct form of malaria caused by the Plasmodium vivax parasite greatly increases the likelihood that they will contract the HIV-1 virus if exposed to it. The authors of the study estimate that roughly 11% of the HIV burden in Africa is directly linked to the greater vulnerability created by this particular adaptation.

For African Americans, that translates to a 40% greater risk of acquiring the HIV-1 virus if exposed compared to those who lack the genetic mutation that once protected their ancestors from malaria, which might go a very long way to explaining why the black population of the U.S. is so much more likely to have HIV/AIDS. The good news, if you could consider it that, is that the genetic adaptation would also seem to slow the progression of the disease compared to those who do not have it. Additional research has already begun to confirm these basic findings.

Melanin and Tuberculosis

With much of sub-Saharan Africa lying in the tropics, where direct sun exposure may be found at its highest levels anywhere in the world, one of the great adaptations that has developed over the millenia among the peoples who live there is increased levels of melanin, which is the substance that gives hair and skin their pigmentation. Here, those with greater levels of melanin in their skin, which corresponds with darker skin color, are much better able to tolerate long hours of exposure to direct sunlight and ultraviolet rays, than those with lower levels of melanin in their skin, who are at much greater risk of sunburn in the short term and skin cancer with repeated, prolonged exposure over the long term.

That enhanced protection comes with a very recently discovered price. Tuberculosis is a disease caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which infects roughly eight million people annually and kills some two million people worldwide, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. According to research led by Philip T. Liu published in February 2006, Toll-Like Receptor Triggering of a Vitamin D-Mediated Human Antimicrobial Response, the increased levels of melanin found in peoples of African descent accounts for the much lower levels of Vitamin D produced through sunlight exposure, which corresponds to greater vulnerability to infection by the M. tuberculosis microbe.

Since UV-B radiation from direct sunlight stimulates the production of Vitamin D in humans through natural chemical reactions, people with increased levels of melanin in their skin produce much lower levels of the vitamin than those with lower levels of melanin, as those whose skin contains higher levels of melanin absorb more of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, thereby limiting the amount of the vitamin produced through this particular mechanism.

This turns out to be vitally important as Vitamin D plays an essential role in the immune system's response to infections. Low levels of Vitamin D in the bloodstream result in the production of much lower levels of cathelicidin when a microbe invades the body, as compared to when high levels of Vitamin D are present. Cathelicidin acts as a microbicide, an agent that kills infectious microbes like the agent behind tuberculosis, M. tuberculosis, which in turn accounts for why peoples of African descent are so much more vulnerable to becoming infected with, and dying from, tuberculosis.

Although both infections and deaths from tuberculosis in the United States are rare and almost non-existent, African Americans are roughly 8 times as likely as other racial/ethnic groups to become infected with tuberculosis if exposed. The researchers conducted laboratory tests to evaluate the effect of increasing the level of Vitamin D in African American blood serum to levels typical of those found in the white population of the United States.

Increasing the level of Vitamin D increased the level of cathelicidin produced within the African American blood samples. This result suggests that Vitamin D dietary supplementation could make for a remarkably effective method for reducing the infection rate of tuberculosis in peoples of African descent. Clinical trials for tuberculosis endemic regions in both Africa and Asia have been proposed to test if these laboratory results can be replicated on a larger scale and to verify if lower rates of the incidence of tuberculosis would result.

A Simple Vitamin Deficiency?

This latter bit of science points to a tantalizing solution to the problem of the racial life expectancy gap in America - could a deficiency of Vitamin D explain why African Americans are more likely to die of a wide variety of chronic diseases than the members of the white population in the United States? And could the gap be closed by addressing the vitamin deficiency within the black population of the U.S.?

As we'll show you tomorrow, that might just be the case. And then we'll also show you that the solution is not quite as simple as you might think....

All the Posts in the Series

For reference, here are all of the posts in our series covering the racial disparity between the life expectancies in the United States:

Blacks Living Longer Than Whites

The post that started the whole thing! We were surprised to find that blacks over the age of 80 had longer remaining life expectancies than whites of the same ages in the U.S. We also used the opportunity to ridicule some pretty blatant rent-seeking behavior on the part of researchers seeking funding for their work.

Erasing the Gap in Racial Life Expectancies

We revisited the life expectancy figures between blacks and whites and took a closer look at the underlying data, which allowed us to reject racism as an explanation for what we observed. We also began asking "why this, but not this?" in comparing not just the survivorship of the black and white populations of the United States, but urban vs rural blacks, immigrant vs native-born blacks, and the effect of older vs younger mothers for African American infant mortality.

The Disproportionate Killers

You can't address racial disparities in life expectancies unless you know what chronic health conditions disproportionately affect the black population of the United States compared to other racial or ethic groups.

African Blessings, African Curses

Chronic diseases often have a very strong genetic or heredity component in determining who is vulnerable to them. In this post, we explored the idea that what doesn't kill you either softens you up for what will or makes you more vulnerable to other health hazards in comparing the black population of the United States to sub-Saharan Africans who share much the same genetic anthropology, while also discovering very recent research whose results potentially explain why all peoples of African descent are more vulnerable to the things that disproportionately kill African Americans.

A Seemingly Simple Solution

Does a chronic vitamin deficiency explain why the disparities between black and white life expectancies in the U.S.? We explore this possibility and why it may not as easy to address as you might think on first glance, as well as how individual African Americans might do so successfully.

Labels: africa, health, health care, medicine

- posted by Ironman at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Home |

After finding that the members of the black population of the United States over the age of 80 are far more likely to live longer than their counterparts in the white population, we wondered why the story is so different for those younger than 80. To see what we mean, let's look again at our chart showing the statistical number of years of remaining life expectancy by age and race for both the black and white populations in the United States:

We see that for every age below 80, the members of the black population in the U.S. are far less likely to live as long as the same-aged members of the white population, while those individuals who reach the age of 80 can expect to live longer. We also see that the gap is fairly substantial. According to Table A in the United States Life Tables, 2004, at birth, a member of the black population has a 50% chance of living at least 73.1 years, while a member of the white population can reasonably expect to live 78.3 years, a difference of 5.2 years. That gap slowly declines with increasing age and is largely erased somewhere between the ages of 75 and 80. After the age of 80, the surviving members of the black population can expect to live longer than their peers in the white population of the U.S.

The Percentages of Survivors

From here, it makes sense to go back to the life tables to more directly compare the two populations. More specifically, we went to Table B, which shows the survivorship of each population, or rather, the statistical number of people for each 100,000 born alive within each group who reach a given age. We converted that statistical number into a percentage and charted the differences between these two racial groups:

We see that the gap between the percentage of surviving members of each population starts out small through Age 20, becomes progressively larger until between Age 75 and 80, then difference between the percentage of survivors for each group shrinks dramatically until matching up with each other around Age 100.

To see this gap better throughout all these ages, we subtracted the percentage of surviving members of the black population from the percentage of surviving members of the white population. Our results are plotted below:

Here, we see some things we expect, and some things we didn't. First, we see that roughly 1% of the black population who are born alive don't survive their first year of life. This corresponds with a higher rate of infant mortality that has been long established for the black population.

Then we see something that we didn't expect to see. From age 1 through 20, there is no significant increase in mortality for the black population with respect to that of the white population. This outcome is evident in the flatness of the curve throughout these ages. We should also note that if not for the higher rate of infant mortality for the black population, the number of surviving members for each 100,000 born alive would be nearly identical to that of the white population through the age of 20.

We then return to what we did expect to see. For the ages of 20 through the mid-70s, we see that the members of the black population are much less likely to survive than the members of the white population. The peak of the discrepancy between the percentage of surivivors of equal sized populations of each race appears to peak at an age of 78 before rapidly disappearing - a consequence of the higher life expectancies that the members of the black population have compared to their white peers above this age.

So much so that by Age 100, the number of blacks surviving to the century mark would outnumber their white counterparts if the nation were 50% white and 50% black.

Building on our previous remarks regarding the higher life expectancies of those in the black population over the age of 80 compared to their white peers, if the racial prejudice of the majority white population toward the minority black population were the primary driver of the difference between the life expectancies and survivorship of the members of the black and white populations of the U.S., it seems exceptionally odd that the black population's children and teenagers are so evidently unaffected by it, while the most elderly are likewise unaffected by it. After all, why would racism play favorites by age group?

Our preliminary conclusion is that something else must be at work here. Something else better accounts for the greater mortality of the black population between the ages of 20 and 80, while also accounting for the similar mortality of the Age 1-20 group and the lesser mortality of those over Age 80.

More Pieces of the Puzzle

As if the differences between the white population and black population of the U.S. weren't enough, there are also differences in life expectancies between different groups within the black population itself! (We're going to avoid the difference between men and women for as long as we can help it - we've opened a big enough can of worms!)

For example, foreign-born blacks who immigrate to the United States tend to live much longer than blacks born in the U.S. - here's the relevant information from the background for Health, Life Expectancy, and Mortality Patterns Among Immigrant Populations in the United States, a 2004 study by the National Institute of Health's Gopal K. Singh and Barry A. Miller:

Compared to their US-born counterparts, black immigrant men and women had, respectively, 9.4 and 7.8 years longer life expectancy.

The increased life expectancy for immigrants comes despite higher levels of poverty compared to the native-born population:

The study reviewed millions of death and health records from 1986-94. Though the numbers are old, more limited studies of recent data suggest the same patterns hold true, although life expectancy is generally rising.

The records showed the average American-born black man could expect to reach 64, while a black man born overseas would likely live beyond 73 if he immigrated. In the case of an African-born man remaining in his homeland, he might well have died before his 50th birthday.

Perhaps most astonishing is that immigrants outlive the U.S.-born population even though they're more likely to be poor and less likely to see a doctor, often a prescription for a shorter life.

Meanwhile, where blacks live within the United States would appear to have a dramatic effect upon their life expectancy. Blacks living in urban areas have a disproportionately high mortality rate as compared to their suburban and rural peers. A 2004 University of Michigan study led by Arline T. Geronimus into Urban/Rural Differences in Excess Mortality Among High Poverty Populations: Evidence from the Harlem Health Survey and Pitt County Hypertension Study outlines some unexpected differences (emphasis ours):

As shown in Table 1, we also found that despite very high poverty rates, African American residents in rural areas did not share the highly disadvantageous mortality profiles of their urban peers. Indeed, they fared almost as well as blacks nationwide. For example, relative to white men nationwide aged 15-65 in 1990, the excess death rate per 100,000 population for black men nationwide was 374; in a rural Delta Louisiana population with a 47% poverty rate it was 391; whereas in Harlem (with a 43% poverty rate), it was 1,296. For black women residents the excess death rates in 1990 were 217 nationwide, 249 in Delta Louisiana, and 534 in Harlem (see Geronimus et al. 1996, 1999, for similar findings for a broader range of local populations). Moreover, in analyses comparing 1980 and 1990 mortality data for the same local areas, we found that the urban/rural divide increased substantially over the decade because increases in excess deaths were much higher in the urban compared to the rural areas (Geronimus et al. 1999). This finding was most pronounced among men, and was largely accounted for by deaths attributed to chronic disease. For example, over the 1980s excess deaths attributed to circulatory disease or cancer each doubled among young and middle-aged Harlem men.

And so we have our first clues as to where we're going next.

Where We're Going Next

The evidence suggests to us that the observed differences in life expectancies between the black population and the white population in the U.S. are much more likely explained by chronic health conditions than racism. In our next stop, we'll examine just what medical conditions are robbing the black population of a longer lifespan.

After that, we'll discuss how a number of what we're going to call African curses and blessings are at play in the black population, and how a disease that kills millions in Africa, but hardly any in America, might open the door to erasing the gap in life expectancies between blacks and whites in the United States.

Ultimately, we'll offer a testable hypothesis that suggests that just a handful of comparatively simple factors explain nearly all the discrepancies between the documented life expectancies for all the groups we identified in this post. Moreover, we'll point to a seemingly simple and inexpensive solution that that might go a long way toward eliminating most of the observed disparities in the life expectancies between the black and white populations of the United States.

We say "seemingly simple" since the solution is one that the U.S. government has already provided, but which turns out to be virtually ineffective for a very large portion of the black population in the U.S. We'll explain why and then we'll point to more effective solutions already widely available in the market.

Somehow or another, we'll also figure out how to fit cattle into the picture as well, as they play a remarkably significant role in the whole thing.

We never said we weren't ambitious! We may be right or we may be wrong, but that's for real science to settle....

All the Posts in the Series

For reference, here are all of the posts in our series covering the racial disparity in life expectancies in the United States:

Blacks Living Longer Than Whites

The post that started the whole thing! We were surprised to find that blacks over the age of 80 had longer remaining life expectancies than whites of the same ages in the U.S. We also used the opportunity to ridicule some pretty blatant rent-seeking behavior on the part of researchers seeking funding for their work.

Erasing the Gap in Racial Life Expectancies

We revisited the life expectancy figures between blacks and whites and took a closer look at the underlying data, which allowed us to reject racism as an explanation for what we observed. We also began asking "why this, but not this?" in comparing not just the survivorship of the black and white populations of the United States, but urban vs rural blacks, immigrant vs native-born blacks, and the effect of older vs younger mothers for African American infant mortality.

The Disproportionate Killers

You can't address racial disparities in life expectancies unless you know what chronic health conditions disproportionately affect the black population of the United States compared to other racial or ethic groups.

African Blessings, African Curses

Chronic diseases often have a very strong genetic or heredity component in determining who is vulnerable to them. In this post, we explored the idea that what doesn't kill you either softens you up for what will or makes you more vulnerable to other health hazards in comparing the black population of the United States to sub-Saharan Africans who share much the same genetic anthropology, while also discovering very recent research whose results potentially explain why all peoples of African descent are more vulnerable to the things that disproportionately kill African Americans.

A Seemingly Simple Solution

Does a chronic vitamin deficiency explain why the disparities between black and white life expectancies in the U.S.? We explore this possibility and why it may not as easy to address as you might think on first glance, as well as how individual African Americans might do so successfully.

Labels: africa, demographics, health

- posted by Ironman at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Home |

It was only last year since we looked at the GDP of countries around the world, but since we did, two years worth of GDP data have been released. So, for the sake of getting caught up, we're skipping 2005 altogether and going straight to 2006!

We'll beginning our annual series of GDP comparisons around the world in Africa, providing a dynamic ranking table to show each of the continent's countries' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), their population and GDP-PPP per Capita for 2006. This year however, we're going to go the extra mile and determine each country's annualized rate of growth of their GDP-PPP per capita since 2004.

But before we go further, we should note that all GDP-PPP and GDP-PPP per Capita data is presented in U.S. dollars and is not adjusted for inflation. For example, for those of you watching the deterioration of Zimbabwe's economy, you won't find the negative effects of the country's hyperinflation of its own currency in these figures from 2006.

As we noted, the table below is dynamic - clicking any of the column headings will sort the data in the table from low to high value or from high to low (by clicking a column heading a second time.) To restore the original order, you'll need to refresh the page in your web browser.

Africa GDP-PPP in 2006

Country	Population	GDP-PPP	GDP-PPP per Capita	Pop. Est. Date	GDP Est. Date	% Change GDP-PPP per Capita, Since 2004
Algeria	32,930,091	250,000,000,000	7,591.84	July 2006	2006	7.2%
Angola	12,127,071	53,060,000,000	4,375.34	July 2006	2006	44.0%
Benin	7,862,944	8,989,000,000	1,143.21	July 2006	2006	-0.3%
Botswana	1,639,833	17,940,000,000	10,940.14	July 2006	2006	6.6%
Burkina Faso	13,902,972	18,760,000,000	1,349.35	July 2006	2006	7.9%
Burundi	8,090,068	5,781,000,000	714.58	July 2006	2006	5.5%
Cameroon	17,340,702	42,480,000,000	2,449.73	July 2006	2006	14.2%
Cape Verde	420,979	3,129,000,000	7,432.67	July 2006	2006	126.8%
Central African Republic	4,303,356	4,998,000,000	1,161.42	July 2006	2006	1.2%
Chad	9,944,201	14,980,000,000	1,506.41	July 2006	2006	-4.2%
Comoros	690,948	441,000,000	638.25	July 2006	2002	-2.8%
Congo, Democratic Republic of the	62,660,551	44,440,000,000	709.22	July 2006	2006	-1.6%
Congo, Republic of the	3,702,314	5,099,000,000	1,377.25	July 2006	2006	33.3%
Cote d'Ivoire	17,654,843	29,050,000,000	1,645.44	July 2006	2006	7.3%
Djibouti	486,530	619,000,000	1,272.28	July 2006	2002	-2.0%
Egypt	78,887,007	334,400,000,000	4,238.97	July 2006	2006	1.0%
Equatorial Guinea	540,109	25,690,000,000	47,564.47	July 2006	2005	342.6%
Eritrea	4,786,994	4,471,000,000	933.99	July 2006	2005	0.0%
Ethiopia	74,777,981	74,880,000,000	1,001.36	July 2006	2006	11.3%
Gabon	1,424,906	10,170,000,000	7,137.31	July 2006	2006	10.2%
Gambia, The	1,641,564	3,284,000,000	2,000.53	July 2006	2006	5.2%
Ghana	22,409,572	60,000,000,000	2,677.43	July 2006	2006	7.3%
Guinea	9,690,222	20,160,000,000	2,080.45	July 2006	2006	-0.7%
Guinea-Bissau	1,442,029	1,249,000,000	866.14	July 2006	2006	9.2%
Kenya	34,707,817	41,360,000,000	1,191.66	July 2006	2006	4.9%
Lesotho	2,022,331	5,327,000,000	2,634.09	July 2006	2006	-8.7%
Liberia	3,042,004	2,821,000,000	927.35	July 2006	2006	4.1%
Libya	5,900,754	72,680,000,000	12,317.07	July 2006	2006	36.0%
Madagascar	18,595,469	17,270,000,000	928.72	July 2006	2006	5.7%
Malawi	13,013,926	8,272,000,000	635.63	July 2006	2006	1.1%
Mali	11,716,829	14,770,000,000	1,260.58	July 2006	2006	17.1%
Mauritania	3,177,388	8,124,000,000	2,556.82	July 2006	2006	17.7%
Mauritius	1,240,827	17,000,000,000	13,700.54	July 2006	2006	3.3%
Mayotte	201,234	953,600,000	4,738.76	July 2006	2005	37.4%
Morocco	33,241,259	152,500,000,000	4,587.67	July 2006	2006	4.8%
Mozambique	19,686,505	29,170,000,000	1,481.73	July 2006	2006	9.2%
Namibia	2,044,147	15,440,000,000	7,553.27	July 2006	2006	0.0%
Niger	12,525,094	12,360,000,000	986.82	July 2006	2006	7.4%
Nigeria	131,859,731	191,400,000,000	1,451.54	July 2006	2006	25.9%
Rwanda	8,648,248	13,700,000,000	1,584.14	July 2006	2006	9.9%
Sao Tome and Principe	193,413	214,000,000	1,106.44	July 2006	2003	-3.1%
Senegal	11,987,121	21,540,000,000	1,796.93	July 2006	2006	3.1%
Sierra Leone	6,005,250	5,452,000,000	907.87	July 2006	2006	26.5%
Somalia	8,863,338	5,259,000,000	593.34	July 2006	2006	3.5%
South Africa	44,187,637	587,500,000,000	13,295.57	July 2006	2006	7.5%
Sudan	41,236,378	97,470,000,000	2,363.69	July 2006	2006	10.2%
Swaziland	1,136,334	5,936,000,000	5,223.82	July 2006	2006	0.7%
Tanzania	37,445,392	29,620,000,000	791.02	July 2006	2006	10.5%
Togo	5,548,702	9,271,000,000	1,670.84	July 2006	2006	3.4%
Tunisia	10,175,014	89,740,000,000	8,819.64	July 2006	2006	11.4%
Uganda	28,195,754	52,930,000,000	1,877.23	July 2006	2006	12.2%
Zambia	11,502,010	11,640,000,000	1,012.00	July 2006	2006	6.1%
Zimbabwe	12,236,805	25,360,000,000	2,072.44	July 2006	2006	3.8%
Africa (All)	910,142,549	2,581,043,600,000	2,835.87	July 2006	2006	8.8%

The Most Amazing Story in Africa

In 2004, Equitorial Guinea was just a bit ahead of the middle of the pack in terms of economic output in Africa. By 2006, GDP-PPP per capita in the small nation had soared past all the other continents countries and even past the United States $43,994.82 GDP-PPP per capita figure, as the nation's economic output skyrocketed at a blistering 342% compound annualized rate of growth.

So, how did a nation that most Americans are likely unfamiliar achieve this feat? In one word: oil. With large untapped oil fields just discovered in 1996, the combination of greatly increased oil production within the country and significant increases in worldwide demand (and prices) for the resource has brought enormous wealth to the tiny country.

With much of this explosive growth so new, we believe that Equatorial Guinea will be very interesting to watch as its population begins absorbing this wealth and the country adjusts to its new condition of being, on paper, one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

Sources and Acknowledgements:

• 2006 GDP-PPP Data: The World Factbook, 2007
• July, 2006 Population Estimate: The World Factbook, 2006 via Bartleby.
• Table Sorting Function: The Daily Kryogenix.

Previously on Political Calculations

2004 Economic and Population Data

• Pacific Rim: 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP Rankings in Muslim Nations
• 2004 GDP Rankings for Asia
• European Union 2004 GDP Rankings
• GDP in Africa: 2004
• GDP Rankings of the Americas: 2004 Edition
• EU vs US: Two Years of Economic Data Later....

2002 Economic and Population Data

• EU vs USA
• Cool Tools and GSP
• GDP of the Americas
• GDP in the Muslim World
• GDP in Europe
• GDP: Africa
• GDP Along the Pacific Rim
• GDP in Asia
• GDP: And the rest...

Labels: africa, gdp

- posted by Ironman at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Home |