Take me to San Juan
That old, persistent story on how successful the Castro regime has been in raising life expectancy levels on the island is doing the rounds. Again.
This time, it’s in the form of a feature article filed from Havana by the Associated Press.
You will find a version of it in the left-leaning British daily The Guardian, under the headline “Despite hardships, Cubans live longer”.
According to the article, Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years for women - compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for folk in the US.
And the reasons for this? The article refers to a combination of mild climate, a “low stress” Caribbean lifestyle (yes, they are serious), and “free medical care”.
And sure enough, several supposedly ordinary Cubans are quoted at length about the free health care, the free doctors, the free medications, etc.
But here is another figure also mentioned in passing in the article you don’t read often.
It seems that Cuba’s life expectancy is not the highest in Latin America after all.
In fact, it’s second in the region to Puerto Rico.
This time, it’s in the form of a feature article filed from Havana by the Associated Press.
You will find a version of it in the left-leaning British daily The Guardian, under the headline “Despite hardships, Cubans live longer”.
According to the article, Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years for women - compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for folk in the US.
And the reasons for this? The article refers to a combination of mild climate, a “low stress” Caribbean lifestyle (yes, they are serious), and “free medical care”.
And sure enough, several supposedly ordinary Cubans are quoted at length about the free health care, the free doctors, the free medications, etc.
But here is another figure also mentioned in passing in the article you don’t read often.
It seems that Cuba’s life expectancy is not the highest in Latin America after all.
In fact, it’s second in the region to Puerto Rico.
posted by Luis M Garcia at 8:55 am
1 Comments:
From the net:
The University of Michigan's World Values Surveys (WVS) has compiled data on the happiest countries in the world for over 20 years. Their results are considered the most authoritative by happiness researchers.
WVS measures the happiness of individuals by two different means. The first is to simply ask them how "happy" they are. The second is to ask them how "happy" they are and also how "satisfied" they are. The results are then combined to arrive at a measure of their "subjective well-being," a term generally considered synonymous with happiness.
Individuals were asked:
Taking all things together, would you say you are: 1. Very happy, 2. Rather happy, 3. Not very happy, or 4. Not Happy?
Then their responses were combined with the following question:
(On a scale of one to ten) "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?" a ranking of "subjective well-being" for the following countries was achieved.
Ranking of Countries by Level of "Subjective Well-Being"
1. Puerto Rico
2. Mexico
3. Denmark
4. Colombia
5. Ireland
6. Iceland
7. N. Ireland
8. Switzerland
9. Netherlands
10. Canada
11. Austria
12. El Salvador
13. Venezuela
14. Luxembourg
15. U.S.
16. Australia
17. New Zealand
18. Sweden
19. Nigeria
20. Norway
21. Belgium
22. Finland
23. Singapore
24. W. Germany
25. France
26. Argentina
27. Vietnam
28. Chile
29. Indonesia
30. Philippines
31. Taiwan
32. Brazil
33. Spain
34. Israel
35. Italy
36. Portugal
37. E. Germany
38. Slovenia
39. Japan
40. Czech Rep
41. S. Africa
42. Croatia
43. Greece
44. Peru
45. China
46. Morocco
47. S. Korea
48. Iran
49. Poland
50. Turkey
51. Bosnia
52. Uganda
53. Algeria
54. Bangladesh
55. Egypt
56. Kyrgyzstan
57. Hungary
58. Slovakia
59. Jordan
60. Estonia
61. Serbia
62. Tanzania
63. Azerbaijan
64. Montenegro
65. India
66. Lithuania
67. Macedonia
68. Pakistan
69. Latvia
70. Albania
71. Bulgaria
72. Belarus
73. Georgia
74. Romania
75. Moldova
76. Russia
77. Armenia
78. Ukraine
79. Zimbabwe
So Puerto Rico is the Happiest Country on Earth.
And where is Cuba? Wherever Cuba is, it ranks beneath Zimbabwe.
It should be obvious that it is better to live a long life as a happy person than as an unhappy person.
Not that anyone should believe Castro's bogus life expectancy statistics in the first place.
There is one Cuban statistic which is not bogus, however, because the Castro regime has attempted to suppress it since it was originally acknowledged:
Communist Cuba has the world's highest suicide rate per capita in the world.
Not a very happy place.
Post a Comment
<< Home