[WS:] I just had a quick look at the charts, but I do not think that the above is valid criticism. First, the selection includes only high income countries, which controls for variance that is associated with income level. Second, this is almost the entire *population* of high income countries, not a sample, therefore the concept of statistical significance is meaningless. Statitical significance denotes the probability that the difference observed in the sample will be null if were to draw other samples of the same size from that population. If that probablity is relatively high (typically higher than 5%) the null hypothesis cannot be rejected by convention. However, if the difference is observed in th epopulation, it is THE difference, as repeated samples of the same size would yield the exat same difference.
Furthermore, they go beyond aggregate statistics and compare individual countries that are very similar but differ on the parameters of interest. That is a valid case study approach.
For a full list of high income countries see http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/ORGANIZATION/CFPEXT/EXTTRUFUN/EXTMAINPRO/EXTPHRD/0,,contentMDK:20923856~menuPK:2639463~pagePK:64168445~piPK:64168309~theSitePK:2524316,00.html
Wojtek
On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 18, 2010, at 10:46 AM, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
>
> It is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives
>> and suffer more from almost every social problem. In a quite fascinating
>> book, /The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better/ <
>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Societies-Almost-Always/dp/1846140390>,
>> epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson <
>> http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cps/index.php?page=2.0.0.40> and Kate Pickett
>> <https://hsciweb.york.ac.uk/research/public/Staff.aspx?ID=1197>
>> demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone
>>
>
> A distinguished sociologist I know, who prefers to remain nameless, said
> that Wilkinson's results are very sensitive to how you specify the equations
> or set up your country universe - i.e., not very robust to alternative
> specifications, as they say. Or, more rudely, you can get the results you
> want by setting things up in a certain way. In my own crude way, I tried
> some multiple regressions using World Bank data on inequality and income as
> the independent variables and life expectancy and infant mortality as the
> dependent variables, and I couldn't get inequality to be significant. And on
> something like this, if the results don't leap out at you, then you might
> want to avoid making the claim.
>
>
> The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are
>> striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem - ill-health,
>> lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long
>> working hours, big prison populations - is more likely to occur in a less
>> equal society.
>>
>
> I wonder how much these results are driven by the U.S. If you did the rich
> OECD countries without the U.S., would the results be statistically
> significant?
>
> Doug
>
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