Loaded question. Here’s how we answer it somewhat scientifically.
You could start by counting the number of Covid-19 cases in your country. But testing resources are tight. So you might have zero cases because your country didn’t test a lot of people. So next.
You could count the number of deaths by Covid-19. That’s probably a better indicator, since death and causes of death tend to be reported more accurately in most countries. But big countries with big populations would tend to have more deaths reported, just because they have more people. So next.
You could count the number of deaths out of a million of your country’s population. That would solve the “big country small country problem”. But then someone would say, hey, Covid-19 tends to kill older folks, or those with pre-existing health conditions. Lots of countries have older populations and they would have a more difficult time keeping them alive. Remember the original question – you want to compare country vs. country to see which government is doing better. It wouldn’t be fair to compare one country with a lot of old people with a country that has a lot of young people just because the young ones would die at a lower rate from Covid-19. So next.
You could find a ranking of how old countries actually are. We went out to look, and we found it. The World Bank publishes an Old Age Dependency Ratio, a ratio of those over 65 as part of the overall working population. If we have that, we can put countries on a “level playing field”.
And that’s it. Look what we found.
If you squint, here’s some things you can see straight away:
- Old aged populations do seem to lead to higher deaths per million. (Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.64056, if you want to get technical.)
- If you a drew a band down the middle of these points, countries like Italy, France, Germany, the USA and Denmark would be pretty much sitting in it. That means they aren’t performing particularly better or worse relative to the others – just about average.
- Countries above the band could be said to be outperforming, and countries below the band could be said to be underperforming. Basically, countries above the band have older than average populations but lower than average mortality given those populations. Similarly, countries below the band have younger than average populations with higher than average mortality rates.
- Look up in the sky. Is it a bird? A plane? No it’s an outlier, Japan. You must be wondering what magic does Japan have. It is a country with THE oldest population in the world, but its mortality rate is impressively low. This deserves its own separate analysis, but we can guess that a combination of really healthy old folks and natural social distancing must be a important reason. Keep an eye on it though, it looks like the infection rate is speeding up there right now.
- We posit that as we monitor the data, we will see more and more outliers and less and less correlation as the effect of government intervention affects the mortality results, such that factors other than the age of the population become more important, such as quarantine measures and social restriction movements.
Stay tuned for weekly updates on how each country is doing. In the meantime, here is our ranking of country’s performances as at 15th April 2020.
Sources:
OADP: World Bank
Mortality: HDX/OCHA
Mortality: Our World in Data
Rank | Country | Mortality/OADP Outperformance | OADP Rank | Mortality Rank |
1 | Japan | 95 | 137 | 42 |
2 | Taiwan | 71 | 85 | 14 |
3 | Georgia | 65 | 101 | 36 |
4 | Seychelles | 64 | 65 | 1 |
5 | Latvia | 62 | 127 | 65 |
6 | Sri_Lanka | 61 | 82 | 21 |
7 | Slovakia | 60 | 100 | 40 |
8 | Thailand | 58 | 86 | 28 |
9 | Vietnam | 57 | 58 | 1 |
10 | New_Zealand | 56 | 107 | 51 |
11 | Bulgaria | 52 | 131 | 79 |
12 | Russia | 51 | 96 | 45 |
13 | Ukraine | 48 | 108 | 60 |
14 | Fiji | 47 | 48 | 1 |
15 | Uruguay | 46 | 102 | 56 |
16 | Venezuela | 46 | 66 | 20 |
17 | Malta | 44 | 126 | 82 |
18 | Greece | 42 | 133 | 91 |
19 | Cuba | 42 | 97 | 55 |
20 | Costa_Rica | 42 | 77 | 35 |
21 | Australia | 41 | 105 | 64 |
22 | Croatia | 40 | 128 | 88 |
23 | Finland | 39 | 135 | 96 |
24 | Nicaragua | 37 | 47 | 10 |
25 | El_Salvador | 36 | 75 | 39 |
26 | India | 35 | 53 | 18 |
27 | Ethiopia | 32 | 34 | 2 |
28 | Mongolia | 32 | 33 | 1 |
29 | Lithuania | 30 | 123 | 93 |
30 | Jamaica | 29 | 76 | 47 |
31 | Kazakhstan | 29 | 67 | 38 |
32 | Haiti | 28 | 44 | 16 |
33 | Singapore | 28 | 78 | 50 |
34 | Sudan | 28 | 35 | 7 |
35 | Uzbekistan | 28 | 36 | 8 |
36 | Argentina | 26 | 88 | 62 |
37 | Guatemala | 26 | 43 | 17 |
38 | Poland | 25 | 110 | 85 |
39 | Benin | 24 | 30 | 6 |
40 | Papua_New_Guinea | 24 | 25 | 1 |
41 | Bangladesh | 23 | 42 | 19 |
42 | Mozambique | 22 | 23 | 1 |
43 | Czechia | 21 | 121 | 100 |
44 | Hungary | 20 | 117 | 97 |
45 | Belarus | 20 | 95 | 75 |
46 | China | 20 | 79 | 59 |
47 | South_Africa | 19 | 46 | 27 |
48 | Senegal | 19 | 28 | 9 |
49 | Germany | 18 | 132 | 114 |
50 | Portugal | 18 | 134 | 116 |
51 | Guinea | 17 | 22 | 5 |
52 | Rwanda | 16 | 17 | 1 |
53 | Estonia | 15 | 124 | 109 |
54 | Montenegro | 15 | 98 | 83 |
55 | Serbia | 15 | 113 | 98 |
56 | Paraguay | 15 | 56 | 41 |
57 | South_Korea | 14 | 90 | 76 |
58 | Pakistan | 14 | 40 | 26 |
59 | Nigeria | 13 | 16 | 3 |
60 | Mauritania | 12 | 24 | 12 |
61 | Suriname | 12 | 60 | 48 |
62 | Italy | 10 | 136 | 126 |
63 | Denmark | 10 | 125 | 115 |
64 | Bosnia_and_Herzegovina | 10 | 104 | 94 |
65 | Slovenia | 10 | 122 | 112 |
66 | Chile | 9 | 87 | 78 |
67 | Sweden | 8 | 129 | 121 |
68 | Romania | 8 | 112 | 104 |
69 | Bolivia | 7 | 68 | 61 |
70 | Azerbaijan | 7 | 51 | 44 |
71 | Equatorial_Guinea | 7 | 8 | 1 |
72 | Gabon | 6 | 31 | 25 |
73 | Cote_dIvoire | 6 | 19 | 13 |
74 | France | 5 | 130 | 125 |
75 | Kyrgyzstan | 5 | 39 | 34 |
76 | Angola | 5 | 9 | 4 |
77 | Colombia | 4 | 71 | 67 |
78 | Somalia | 4 | 26 | 22 |
79 | Armenia | 3 | 84 | 81 |
80 | Ghana | 3 | 18 | 15 |
81 | Austria | 2 | 115 | 113 |
82 | Barbados | 2 | 103 | 101 |
83 | Albania | 2 | 92 | 90 |
84 | Tunisia | 2 | 70 | 68 |
85 | Indonesia | 1 | 50 | 49 |
86 | Jordan | 0 | 32 | 32 |
87 | Norway | 0 | 111 | 111 |
88 | Trinidad_and_Tobago | 0 | 80 | 80 |
89 | Canada | -1 | 109 | 110 |
90 | Mauritius | -1 | 83 | 84 |
91 | Cyprus | -3 | 89 | 92 |
92 | Egypt | -3 | 49 | 52 |
93 | Netherlands | -3 | 120 | 123 |
94 | Kenya | -4 | 7 | 11 |
95 | Iceland | -7 | 99 | 106 |
96 | Mexico | -7 | 63 | 70 |
97 | Israel | -8 | 91 | 99 |
98 | Niger | -8 | 21 | 29 |
99 | United_Kingdom | -8 | 116 | 124 |
100 | Switzerland | -8 | 114 | 122 |
101 | Togo | -8 | 15 | 23 |
102 | Belgium | -9 | 118 | 127 |
103 | Spain | -9 | 119 | 128 |
104 | Lebanon | -10 | 59 | 69 |
105 | Gambia | -11 | 13 | 24 |
106 | Malaysia | -12 | 54 | 66 |
107 | United_States_of_America | -12 | 106 | 118 |
108 | Morocco | -13 | 61 | 74 |
109 | Moldova | -14 | 81 | 95 |
110 | Liberia | -14 | 29 | 43 |
111 | Brazil | -15 | 74 | 89 |
112 | Djibouti | -16 | 38 | 54 |
113 | Cameroon | -17 | 14 | 31 |
114 | Afghanistan | -18 | 12 | 30 |
115 | Peru | -18 | 69 | 87 |
116 | Brunei_Darussalam | -20 | 37 | 57 |
117 | Ireland | -25 | 94 | 119 |
118 | Iraq | -26 | 27 | 53 |
119 | Luxembourg | -27 | 93 | 120 |
120 | Philippines | -27 | 45 | 72 |
121 | Kuwait | -28 | 5 | 33 |
122 | Honduras | -30 | 41 | 71 |
123 | Turkey | -30 | 73 | 103 |
124 | Guyana | -31 | 55 | 86 |
125 | Oman | -33 | 4 | 37 |
126 | Burkina_Faso | -36 | 10 | 46 |
127 | Panama | -36 | 72 | 108 |
128 | Dominican_Republic | -40 | 62 | 102 |
129 | Ecuador | -43 | 64 | 107 |
130 | Saudi_Arabia | -47 | 11 | 58 |
131 | Bahamas | -48 | 57 | 105 |
132 | Qatar | -61 | 2 | 63 |
133 | Iran | -65 | 52 | 117 |
134 | United_Arab_Emirates | -72 | 1 | 73 |
135 | Bahrain | -74 | 3 | 77 |
136 | Zimbabwe | -110 | 20 | 130 |
137 | Zambia | -123 | 6 | 129 |
Footnotes:
- The Seychelles, Vietnam, Fiji, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea have so far recorded 0 Covid-19. Hence their Outperformance score is derived from their OADP rank (essentially, their OADP rank minus 1 will be their Outperformance score).