Do rich countries always have better health than their poorer neighbours? A comparison of economies and health status in the USA, Canada, Mexico and Cuba

1. North America
Health in North America

3. In this presentation I want to take a look at some of the
differences in health status in Canada and the USA.
Both countries are amongst the wealthiest in the world.
To get some idea of how they compare with other neighbouring
countries I’ve added some data for Mexico and Cuba.
Economically very different and with very different amounts of
money spent on health care.

4. Gross Domestic Product per capita
50,000
47,500
37,500 39,200
$(int)
25,000
12,500 14,300
9,500
0
USA Canada Mexico Cuba
$int

5. Health Spending as % of GDP
16
15.4
12
9.8
$(int)
8
6.5 6.3
4
0
USA Canada Mexico Cuba
$int

6. Total per capita expenditure on Health
7,000
6,096
5,250
$(int)
3,500
3,173
1,750
655
0 229
USA Canada Mexico Cuba
$int

8. Looking at the previous charts it’s clear that there are signifcant
economic differences between the four countries.
Given what we know about the relative health advantages of the
wealthy compared to the poor we would expect the richest
country to have the best population health status.
Lets take a look and see.

9. Under 5 Mortality
30.0
22.5
21.1
15.0
7.5 7.9
6.8
5.9
0
USA Canada Mexico Cuba
per 1,000 live births

11. There is a clear and significant difference in under 5 mortality
between Mexico and the other three countries.
As expected the wealthier countries have low mortality rates.
What is interesting here is that, despite a very large economic
disadvantage, Cuba has a lower under 5 mortality rate than the
USA.
When we look at overall life expectancy the differences are not
so great. Cuban can expect to live more or less as long as people
in the USA and Canada.

12. Life expectancy
80
80 79
78 77
75 75 75
72
60
40
20
0
Males Females Males Females Males Females Males Females
USA Canada Mexico Cuba

14. When we look at the risks of dying at a younger age we find
more surprises.

15. Probability of dying between 15-60
per 1,000 population
200
162
150
137
128
100
90 94
81 83
50 56
0
Males Females Males Females Males Females Males Females
USA Canada Mexico Cuba

16. So what’s going on?
It seems that it’s not a simple relationship between wealth,
spending power and health.
What you think accounts for the differences if it’s not just money?
Take a look at the sources below and see if you can get some ideas
from the outline country information in their country profiles.
CIA World Factbook
WHO Statistics Database