Is the US worse than North Korea for malnutrition deaths?
6/20/20269 min
This surprising claim was spotted circulating on social media: ‘The United States has surpassed China and North Korea in deaths from malnutrition’. The claim used analysis from the Global Burden of Disease database for their sums. The data does indeed show that the US records more deaths from Malnutrition than China and North Korea. The rate in the US was 2.8 deaths per 100,000 compared to just 1.7 deaths per 100,000 for North Korea. From what we know about the two countries this seems unlikely, so what’s going on here? We talk to Dr Krstina Newport, Chief Medical officer for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Care Medicine to find out more.
If you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at, email moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Duncan Hannant
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsTim Harford· Host0:00
Hello, and thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast, with a program that looks at the numbers in the news, in life, and the inbox of moreorless@bbc.co.uk. And I'm Tim Harford. [gentle music] As sleuths of a statistical persuasion, we are used to doing double-takes as bad stats whiz by. It is amazing. They're everywhere, on the sides of buses, billboards, vans, newspaper articles, government speeches, and of course, one of the main culprits, social media. One such claim on X made us do a double-take so violent that our heads rotated 360 degrees, like that girl in The Exorcist or, you know, a wise old owl. Anyway, this was the claim.
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:46
The United States has surpassed China and North Korea in deaths from malnutrition.
Tim Harford· Host0:52
Below the claim was a graph from Our World in Data, which used analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Database for their sums. The data does indeed show that the US records more deaths from malnutrition than China and North Korea. The rate in the US was 2.8 deaths per 100,000, compared to just 1.7 deaths per 100,000 for North Korea. From what we know about the two countries, this seems unlikely. So what's going on here? First things first, we cannot trust the data for North Korea. The Institute