Thursday, January 04, 2007
USA vs EU
Interesting graph here comparing US income vs European. Not entirely what it covers. Whether EU 15 or the EU 25. (or EU 27 as it is now). But it is interesting. Seemingly it does include in the graph such things as medical expenses. It would be interesting to see this broke down per country. From Back Talk Blog
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2 comments:
Hi Simon,
That's an interesting post you've linked to, but just to clarify, this is broken down per country. Engram says that he drew the figures from an aggregation of figures from "the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Finland, U.K., and Belgium."
Also, one of the commentators suggests that the figures don't include healthcare costs. By which I assume he means, doesn't include private healthcare costs to individuals in the States (since they'd be included in the tax burdens of people in all the European countries Engram measured).
God knows how you would calculate median per capita healthcare costs, but what we do know is that health spending in the states is well over twice the OECD average. These costs are not only borne by the taxpayer as in other countries, but (especially for the people in the middle of the graph) by the consumer too.
As the commenter said, it's hard to know what impact this (and, say higher education costs) might have on the actual burdens people face, but it's worth acknowledging that they explain at least some of the difference.
Ciarán hit it dead on with healthcare in the states. Out of pocket expenses for the top and bottom here are extremely low ~ its the middle that gets the sort end of the stick.
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