Two weeks ago the Human Development Report 2023/24 was published. As I did last year, here’s a comparison of current and past socialist and capitalist economies’ HDI (not weighed), along with the standard error of the latter group and a p-value computed via Mann-Whitney U-test.

Looks like socialist countries are now (in 2022) fully on par with their capitalist counterparts. All of them except Cuba saw a sharp increase in their HDI, while capitalist countries are yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences.

  • olgas_husband
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    8 months ago

    interesting that there is a drop even on capitalist countries coinciding with the cracks and later dissolution of soviet union.

    • pancakeOP
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      8 months ago

      I think the methodology is not consistent before 1990, so it’s difficult to say how much of that drop is real (should probably not have included anything pre-1990).

      • olgas_husband
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        8 months ago

        welp, my argument is destroyed. i wanted to make a point about neoliberalism turning worker living conditions to shit even on central of the system.

        • pancakeOP
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          8 months ago

          Well, it’s doing it right now, so your point stands ;)

    • pancakeOP
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      8 months ago

      Indeed! The two averages are virtually the same, so it makes sense that the statistical test can’t find any meaningful difference between the two.

      • Valbrandur
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        8 months ago

        I find it very curious that despite the massive drop in the early 90s for socialist countries, the p-value still didn’t reach statistical significance.

        • pancakeOP
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          8 months ago

          Well, the threshold for significance might not be that strict here since the risk of seeing a difference where there is none is not really a problem. But there are very few socialist countries anyway, so our ability to tell apart real differences from coincidences is very low as you point out…