Socialism vs. capitalism: Which provides the better quality of life?

A by-the-numbers thread dealing strictly in facts, which I'm told don't care about your feelings.

In 1986, a study was published in the International Journal of Health Services. It purported to compare and contrast the physical quality of life (PQL) of capitalist and socialist countries. It didn't get a lot of attention, for reasons you'll soon see.

Two things make this study interesting:

1. Countries are divided by development level rather than lumping everybody together — a far fairer method.
2. The data is from 1983, a notoriously difficult period for the socialist bloc. Keep this in mind when we get to the numbers.

OK, I lied. Three things. Character limit and all.

3. The authors deliberately ignored heavily propagandized metrics typically used to compare capitalism and socialism, and instead focused on the fulfillment of basic human needs.

Here's how the surveyed countries were divided.

Points of interest:

No socialist country has "high-income" status.
"Recent postrev" category for places with immature systems. Most were attempting socialism.
Norway, Denmark and Sweden are listed as capitalist. Sorry, socdems.

The income categories are determined by per-capita GNP. Here's how it shakes out. I know, GNP isn't a perfect metric. But this works well enough to get an idea of which countries can be fairly compared to one another.

You'll notice per-capita GNP is roughly the same or a little in capitalism's favor in that table. And yet...it's the quality of life metrics that matter. So let's look at those.

We start with infant mortality and child death rates and — holy hell, look at those numbers. Recent postrev countries give capitalist nations a run for their money, but fully developed socialist systems are on a whole other level.

Birth rate was lower in socialist countries than capitalist ones. This is kind of a neutral figure; high or low birth rates can mean any number of things. Lower rates in socialism were in all likelihood due to ease and affordability of birth control for women, an obvious plus.

How about life expectancy and crude deaths? Again, no contest. Socialist countries beat out their counterparts in life expectancy and are on par with the rungs above them. Crude death rates are a little more even.

If those numbers are that good, it stands to reason health care figures tell a similar tale. And they do!

Socialist countries boast a staggering doctor-to-patient and nurse-to-patient ratio when put up against their capitalist cohorts.

But nobody gets fed in socialism. At least that's what Charlie Kirk says. And he'd never lie to me, right?

Yeah, of course he would. Socialist countries universally provided 100 percent of recommended nutrition, and mid-upper income socialist countries beat everybody.

So health figures look pretty good. Let's move on to our next dataset, for education and literacy.

You'll never guess who wins, unless you somehow managed to guess "the countries with free cradle-to-grave education."

The study ultimately composites these figures to come up with a Physical Quality of Life Index. All this ends up doing is giving us a nice round number that shows how much better socialism is than capitalism. Thanks, authors!

Skeptics reading this might wonder if the figures provided for the socialist countries are accurate. The authors seem confident in the statistics, and even hint that socialist countries do a better job reporting this information than capitalist ones.

The authors drop a couple more hints about the inequities of health care, education and the like for disadvantaged groups in high-income capitalist countries. The implication seems to be that part of socialism is correcting these injustices, and the numbers suggest success.

What can we take away from this?

First, people who say socialism or communism "doesn't work" have no idea what they're talking about.
Second, even with big welfare states and safety nets, social democracies still fall short of "actually existing socialism" when it comes to QOL.

Socialism works — for the workers, the people, the vast majority of society.

Capitalism also works — but only for the ruling class and its privileged few.

I know which side I'm on. Do you?

Here's the full report. Share. Make capitalist stooges mad. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/AD12-7RYT-XVAR-3R2U

Addendum: I mentioned it upthread, but just a reminder this data is from 1983, at the tail end of the Soviet Union's life cycle and part of the era many expats remember as hell on earth. And yet it still beats its richer capitalist counterparts. Really Makes You Think.

Addendum to the Addendum: Imagining how much better the QOL numbers would get if these socialist countries weren't interfered with and were able to reach "high-income" status. Getting very sad about this. Sorry if you're also sad now.