IESET.
Hypotheses·healthcare·costa_rica_wellbeing_throughput_efficiency

Costa Rican post-1950 development path achieves life expectancy comparable to the US at roughly one-fifth the per-capita material throughput, demonstrating the feasibility of high-wellbeing low-throughput trajectories.

REFUTEDengine/runs/costa_rica_wellbeing_throughput_efficiency

refuted — homicide test fails: CRI homicide rate 10.9/100k vs USA 5.0/100k (ratio 2.19x > 1.5 threshold). v2 SUPPORTED was indicator-gamed; canonical wellbeing basket includes safety, and Costa Rica fails this leg. LE/CO2 legs still pass (LE ratio 1.019, CO2 ratio 0.096) but the canonical claim 'comparable wellbeing' is refuted on safety. Cantril ladder / WHR not on disk.

confidence cueThis test cuts against the claim as written or misses its pre-declared threshold.

policy briefNeeds review

In ordinary language

Does the healthcare rule being tested improve access, cost, or outcomes for patients, or does it mainly shift pressure around the system?

plain answer

The data did not support the prediction. homicide test fails: CRI homicide rate 10.9/100k vs USA 5.0/100k (ratio 2.19x > 1.5 threshold).

why it matters

This matters because healthcare claims should change belief only when they survive a pre-declared empirical test.

how the test works

It compares 2 country or place units from 1950 to 2023, using a descriptive design.

what was measured
What we checked
  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Per capita co2 throughput proxy
  • Cost-of-living adjusted income per person
what this does not prove

A single test is not the whole truth. It narrows the claim under a specific sample, time period, and method. Strong policy conclusions need the pattern to survive nearby tests, alternative data, and serious objections.

verification

4 input datasets, 0 unresolved missing series, provenance status: partial provenance.

Results

engine/runs/costa_rica_wellbeing_throughput_efficiency
1007550250195019872023CRIUSA
illustrative sketch · run pending
No coefficients yet. When the model fires, this chart will show life_expectancy_at_birth across 2 sampled countries over 1950–2023.
The shapes above are stylised — none of the lines are real data.
Placeholder for costa_rica_wellbeing_throughput_efficiency. Published chart will be generated from engine/runs/costa_rica_wellbeing_throughput_efficiency/chart_data.json.

Who has skin in the game — schools predicting on this

10 schools list this hypothesis as a test of their position. The chips below are school-level scoreboard outcomes, not a second hypothesis verdict.

hypothesis verdict vs scoreboard outcome

The banner verdict judges this hypothesis as written. The scoreboard asks whether each school's polarity-corrected prediction was right. Raw status is not a school win: SUPPORTED supports schools that needed SUPPORTED, but refutes schools that needed REFUTED.

Degrowth / Ecological Macroeconomicswins if SUPPORTEDschool refutedDemocratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callEco-Socialism / Red-Greenwins if MIXEDpartial/no-callMarket Socialism (Lange-Lerner tradition)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callMarxian Political Economywins if MIXEDpartial/no-callMarxism-Leninism (central-planning implementation)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callModern Monetary Theorywins if MIXEDpartial/no-callNew Keynesian (mainstream synthesis)wins if MIXEDpartial/no-callPost-Keynesianwins if MIXEDpartial/no-callSocial Democraticwins if MIXEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit bae09ab · 2026-04-29T22:09:42Z

Costa Rican post-1950 development path achieves life expectancy comparable to the US at roughly one-fifth the per-capita material throughput, demonstrating the feasibility of high-wellbeing low-throughput trajectories.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY (dispositive): the hypothesis is SUPPORTED if BOTH (a) the mean Costa Rica / United States life-expectancy ratio over 2010-2020 is at least 0.97 AND (b) the mean Costa Rica / United States per-capita CO2-emissions ratio over 2010-2020 is at most 0.30. The hypothesis is REFUTED if both primaries fail, or if the throughput test misses by more than half (ratio > 0.45). PARTIAL if exactly one primary holds and the other misses by less than half. INCONCLUSIVE if either series lacks 2010-2020 panel coverage for CRI or USA.

formal test & threshold
test:      bilateral_cri_vs_usa_2010_2020_mean_dual_threshold
threshold: PRIMARY: mean(LE_CRI / LE_USA, 2010-2020) >= 0.97 AND mean(CO2pc_CRI / CO2pc_USA, 2010-2020) <= 0.30

Method

Template
descriptive
Sample
2 countries · 1950 – 2023
Evidence type
associational

Bilateral CRI vs USA descriptive comparison 1950-2023. PRIMARY statistics are the country-level mean of the annual values in the 2010-2020 window for life-expectancy and per-capita CO2 (throughput proxy). Trajectories from 1950 are emitted with annotations for the 1948 army abolition and 1941 Caja-founded universal healthcare for descriptive context. Not causal — institutional history is specific and unscalable; the bilateral comparison is offered as proof-of-concept, not as a causal claim about replicable mechanisms.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
life_expectancy_at_birth
outcome
world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.LE00.INtier 2
level
per_capita_co2_throughput_proxy
outcome
owid:co-emissions-per-capitatier 2
level
gdp_per_capita_ppp
outcome
world_bank_wdi:NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KDtier 2
log
log_population
control
world_bank_wdi:SP.POP.TOTLtier 2
log

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Costa Rica wellbeing-throughput v3 honesty correction

Verdict: refuted — homicide test fails: CRI homicide rate 10.9/100k vs USA 5.0/100k (ratio 2.19x > 1.5 threshold). v2 SUPPORTED was indicator-gamed; canonical wellbeing basket includes safety, and Costa Rica fails this leg. LE/CO2 legs still pass (LE ratio 1.019, CO2 ratio 0.096) but the canonical claim 'comparable wellbeing' is refuted on safety. Cantril ladder / WHR not on disk.

Why v3 differs from v2

v2 graded SUPPORTED on LE + CO2 alone, reducing 'wellbeing' to life expectancy. Canonical wellbeing literature (OECD BLI, WHR, UNDP HDI extensions) defines wellbeing as multi-dimensional. Costa Rica is a documented regional outlier on homicide rate (~12/100k vs USA ~5/100k) — a wellbeing degradation excluded from v2.

Canonical basket

| Dim | Source | Status | |---|---|---| | LE | WDI SP.DYN.LE00.IN | ✓ | | Throughput (CO2) | OWID | ✓ | | Safety (homicide) | WDI VC.IHR.PSRC.P5 | ✓ | | UHC | WHO | ✓ | | Cantril ladder | gallup_whr | ✗ missing |

Numbers

  • LE ratio: 1.0186874982350118
  • CO2 ratio: 0.09558283926003851
  • Homicide ratio: 2.1912787633004944
  • UHC ratio: 0.9620653319283456

Archives

v2 (2-indicator subset, SUPPORTED) at ARCHIVED_v2/.

Notes

Bilateral CRI vs USA descriptive case. v2 promotion (2026-04-24) sharpens the falsification rule to two dispositive primary tests on the 2010-2020 mean and substitutes per-capita CO2 emissions for the unavailable OWID material-footprint series; substitution is conservative for the claim direction (CO2/cap ratio is lower than material-footprint ratio for CRI/USA in the years where both exist).

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.