Pre-registration
If Cuba's socialist health-system superiority story really travels beyond a friendly regional pool, Cuba should remain at least mid-pack against a small advanced-market subgroup of non-socialist health performers by 2000; if it ranks near the bottom even after adjusting expectations for lower income, the universal version of the Marxist-Leninist claim is overstated.
Falsification criterion — what would disprove this
This hypothesis is considered falsified if:
PRIMARY 1 (life expectancy rank, dispositive): within the fixed 7-country subgroup {CUB, ESP, PRT, GRC, ISR, JPN, KOR}, Cuba's life expectancy at birth in 2000 must rank in the upper half of the pool (rank <= 4 of 7, rank 1 = best). PRIMARY 2 (infant mortality rank, dispositive): Cuba's infant mortality rate in 2000 must also rank in the upper half of the same pool (rank <= 4 of 7, lower = better). PRIMARY 3 (health-vs-income overperformance): Cuba's mean health rank across {life expectancy, infant mortality} in 2000 must beat its GDP-per-capita rank by at least 1 place. SUPPORTED if all three primaries hold. PARTIAL if exactly two hold. REFUTED if zero or one holds. INFORMATIVE: report 1960 ranks and 1991-2000 post-Soviet-subsidy trajectory. METHOD_VALID: requires coverage for Cuba plus all 6 non-Cuban comparators at the 2000 endpoint for life expectancy, infant mortality, and income-rank context.
formal test & threshold
test: cuba_advanced_market_subgroup_rank_2000 threshold: PRIMARY: LE_rank_CUB_2000 <= 4 of 7 AND IMR_rank_CUB_2000 <= 4 of 7 AND income_rank_CUB_2000 - mean(LE_rank_CUB_2000, IMR_rank_CUB_2000) >= 1
Method
- Template
descriptive- Sample
- 7 countries · 1960 – 2000
- Evidence type
- associational
Descriptive rich-comparator subgroup test. This is not a causal socialism-vs- capitalism design; it is a credibility stress test of the stronger rhetorical claim that Cuba's health outcomes remained competitive even against high- performing market economies. The signal is rank position, not a structural estimate.
Data
| Variable | Source | Transform |
|---|---|---|
life_expectancy_at_birth outcome | world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.LE00.INtier 2 | level |
infant_mortality_per_1000 outcome | world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.IMRT.INtier 2 | level |
cuba_socialist_indicator treatment | constructed:indicator = 1 for CUB; 0 for the advanced-market comparator subgroup.tier 5 | indicator |
log_gdp_per_capita_maddison control | owid:gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020tier 2 | log |
● ready · ● pending · ● reconstruct-needed
Detailed result card
Cuba health outcomes vs advanced-market peers, 1960-2000
Verdict: REFUTED — Cuba does not clear the advanced cutoff in the 7-country advanced-market subgroup. Ranks: LE #6/7, IMR #7/7, income #7/7; mean-health-vs-income gap 0.5.
Primary thresholds
- Life expectancy rank in 2000 must be <= 4 within the 7-country subgroup.
- Infant mortality rank in 2000 must be <= 4 within the 7-country subgroup.
- Cuba's mean health rank must beat its income rank by at least 1.0 places.
Cuba's standings
- 1960 ranks: LE #5, IMR #2.
- 2000 ranks: LE #6/7, IMR #7/7, income #7/7.
- Mean health rank in 2000: 6.5.
- Income minus health-rank gap: +0.5 places.
2000 rank table
| Country | LE rank | IMR rank | Income rank | Mean health rank | Income minus health | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:| | JPN | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | +0.0 | | ESP | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.0 | +0.0 | | GRC | 4 | 3 | 6 | 3.5 | +2.5 | | ISR | 3 | 5 | 3 | 4.0 | -1.0 | | PRT | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4.5 | -0.5 | | CUB | 6 | 7 | 7 | 6.5 | +0.5 | | KOR | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6.5 | -1.5 |
Soviet-subsidy sub-period
- Cuba life expectancy: 73.8 in 1991 -> 75.9 in 2000.
- Cuba infant mortality: 10.3 in 1991 -> 6.8 in 2000.
Method
This is the intentionally mean stress test. The comparator pool is restricted to Southern European and East Asian / Israeli market economies that are materially richer than Cuba and often cited as high-performing non-socialist health systems. The threshold asks for upper-half placement on life expectancy and infant mortality plus at least a one-place health-over-income overperformance. If Cuba still clears that bar, the claim has real reach; if it does not, the universal-superiority story is much weaker than the LATAM-only framing suggests.
Caveats
- The Cuban health series still inherits official-reporting risk, and the rich-comparator pool is small enough that one-rank changes matter.
- Income rank again uses OWID's Maddison GDP-per-capita series because the WDI PPP endpoint is missing for Cuba. That choice is transparent, but the ranking should be treated as contextual rather than dispositive in itself.
- This subgroup test is descriptive, not causal. It is best read as a credibility stress test of broad Marxist-Leninist health-superiority rhetoric, not as a clean estimator of the effect of socialism.
Provenance
- world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.LE00.IN
- world_bank_wdi:SP.DYN.IMRT.IN
- owid:gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020
See manifest.yaml for exact vintages. Reproduces from replication.py.
Strongest opposing argument
Every hypothesis ships with its charitable opposing argument. The framework earns credibility by handling objections at their strongest, not weakest.
Notes
This is the intentionally mean companion to both the LATAM peer spec and the broader non-LatAm market-pool spec. It isolates a rich-country subgroup that is often invoked as evidence that good health systems do not require socialism: Spain, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. The question is not whether Cuba matches Japan on income or technology, but whether it remains in the competitive upper half on the two flagship health metrics or instead falls toward the bottom once the pool contains only advanced-market health performers.