IESET.
Hypotheses·healthcare·cuba_health_outcomes_vs_non_latam_market_peers

Cuba's life expectancy and infant mortality outcomes by 2000 were strong enough to rank competitively not just against Latin American peers, but against a broad ex-ante fixed pool of non-Latin-American market economies; if Cuba fails that harder comparison, the "socialist health-system superiority" story is more regional than universal.

PARTIALengine/runs/cuba_health_outcomes_vs_non_latam_market_peers

PARTIAL — Cuba clears two of the three harder gates in the 21-country non-LATAM market-economy pool. Ranks: LE #6/21, IMR #7/21, income #18/21; mean-health-vs-income gap 11.5. Missed: IMR rank need <= 5.

confidence cueThe result is useful, but not decisive. Treat it as a clue, not a settled conclusion.

policy briefMixed or noisy

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 evidence is suggestive but not decisive. Cuba clears two of the three harder gates in the 21-country non-LATAM market-economy pool.

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 21 country or place units from 1960 to 2000, using a descriptive design.

what was measured
What changed
  • Cuba socialist indicator
What we checked
  • Life expectancy at birth
  • Infant mortality per 1000
  • Life expectancy who
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

No evidence packet has been generated yet.

Results

engine/runs/cuba_health_outcomes_vs_non_latam_market_peers
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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 SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callDemocratic Socialism (Bernsteinian revisionism + modern)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callEco-Socialism / Red-Greenwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callMarket Socialism (Lange-Lerner tradition)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callMarxian Political Economywins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callMarxism-Leninism (central-planning implementation)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callModern Monetary Theorywins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callNew Keynesian (mainstream synthesis)wins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callPost-Keynesianwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-callSocial Democraticwins if SUPPORTEDpartial/no-call

Pre-registration

pre-registered
first-spec commit 4c8ce8e · 2026-07-18T22:11:21Z

Cuba's life expectancy and infant mortality outcomes by 2000 were strong enough to rank competitively not just against Latin American peers, but against a broad ex-ante fixed pool of non-Latin-American market economies; if Cuba fails that harder comparison, the "socialist health-system superiority" story is more regional than universal.

Falsification criterion — what would disprove this

set before the run · honoured after

This hypothesis is considered falsified if:

PRIMARY 1 (life expectancy rank, dispositive): within the fixed 21-country pool {CUB, ESP, PRT, GRC, TUR, ISR, JPN, KOR, THA, MYS, IDN, PHL, IND, LKA, PAK, BGD, MAR, TUN, DZA, EGY, JOR}, Cuba's life expectancy at birth in 2000 must rank in the top third of the pool (rank <= 7 of 21, rank 1 = best). PRIMARY 2 (infant mortality rank, dispositive): Cuba's infant mortality rate in 2000 must rank in the top quartile of the same pool (rank <= 5 of 21, 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 5 places. SUPPORTED if all three primaries hold. PARTIAL if exactly two hold. REFUTED if zero or one holds. INFORMATIVE: report 1960 ranks, 1991-2000 post-Soviet-subsidy sub-period trajectory, and separate Cuba's standing versus the advanced-market subgroup {ESP, PRT, GRC, ISR, JPN, KOR}. METHOD_VALID: requires coverage for Cuba plus at least 18 of the 20 non-Cuban comparators at the 2000 endpoint for life expectancy, infant mortality, and income-rank context.

formal test & threshold
test:      cuba_non_latam_market_pool_rank_and_income_gap_2000
threshold: PRIMARY: LE_rank_CUB_2000 <= 7 of 21 AND IMR_rank_CUB_2000 <= 5 of 21 AND income_rank_CUB_2000 - mean(LE_rank_CUB_2000, IMR_rank_CUB_2000) >= 5

Method

Template
descriptive
Sample
21 countries · 1960 – 2000
Evidence type
associational

Descriptive rank-table comparison of Cuba against a broad non-LatAm market comparator pool, 1960-2000. Primary statistics are 2000 endpoint ranks on life expectancy, infant mortality, and GDP per capita. The key diagnostic is whether Cuba's health rank materially outruns its income rank inside a pool that includes both developing and advanced market economies. Not causal and not a clean socialism-vs-capitalism estimator: Soviet subsidy, baseline advantage, sanctions, and official-data quality remain confounds. The point is to stress- test how far the Cuban health result travels outside a friendlier regional pool.

Data

VariableSourceTransform
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
life_expectancy_who
outcome
who_gho:life_expectancy_at_birthtier 1
level
cuba_socialist_indicator
treatment
constructed:indicator = 1 for CUB; 0 for the non-LatAm market comparator pool.tier 5
indicator
log_gdp_per_capita_maddison
control
owid:gdp-per-capita-maddison-2020tier 2
log
log_health_expenditure_per_capita
control
world_bank_wdi:SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CDtier 2
log

● ready  · ● pending  · ● reconstruct-needed

Detailed result card

Cuba health outcomes vs non-LATAM market peers, 1960-2000

Verdict: PARTIAL — Cuba clears two of the three harder gates in the 21-country non-LATAM market-economy pool. Ranks: LE #6/21, IMR #7/21, income #18/21; mean-health-vs-income gap 11.5. Missed: IMR rank need <= 5.

Primary thresholds

  • Life expectancy rank in 2000 must be <= 7 within the 21-country pool.
  • Infant mortality rank in 2000 must be <= 5 within the 21-country pool.
  • Cuba's mean health rank must beat its income rank by at least 5.0 places.

Cuba's standings

  • 1960 ranks: LE #5, IMR #2.
  • 2000 ranks: LE #6/21, IMR #7/21, income #18/21.
  • Mean health rank in 2000: 6.5.
  • Income minus health-rank gap: +11.5 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 | 18 | 6.5 | +11.5 | | KOR | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6.5 | -1.5 | | MYS | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8.0 | -1.0 | | TUN | 9 | 12 | 11 | 10.5 | +0.5 | | JOR | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11.0 | -1.0 | | THA | 12 | 10 | 9 | 11.0 | -2.0 | | LKA | 13 | 9 | 14 | 11.0 | +3.0 | | TUR | 10 | 14 | 8 | 12.0 | -4.0 | | PHL | 15 | 13 | 17 | 14.0 | +3.0 | | DZA | 14 | 15 | 12 | 14.5 | -2.5 | | EGY | 16 | 16 | 13 | 16.0 | -3.0 | | MAR | 17 | 18 | 16 | 17.5 | -1.5 | | IDN | 18 | 17 | 15 | 17.5 | -2.5 | | IND | 19 | 20 | 20 | 19.5 | +0.5 | | BGD | 20 | 19 | 21 | 19.5 | +1.5 | | PAK | 21 | 21 | 19 | 21.0 | -2.0 |

Advanced-market subgroup check (ESP, PRT, GRC, ISR, JPN, KOR, plus Cuba)

| 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

Descriptive rank-table test only. The dispositive question is whether Cuba remains genuinely competitive once the comparison pool expands beyond a friendlier Latin American frame. Life expectancy and infant mortality come from WDI; income-rank context comes from the OWID-packaged Maddison GDP-per-capita series because the WDI PPP-per-capita vintage does not report a usable Cuba 2000 endpoint. Method-validity requires Cuba plus at least 18 of the 20 non-Cuban comparators at the 2000 endpoint on life expectancy, infant mortality, and income.

Caveats

  • WDI back-fills Cuba's 1960-2000 health series from Cuban official reporting; the usual official-data caveat still applies, especially for infant mortality classification practices and the lack of a full-window WHO-independent backfill.
  • Income rank uses OWID's Maddison GDP-per-capita series rather than WDI PPP-per-capita because Cuba's WDI PPP endpoint is missing. That preserves cross-country comparability, but the exact income-rank gap should be read as an approximate context metric, not a causal control.
  • A strong or weak rank in this pool does not by itself identify socialism as the cause: Soviet transfers, pre-revolution baseline, sanctions, public-health prioritisation, and state capacity remain bundled together.

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

Harder companion to `cuba_health_outcomes_vs_latam_peers`. The LATAM-only pool is informative but friendly: Cuba started ahead regionally and some of the best non-socialist health performers (Southern Europe, East Asia) sit outside that frame. This spec widens the test to a broad non-LatAm market-economy pool and asks where Cuba actually ranks, both in raw health outcomes and relative to its income rank. The question is not "did Cuba beat Japan or Spain on every metric," but whether Cuba's health ranking materially outran what its income position within a broad market comparator pool would predict.

Authored framework. Read the transparency note.