Cuba's Literacy Rate, Life Expectancy Nothing to Lionize

Cuba's Literacy Rate, Life Expectancy Nothing to Lionize
Dictatorships may value literacy as much as democracies, but they value
life a lot less.
Marian Tupy | April 19, 2016

Recently, I had a conversation with an American acquaintance, who
bemoaned the lack of "free" education and healthcare in the United
States. "Even Cuba," he continued with a non-sequitur, "has higher
literacy and life expectancy [than America]." In case you wonder what
circles I happen to move in, recall that even President Obama recently
waxed lyrical about Cuba's education and healthcare. To quote the sage
of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, "I said this to President Castro in Cuba. I
said, look, you've made great progress in educating young people. Every
child in Cuba gets a basic education—that's a huge improvement from
where it was. Medical care—the life expectancy of Cubans is equivalent
to the United States, despite it being a very poor country, because they
have access to health care. That's a huge achievement. They should be
congratulated."

The left has a long history of lionizing Cuba's education and health,
while ignoring or downplaying the island's poverty and dictatorship.
Underlying all conversations that I have had with American leftists
about Cuba has been an implicit acceptance of a tradeoff between freedom
and "free stuff." "Yes, Cuba is not a democracy," the argument usually
goes, "but at least they have free education and healthcare. And, we
don't!" The casual way in which the left glosses over Cuba's
dictatorship is all the more remarkable considering that here at home
the left is hypersensitive to voting rights and the supposed attempts by
the political right to disenfranchise America's minorities.

And that got me thinking, what is the relationship between literacy and
life expectancy on the one hand, and democracy and dictatorship on the
other hand? In 2012, the last year for which Human Progress has data on
Cuban literacy, 40 out of 73 countries and territories surveyed by
UNESCO had literacy rates among adults higher than 90 percent. With
99.75 percent, Cuba came in second place—after Azerbaijan. According to
Freedom House, out of the 40 countries and territories in the top
decile, 35 percent were politically free, 35 percent were partly free
and 27.5 percent were unfree (the rest had no Freedom House score).

The contrast between free and unfree countries is much starker when it
comes to life expectancy. In 2014, out of 198 countries and territories
surveyed by the World Bank, 35 had a life expectancy over 80 years. With
79.39 years, Cuba was not one of them. It ranked in the 38th place
globally. With 78.94 years, the United States came in 43rd place. Thus,
while Cuba has edged out the United States, it is not in any way
remarkable by global standards. In fact, out of the 35 countries and
territories with life expectancy over 80 years, 83 percent were free and
6 percent were partly free (the rest had no Freedom House score). Not
one unfree country had a life expectancy over 80 years!

What are we to make of this? It may well be that a literate population
is relatively highly valued by both dictatorial and democratic
government. When newspapers are tightly controlled by the government,
having the populace read the government propaganda seem like a good
thing. But, when it comes to life expectancy—an excellent proxy for the
standard of living in general and health of the populace in
particular—dictatorships can't hold a candle to democracies.

Marian L. Tupy is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for
Global Liberty and Prosperity and editor of www.humanprogress.org

Source: Cuba's Literacy Rate, Life Expectancy Nothing to Lionize -
Reason.com -
http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/19/cubas-literacy-rate-life-expectancy-noth