Stat of the Week Winner: August 4 – 10 2012

Congratulations to Eric Crampton for his nomination of an absolute shocker of a statistic this week. The printed story completely mangled the information in the press release. It even went further and attributed malicious intent to the researchers.

“67 Maori children died avoidable deaths every year, costing taxpayers $200 million annually.”

The original study says that the social costs of health disparities ranges from $62m-$200m, including measures of the value of statistical lives lost among Maori children. In no way is the larger figure close to a “Cost to the taxpayer” except in the odd sense that costs borne by the parents who cared about those children are included in the value of statistical lives lost and some of those parents may have been taxpayers.

Another case of “Economic Impact” or “Social cost” turning into “cost to the taxpayer” when handled by journalists.

Discussed at length:

http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2012/08/06/journalist-ideological-cant-read/

http://www.offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/i-hate-economic-impact-numbers.html