This map says South Africa is ‘best at’ death – but it’s wrong
A map purporting to show ‘International Number Ones‘ has been updated for 2016 – showing the one thing that almost every country in the world is ‘best at’.
The categories of ‘bests’ range from commodities, economics and technology, to more esoteric things like ‘nice’ and ‘nasty’ number ones.
Australia is apparently ‘best’ at data breaches, while the United States is best at spam emails. The UK is best at having billionaires, while China has the honour of having the most jailed journalists.
According to the map, which was researched and designed by data journalist, David McCandless, South Africa is best at death.
(Click to enlarge)
The map cites sources such as the CIA, New York Times, Bloomberg and other media outlets, and provides a full breakdown of how each ‘best’w as reached.
Delving into these sources, South Africa’s death ‘honour’ was taken from the CIA World Fact Book for 2014 – where indeed the country ranked first in the world for its death rate of 17.5 people per 1,000 population.
However, the map purports to be an update for October 2016, which means the South Africa stat is out of date by two years.
Looking at the same data source – but for 2016 – South Africa is no longer ranked first for its death rate, but rather comes in at 51st, with a death rate of 9.6 deaths per 1,000 population.
In 2016, South Africa is far from being the ‘best at’ death (that title belongs to Lesotho, with a death rate of 14.9).
So what is South Africa the ‘best at’? According to the CIA World Fact Book, South Africa is listed as having the highest rate of HIV/AIDS related deaths, based on 2015 estimates. Arguably, that isn’t much better.
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