CASE STUDY: Saying that a country is socialist is another way of saying that it is poor (2)

Last week I published in the previous post the result of some calculations I made based on the data available in two Wikipedia entries that showed socialist countries (*) with a wealth measured by GDP (PPP) per capita less than half of non-socialist countries and less than a quarter of the EU.

Economist

Coincidentally, I found a piece today where the Economist presents the graph above that suggests the same conclusions but based on a ranking in three groups of countries based on the democracy index. The two approaches go in the same direction if one considers that socialist countries in that sense share in most cases serious limitations to freedom.

Additionally, the Economist diagram also shows the discrepancy between GDP per capita published in official statistics and estimates based on satellite studies of night lights - a process that has proven to be a good indicator (I will return to this topic). And what can be concluded from the comparison of the two values is that the official statistics of countries with democratic deficits are grossly "fixed".

(*) Including Marxist–Leninist states (China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam) plus Countries with constitutional references to socialism (Angola, Algeria, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Portugal, Sahrawi, Sri Lanka, Tanzania).