G. K. Masterson
@elonmusk .@DataRepublican I made a paper using the Lancet study’s methodology. The USAID Mortality Multiplier: A Counterfactual Analysis of Regime-Enabled Excess Deaths, 2001–2025 We apply fixed-effects Poisson regression to panel data from the 133 countries in the original Lancet study. Our key independent variable is annual USAID disbursements per capita. We control for the usual suspects — GDP, literacy, doctors per thousand — but add one critical covariate the original paper omitted: an index of left-wing governance strength, scored from 0 to 1 based on the proportion of cabinet positions held by self-identified socialists, communists, or Peronists during each year. The model reveals a robust positive association: each additional dollar of USAID per capita is associated with 47.3 excess deaths per 100,000 population under left-wing administrations. Using the same microsimulation framework as the Lancet paper, we project that USAID’s total spending from 2001 to 2025 enabled approximately 187 million excess deaths, of which 68 million were children under five. Our counterfactual — what if USAID had never existed? — shows that 68 million kids would still be alive today. The confidence intervals are wide, the causal assumptions are heroic, and the governance index is completely made up. But hey, it matches their methods exactly.
