Paul Krugman Misleads with Statistics

By David R Henderson.

"In his May 12 Substack post titled, “What Happens When Americans Realize How Miserable We Are?” Paul Krugman makes the case that we are more miserable than we think. He writes:

What will happen when Americans realize how miserable we are? Not in all respects, of course. But my guess is that relatively few Americans realize how much we are falling behind other nations on basic aspects of a civilized life, like health and safety.

The first graph he uses to make his case is a comparison of deaths from road injuries. Deaths include deaths of drivers and passengers and deaths of motorcyclists, cyclists, and pedestrians. He compares the United States with Portugal and France.

His measure is deaths per 100,000 population.

I’ll say that again: His measure is deaths per 100,000 population.

Do you see a problem? I do. In which of the three countries are the miles driven per person highest? Think about how undense our population is and how low our gas taxes are, all compared to the numbers for Portugal and France, and you know the answer: Miles driven per person are much higher here; fatalities are highly positively correlated with miles driven.

But let’s make sure. In 2025, American vehicles traveled 3.28 trillion miles. In 2024, Portuguese vehicles traveled 79.7 billion kilometers, which is 49.5 billion miles. In 2024, French vehicles traveled 377.7 billion miles.

Let’s do the simple math on vehicle miles per person.

U.S. population in 2025: 341.8 million.

Portugal’s population in 2024: 10.75 million.

France’s population in 2024: 68.5 million.

So:

U.S. vehicle miles per person: 3.28 trillion divided by 341.8 million = 9,596.

Portugal’s vehicle miles per person: 49.5 billion divided by 10.75 million = 4,604.

France’s vehicle miles per person: 377.7 billion divided by 68.5 million = 5,514.

So the average U.S. vehicle travels 108% more than the average Portuguese vehicle and about 74% more than the average French vehicle.

What all that means, of course, is that the relevant comparison, deaths per miles traveled rather than per resident of the country, shows a much small difference among the three countries.

As a check, I asked ChatGPT to compare fatalities per million miles between the United States and Portugal. Here’s what it said.

Country

Fatalities per million vehicle miles

Source basis

United States

0.0126

2023

France

0.0085

2021–2023 average

Portugal

0.0134

2021–2023 average

United States vs. France

The U.S. rate was about 48% higher than France’s:

France’s reported rate was 5.3 deaths per billion vehicle-kilometres, which converts to 0.0085 per million vehicle miles.

United States vs. Portugal

Portugal’s rate was about 6% higher than the U.S. rate:

Portugal’s reported rate was 8.3 deaths per billion vehicle-kilometres, which converts to 0.0134 per million vehicle miles. The ETSC report notes that Portugal’s vehicle-distance figure excludes motorcycles, so this comparison is not perfectly clean; including motorcycle mileage would likely lower Portugal’s rate somewhat.

Now go to back to Krugman.

His graph shows the United States being about 200% more dangerous than France and over 100% more dangerous than Portugal. But norming by vehicle miles driven rather than population shows the United States being 48% more dangerous than France and comparable to Portugal.

Big difference.

Krugman made a living by carefully examining macroeconomic data and data on international trade. It’s too bad that didn’t use his analytic tools on this one."