In 2005 the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) published a Report on European Demography. In it you can find data for the year 2004 on births, deaths, migration etc for all the countries in the EU, as well as comparative data for the USA, China and India. Obviously from this one can work out the number of deaths in 2004 per 1,000 of population for the countries covered. The report’s in PDF form, so I’ve lovingly copied the figures into the table below, in descending order of rate of death:
Two questions immediately come to mind here – was pre-invasion Iraq really safer than all the countries in this list, and nearly twice as safe as Denmark, for example? And is post-invasion Iraq – the Iraq of Shia death squads, of US airstrikes, Fallujah, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and the ragged people with their sandals and their Kalashnikovs, writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars with 145 military operations every day – really only slightly less safe than Hungary, and more safe than Bulgaria?
Update:
Thanks to Ross in the comments for explaining patiently that this has been covered in other threads and that as Iraq has a young population, its death rates should be considerably lower than countries with a lot of OAPs. More info on median age of population worldwide here.
