Does ‘Data Fudging’ Explain the Autocratic Advantage? Evidence from the Gap between Official COVID-19 Mortality and Excess Mortality

Social Science & Medicine – Population Health, Volume 19, September 2022, 101247

8 Pages Posted: 17 Mar 2022 Last revised: 29 Dec 2022

See all articles by Eric Neumayer

Eric Neumayer

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Thomas Pluemper

University of Essex - Department of Government; Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Socioeconomics

Date Written: March 14, 2022

Abstract

Governments can underreport COVID-19 mortality to make their performance appear more successful than it is. Autocracies are more likely to ‘fudge’ these data since many autocratic regimes restrict media freedom and thus can prevent domestic media from reporting evidence of undercounting deaths. Autocracies also enjoy greater leverage over reporting health authorities to either fudge data or adopt restrictive definitions of what constitutes COVID-19 mortality. Controlling for factors that partly explain the difference between excess mortality and official COVID-19 mortality, we demonstrate that any apparent ‘autocratic advantage’ in fighting the pandemic is in fact down to ‘autocratic data fudging’. No full liberal democracy is detected as fudging their data, whereas several autocracies and semi-democracies appear to systematically underreport COVID-19 mortality statistics.

Note:
Funding Information: None to declare.

Conflict of Interests: None to declare.

Keywords: COVID-19, mortality, misreporting, data, democracy, autocracy

Suggested Citation

Neumayer, Eric and Plümper, Thomas and Plümper, Thomas, Does ‘Data Fudging’ Explain the Autocratic Advantage? Evidence from the Gap between Official COVID-19 Mortality and Excess Mortality (March 14, 2022). Social Science & Medicine – Population Health, Volume 19, September 2022, 101247 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4057494 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4057494

Eric Neumayer (Contact Author)

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://ericneumayer.wordpress.com/

Thomas Plümper

Vienna University of Economics and Business - Department of Socioeconomics ( email )

Vienna
Austria

University of Essex - Department of Government ( email )

Wivenhoe Park
Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.polsci.org/pluemper

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