devtools::install_github("drsimonj/ourworldindata")
finance <- ourworldindata::financing_healthcare

Question

What is the relastionship between healthcare expenditure and child mortality over year?

finance %>% 
  select(year, country, health_exp_total, child_mort) %>% 
  filter(country == "United States") %>% 
  na.omit() %>% 
  mutate(child_mort = child_mort/100) %>% 
  ggplot(aes(health_exp_total, child_mort)) +
    geom_point(size = 2) +
    geom_text(aes(label = year),
              vjust = 1.3) +
  scale_x_continuous(labels = scales::dollar) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::percent) +
  labs(x = "\nTotal Health Expenditure",
       y = "Child Mortality\n",
       title = "Child Mortality Declines with Increased Health Expediture in the U.S.",
       caption = "Source: World Bank - WDI") +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(title = element_text(size = 16),
        axis.text = element_text(size = 11))

It appears that the biggest decreases in child mortality occured in the 90’s. While it looks like healthcare expenditures increased faster in the 2000’s, why did it take a decade for child mortality to start decreasing again?

Data and other figures are found here