Do Freedom of association and Health spending go together across countries?

Across 166 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = +0.39, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.50.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 2000-2024, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.018 (171 countries, 4,047 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is +0.004.

Does Freedom of association cause Health spending?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Freedom of association vs. Health spending

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 166 countries, Freedom of association and Health spending rise and fall together at r = +0.39 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = +0.33, q = 0.011, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of freedom of association, 0.448 to 0.869 points, health spending is 1.63% of GDP higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 1.35% of GDP.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.393p = 1.6e-7 · 166 countries

After adjusting for national income+0.330p = 1.5e-5 · likely range [+0.19, +0.46]

p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.045 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.011across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Freedom of association · index (0-1)link with income +0.42 · moderate

Health spending · % of GDPlink with income +0.29 · independent

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	+0.393	1.6e-7	166
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.497	9.2e-12	166
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	+0.330	1.5e-5	166
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	+0.393	1.8e-7	166

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 166 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.063 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.307 (without QAT) to +0.390 (without AFG). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AFG (+0.059).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	20	+0.45
Europe & Central Asia	48	+0.46
Latin America & Caribbean	23	-0.02
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	21	+0.15
Sub-Saharan Africa	46	+0.23

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	56	-0.01
Middle third	55	+0.29
Richest third	55	+0.62

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	99	+0.19
Muslims	47	-0.05

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	25	+0.01
Never a European colony	21	+0.32
Spain	19	+0.19
United Kingdom	49	+0.38

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.391 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 25years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = -0.018, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose freedom of association moved did not tend to see their health spending move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.330for comparison

Within countries-0.030each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.018q = 0.866 · 171 countries

Year-on-year changes+0.004q = 0.963

Read with care.

Almost all of this indicator's variation is between countries, not within them, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

4,047 country-years (one country in one year), 171 countries, 2000–2024, about 24 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 7% for Freedom of association, 18% for Health spending. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.018. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

This curve peaks at the edge of the window (lag +10), so it is still drifting where the search stops. That pattern usually reflects a slow trend left over in the data, not a link with real timing. The peak value should not be read as the “true” link at the right lag.

The data

	index (0-1)	% of GDP	Years
Sweden SWE	0.931	11.2%	2025, 2024
Denmark DNK	0.929	9.39%	2025, 2024
Japan JPN	0.924	10.7%	2025, 2023
Costa Rica CRI	0.922	6.87%	2025, 2023
Iceland ISL	0.917	8.98%	2025, 2024
Switzerland CHE	0.917	11.7%	2025, 2023
Norway NOR	0.915	9.43%	2025, 2023
Spain ESP	0.915	9.22%	2025, 2023
United States USA	0.913	16.7%	2025, 2023
Ireland IRL	0.912	6.85%	2025, 2024
Estonia EST	0.908	7.84%	2025, 2024
Uruguay URY	0.902	9.02%	2025, 2023
Malta MLT	0.902	8.84%	2025, 2023
Belgium BEL	0.896	10.8%	2025, 2023
Luxembourg LUX	0.895	5.89%	2025, 2024

Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Freedom of association

Freedom of association index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Whether parties and civic groups may form and operate freely. A part of the electoral democracy index.

Health spending

Current health expenditure (% of GDP)

World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure Database · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2021–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Freedom of association and Health spending

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Freedom of association changes Health spending, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.