Deaths from falling out of bed in the USNumber of billionaires worldwide
US deaths from falling out of bed and the global count of billionaires have, between 2016 and 2021, risen together at a correlation of 0.857. Whether the billionaires are falling out of their own beds is, sadly, not the story. The real story is about demography and capital, which rarely share a headline but here are both rising together.
US deaths from falling out of bed climbed from around 450 in 2016 to over 700 by 2021, driven by the aging American population and increased fall risk in the over-65 demographic. The global count of billionaires grew from 1,810 to over 2,700 in the same window, driven by asset-price inflation and pandemic-era monetary expansion. The two trends share no mechanism whatsoever — one is an aging-population mortality statistic, the other is a wealth-concentration metric — but both rose across the same short window.
Six years of two lines rising together can describe one aging country and one expanding wealth tier sharing a calendar. The mattress and the yacht are in different rooms. Only one of them is accounted for.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Deaths from falling out of bed in the US” vs “Number of billionaires worldwide” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
