





●Introduction

What age were you able to swim at ?

An American girl can swim in a pool from end to end without buoy. It’s amazing ! I introduced the YouTube video in this article below.

Also, her YouTube video made me worry about her drowning. According to my experience in the US, I felt like there were more American people who could not swim at all than Japanese people. I got curious about which nation had more drownings, the US or Japan. I checked the statistics and did a quick analysis below.

Elizabeth, a 16 months old girl, can swim without buoy !

Elizabeth, who lived in Texas, started to learn how to swim from her passionate mother when she was only 14 months old. When she became 16 months old, she already knew how to use her body to breathe and swim.

You can watch how she swims in a pool. (You can jump to her YouTube website by clicking the link). How she swims is incredible !

It is unbelievable to see the American baby girl swimming. That video made me worried about her drowning when I watched it for the first time. It’s amazing that she knows how to survive in the water at her young age.

Where are there more deaths by drowning, America or Japan ?

I looked for a statistics about drowning and found the data of death rates by accidental drowning. The data are pulled out from WHO Mortality Database.

I compared the death rates among countries in the Group of Seven which are the US, France, Canada, the UK, Germany, Italy and Japan. Those countries were selected for the comparison because I just simply assumed that those countries were seven of the largest economies in the world and may have had similar environments.

The figure below illustrates the change in death rates per 100,000 population by accidental drowning and submersion from 2000 to 2016. The death rates are age-standardized with the world standard population by WHO.

As shown in the figure, Japan, the red line, is the highest among 7 countries. The death rates have a decreasing trend, but still there were about 2 people killed by accidental drowning per 100,000 people in 2015.

According to Consumer Affairs Agency in Japan, one of the main reasons of high Japan’s death rate is elderly people. Elderly people tend to drown while in the bath.

The US is relatively high among 7 countries, having more than one person killed by drowning per 100,000 people a year. The figure clearly shows that Japanese people tend to drown more often than American people.

Summary

・Elizabeth is amazing ! She can swim at the age of 16 month !

・Japan has high death rates by accidental drowning among G7 countries.

・You should be careful when you get into the water. Water can kill you. Do not overestimate yourself. Better be safe than sorry.





