The UK’s “Office for National Statistics” has issued a report with a bunch of, well, statistics about the British labor market. One of the interesting bits (and, god, yes, economic statistics are fascinating):
Along with recent increases in unemployment rates there has also been an increase in the number of households in which no one has ever worked. Between Q2 1997 and Q2 2010 the number of households in which no one had ever worked almost doubled from 184,000 to 352,000 households (ONS, 2011c). The 352,000 households where no one had ever worked equated to 1.7 per cent of the households in the UK up from 1.0 per cent in 1997. Excluding student households, where everyone was aged 16 to 24 and in full-time education, there remain 269,000 households where no one has ever worked in Q2 2010. Across the country, the highest proportion was in Inner London at 6.5 per cent of all households, three times more than the next highest – Outer London at 2.2 per cent. The lowest percentage was in the East of England at 0.5 per cent, followed by 0.8 per cent in the South West and 0.9 per cent in the South East. As can be seen in Table 4 the majority of households where no one has ever worked were oneperson households followed by lone-parent households (around 39 per cent and 35 per cent of households where no one has ever worked, respectively, increasing to 40 and 44 per cent respectively when student households are excluded). Only 29,000 of the 352,000 households where no one has ever worked were couple households (around 8.2 per cent).
…
In Q2 2010 around 552,000 adults were living in households where no one had ever worked, with a third of these in student households not wanting to work because of their studies. Of the remaining 374,000 adults:
68 per cent were not seeking a job and would not like to work
16 per cent were not seeking a job but would like to work
13 per cent were unemployed, therefore looking for and available to work
There are also around a quarter of a million children under 16 years old, living in households where none of the adults has ever worked (265,000 in all households that have never worked and 258,000 in non-student households) (ONS, 2011c).
So, uh… success?
13 Responses to “Social Trends”
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Gotta love the welfare state.
Their economic system is a disaster. Yet their homicide rate is less than half of ours. Infant mortality about 25% lower. It spends 250% less, on average, per person on healthcare. The liberal in me thinks that while they do some things poorly, we can also learn from their successes. The pragmatist in me will skip the gun issue on this one to make a bigger point. All nations have a mixture good and bad traits. Some nations, like North Korea, hardly have any good traits at all. Others, like Sweden, are doing really well. We are smart enough to pick and choose, I think, without resorting to generalizations. Why not steal a good idea when we see it?
“Between Q2 1997 and Q2 2010 the number of households in which no one had ever worked almost doubled from 184,000 to 352,000 households (ONS, 2011c”
Are you saying that’s a good idea we should steal?
> their homicide rate is less than half of ours
Little to nothign to do with government, but rather the societies involved.Note that gun toting rural areas in the US have on the whole lower homicide rates than gun-banning urban areas. The take-away? Big cities need to learn from small cities. Break up most major metropoli, convert the giant peoplefarm apartment blocks into empty fields, spread the people out. Those who still can;t play well with others? Deportation to penal colonies. London, for example.
> Infant mortality about 25% lower
Careful – read the data I posted about back in 2009: http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=3507
Nations record statistics like “infant mortality” quite differently. Additionally, the causes of infant mortality can vary massively from nation to nation. Americans have higher “teen pregnancy” rates than other nations, and gettign preggers early is a good way to give birth to an underweight baby, which is a good way to kill said baby.
> We are smart enough to pick and choose, I think, without resorting to generalizations. Why not steal a good idea when we see it?
Some of us are. Note how “shall issue” concealed carry gun laws are spreading, for example, while crime rates have been declining. Some of us have noticed that Ireland’s economy started booming some years back when they dropped their corporate tax rates… companies started moving in in droves.
If you want to claim that your preferred Senator/Representative/President is well and truly “pro-science,” then get them to do one or more of the following:
1: All new health care laws have a sunset date. If at the end of, say, 10 years the law has worked, then it can be voted in again. If it hasn’t, it can be allowed to fade away. Passing untried laws & programs that cannot be killed is the essense of *anti* science.
2: Any new health care law, environmental regulation, tax increase or anything else that restricts and/or punishes productive people should apply to no more than 50% of the states, no more than 50% of the US population. At the end of a testing period, no earlier than 5 years, you can examine the effects on both the test subjects and the control group. Since Americans are quite capable and willing to pack up and move from state to state, you can see how people vote with their feet.
So a simple scientific experiment: take the coastal states – CA, WA, NY, FL, and so on – and jack their corporate tax rates up to 95%. Provide funding for *massive* enforcement of the tax laws. Take the central “flyover” states and drop their corporate tax rate to 1%. Give the companies a two year period to get their affairs in order, then start enforcing. Come back in another 5 years, and see how the various state economies are doing, and where the corporations are.
“Americans have higher “teen pregnancy” rates than other nations, ”
USA, USA!
Indeed. If you choose to learn from your mistakes, you could choose to learn that there are cultural problems not solvable by throwing trillions of dollars down a government hole.
A federal law applying to only half the states violates equal protection. Let the individual states try out different ideas.
Automatic sunsets on experimental ideas is a good idea.
> A federal law applying to only half the states violates equal protection.
A number of laws violate equal protection. “Progressive” tax rates, for instance. Affirmative action. One could argue that tobacco being legal while pot isn’t, for another.
No, read the first line of my comment. Their economic system is a disaster. The problem is, our political system is built on all or none concepts. Either Sweden is a communist menace, or a liberal paradise. Both conservatives and liberals are guilty of these generalizations. Neither is true. We should pick and chose. Do you also check for the good numbers coming out of Europe? They are equally informative, particularly because many of our problems do not exist in all of Europe. Healthcare is a big one. Also violent crime.
>many of our problems do not exist in all of Europe. Healthcare is a big one. Also violent crime.
Buh?
It’ll take a *long* time before America averages out to be as violent a place as Europe.
“They are equally informative, particularly because many of our problems do not exist in all of Europe. Healthcare is a big one. Also violent crime”
Uh yeah, the country with most violent crime per 100k inhabitants is the UK. Followed by 8 other EU countries. The only non EU country in that statistic is South Africa. The US is far away from that.
Violent crime in the EU, especially in the UK, is through the roof. Cops in the UK have started carrying guns because they’re being shot at on almost a daily basis. There’s not one day in little Austria without some people trying to kill each other these days. In Germany it’s far worse than that.
Healthcare… the NHS is bankrupt, waiting lists for stuff like skin cancer surgery are through the roof.
… many of our problems do not exist in all of Europe. Healthcare is a big one. Also violent crime.
Heh. That’s amusing. Yes, my friends, there’s no violent crime in Europe …
Time to salt the leaches living on the public dole before they kill the host.
Honest unemployment stats would count those “not seeking a job and would not like to work” and “not seeking a job but would like to work”. But that makes the gooberment not look good.