Underage drinking

Summary

More or Less – “Underage Drinking” (BBC Radio 4, Oct 4, 2013)

Episode Overview

In this episode of More or Less, host Tim Harford unpacks alarming national headlines about underage drinking in the UK. The programme investigates the figures behind claims of “hundreds of drunk under-11s” being admitted to A&E, scrutinizes the media’s use and misrepresentation of these numbers, and asks what the real data tell us about the drinking habits of Britain’s children. Along the way, the team debunks dubious statistics, clarifies genuine trends, and demonstrates the importance of healthy skepticism and clear interpretation when it comes to headline-grabbing numbers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Headline: Hundreds of Drunk 11-Year-Olds (00:22–02:19)

• Harford introduces the startling headline picked up by national media: “Almost 300 children under the age of 12 were admitted to A&E units across the UK last year after drinking too much.”
• The media’s portrayal as an “army of children overwhelming A&E” is called into question:
  • Tim Harford (00:51): “An army? 300 children’s almost one a day somewhere in the UK. So I rather hope A and E units are less than overwhelmed by that.”
• The number is contextualized:
  • There are around 9 million children aged 11 and under; 300 cases is a “very, very small proportion.” “Even if we just consider 11 year olds, there are 700,000 of those.” (Hannah Barnes, 02:15)

2. Is 300 a Big Number? The Statistic in Context (02:19–02:42)

• The supposed “third rise in a year” is scrutinized:
  • Hannah Barnes (02:33): “It’s so small that it bounces up and down. It's up almost a third on last year, but down a fifth on two years ago.”
• The numbers fluctuate annually, making trend claims unreliable for small samples.

3. Actual Trends: Underage Drinking in Decline (02:50–03:29)

• Despite media panic, the largest and most authoritative survey (of 11-15-year-olds) shows underage drinking is falling:
  • From 60% (ever tried alcohol) ten years ago to 40% in 2012.
  • Barnes (03:09): “But the young people who are drinking seem to be drinking slightly more.”
  • A&E attendances for under-18s for alcohol-related reasons have fallen from ~8,100 in 2008 to ~6,600 in the last year.

4. Fuzzy Definitions: What Does “Alcohol-Related” Mean? (03:29–05:12)

• The term “alcohol-related condition” used in the FOI request is vague and problematic:
  • May include cases where the child did not drink at all, but was somehow involved in an incident where alcohol was present (e.g., a drunk parent, or accidental ingestion of medication like Calpol).
  • Tim Harford (04:40): “A child has drunk a bottle of Calpol would be flagged... and so would child has broken arm, parents intoxicated.”
  • Reporting is inconsistent; NHS Trusts rely on searching for keywords like “drunk” or “alcohol” in doctors’ notes—not a systematic indicator.

5. Survey Claims on 11-Year-Olds' Drinking: More Problems (05:12–09:01)

• Stephen Fry’s claim: “One in ten 11-year-olds have had alcohol in the last week.”
  • The cited survey (School Health Education Unit) has inconsistencies:
    • 13% of boys and 10% of girls in year six claim to have had a specific alcoholic drink in the past week, but on another question, only 9% of boys and 4% of girls say they've drunk on any day (06:29).
    • Tim Harford (06:40): “There must be kids who had an Alco pop last week and yet didn’t touch a drop on any particular day. Odd.”
  • Dr. David Regis, survey manager, admits the dataset is “scruffy,” not nationally representative, and subject to local variation (07:55).
    • Regis: “The alcohol figures, possibly in the primary school, might be the weakest link in the whole thing.” (08:47)

6. What The Best National Data Actually Say (09:01–09:27)

• The official national survey indicates only about 1% of 11-year-olds have had an alcoholic drink in the past week—nowhere near the 10% headlined.

  • Harford (09:01): “Only 1% of 11 year olds have had a drink in the past week, not 10%. So in summary, 300 drunk 11 year olds in a year isn’t an army. And we have no idea how many of the 300 drunk 11 year olds were in fact stone cold sober.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Tim Harford (00:51): "An army? 300 children’s almost one a day somewhere in the UK. So I rather hope A and E units are less than overwhelmed by that."
• Hannah Barnes (02:19): “Even if we just consider 11 year olds, there are 700,000 of those.”
• Tim Harford (04:40): “Child has drunk a bottle of Calpol would be flagged up... and so would child has broken arm, parents intoxicated.”
• Dr. David Regis (08:20): “Given that we've got a national stratified and random sample that's done very carefully from the government, that's obviously one to look at and rely on. The report that you have in front of you, Tim, is sort of a byproduct...”
• Tim Harford (09:01): “The proportion of young people who are drinking is trending firmly downwards and the number of 11 year olds who've had an alcoholic drink in the past week is 1%, not 10%. Good news all round.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:22–01:50: Introduction to the panic headlines and email from skeptical listeners
• 01:31–02:19: Origin of the “300 under-12s” figure (FOI request)
• 02:12–02:50: Is 300 significant? Putting numbers in perspective
• 02:50–03:29: National surveys show decline in underage drinking
• 03:29–05:12: Investigation into what “alcohol related condition” actually signifies
• 05:12–09:01: Analysis of school survey claims, and interview with Dr. David Regis
• 09:01–09:27: Official national stats: Only 1% of 11-year-olds had a drink in the past week

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Flow & Tone

• The episode uses dry wit and skepticism to cut through hyperbolic headlines.
• Experts and official data are used to ground the debate, with Harford and the team making statistical literacy accessible and engaging for listeners.
• The message is one of reassurance: the panic over underage drinking is based on ambiguous definitions, small numbers, and unreliable data, while the genuine trend is positive.
• The conversation illustrates the importance of examining how numbers are gathered, interpreted, and reported, not just their face value.

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Useful for New Listeners

• This summary gives a clear, step-by-step breakdown of how More or Less uses statistical investigation to challenge misleading claims in news and public debate.
• Listeners learn about data interpretation, definitions, and the pitfalls of headline-driven panic.
• Key findings: Underage drinking is falling, the headlines exaggerated the issue, and careful use of statistical methods is essential for understanding social questions.

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For statistical clarity, skepticism, and the good news buried behind the headlines, listen to Tim Harford and team on More or Less.

Transcript

[Tim Harford]

Thank you for downloading More or Less from the BBC. This is the version of the programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Harford.

Hello and welcome to More or Less the programme which drinks deeply from the glass of statistical good sense. This week we return to Trumpton.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Good heavens, there's water dripping through the ceiling.

[Tim Harford]

But first, almost 300 children under the age of 12 were admitted to AE units across the UK last year after drinking too much.

This BBC story was picked up by the national press.

[Hannah Barnes]

Hundreds of drunk under 11s sent to AE.

[Jonathan Emerson]

Almost 30011 year olds admitted to AE for alcohol abuse, up by a third in a single year.

[Hannah Barnes]

Army of children overwhelming AE with drug and alcohol problems.

[Tim Harford]

An army 300 children's almost one a day somewhere in the UK. So I rather hope A and E units are less than overwhelmed by that.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

But.

[Tim Harford]

But still, 11 year olds is pretty worrying. And an army of loyal listeners emailed us at more or lessbc.co.uk to say they thought the story was absolutely shocking, shockingly implausible. And one of them was James Turner. I saw this story on the BBC news site and I couldn't help but think, bunkum. We thought we'd better run the story through our great machine of statistical truth telling. Hannah Barnes. Hannah.

[Hannah Barnes]

Well, this story originated right here at the BBC at Radio 5 live. It started with a Freedom of Information request from the Victoria Derbyshire program to every NHS trust and health board across the UK. They asked how many under 18s had been to an A and E department for an alcohol related condition over the past five years.

[Tim Harford]

And one of the headline findings was that the numbers included 300 children aged 11 or under who'd been to in just the past year. But I've got to ask, Hannah, is that a big number? I know no young child should be drinking, but do we really have an army of drunk infants?

[Hannah Barnes]

Well, there are about 9 million 11s

[Tim Harford]

and under in the UK, so 300 is a very, very small proportion.

[Hannah Barnes]

And even if we just consider 11 year olds, there are 700,000 of those.

[Tim Harford]

OK, so 300 is not a big number, but still the trend looks alarming. The headlines have said it's up by a third in just.

[Hannah Barnes]

It was. But it's a very messy number. It's so small that it bounces up and down. It's up almost a third on last year, but down a fifth on two years ago.

[Tim Harford]

Now, this number may look erratic, but there are fairly reliable nationally collected figures on young people in general and whether they drink.

[Hannah Barnes]

Yeah. And the overall Trend is down. The most authoritative survey on underage drinking, which looks at 11, 15 year olds in England, shows that the proportion of these children drinking has gone down steadily over the last decade, from about 60% who say they've ever tried alcohol to about 40% in 2012. But the young people who are drinking seem to be drinking slightly more. But the BBC report itself showed that the number of under 18s attending AE for these alcohol related reasons appears to have steadily fallen over the last five years, from around 8,100 in 2008 to nearly 6,600 in the last year.

[Tim Harford]

And this term used in the FOI request, alcohol related condition. You just know we're going to find some argument with the a term like that it's not the same as drunk, even though that's how most of the media have reported these 11 year olds.

[Hannah Barnes]

And actually we found out it may have included occasions where the young person themselves hadn't had any alcohol at all.

[Tim Harford]

Yes, we find ourselves considering the possibility of alcohol free alcohol related incidents.

[Hannah Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, we called the NHS trusts which seem to have the highest numbers of young people attending AE for these alcohol related conditions, and we got some surprising answers. For instance, NHS Grampian have the second highest number for alcohol related cases involving the under 18s in the last year. When they're filling in their forms to record AE attendances, they don't have a code for drunk as a skunk. So instead they might add some descriptive phrases in what's called a free text field, basically notes and comments section. Now, in response to the Freedom of Information request, NHS Grampian simply searched that free text field for words such as drunk, been drinking alcohol or intoxicated.

[Tim Harford]

So let's be clear, child has drunk a bottle of Calpol would be flagged up as a case where a child was seen at A and E and the word drunk was entered in the

[Hannah Barnes]

notes and so would child has broken arm, parents intoxicated. The ABM University Health Board in Wales told a similar story, explaining that the word alcohol could be in the child's notes if, for example, the accident had been caused by a parent who was drinking alcohol.

[Tim Harford]

And what about babies with Alcoh alcoholic mothers?

[Hannah Barnes]

Well, they might also be caught in the Freedom of Information Dragnet.

[Tim Harford]

So we can't even be sure that these 300 cases involved young people drinking at all. We certainly can't say that the cause of attendance was alcohol poisoning. Now, we're not quite done with drunken children because loyal listeners Frances, Michael and Ben spotted another dubious claim made in the whirlwind of excited reporting about this apparent new pestilence of our time, a liver specialist talking about the story on BBC News.

[Stephen Fry]

Certainly we do know that children aged 11 in the last year of primary school, one in 10 have had alcohol in the last week.

[Hannah Barnes]

The liver specialist here is Professor Sir Ian Gilmour and he said that his figure had been mentioned in newspapers and based on a survey of school children conducted by the school's Health Education Unit. We dug out the survey in question and there seemed to be a few problems. One question asks children whether they've drunk alcohol in the past week and prompts them with examples. Cider beer, Cinzano.

[Tim Harford]

Cinzano.

[Hannah Barnes]

Don't judge, tim. Not every 11 year old is a real ale buff.

[Tim Harford]

But looking at the answers from pupils in year six, that's the last year of primary school, the 10 and 11 year olds, we find that 13% of boys and 10% of girls can name a particular alcoholic drink they've had in the past week.

[Hannah Barnes]

And yet another page of the survey asks them how many days they drank in the last week. And there only 9% of boys and 4% of girls said they had drunk on any day at all.

[Tim Harford]

If you follow the logic through, you find there must be kids who had an Alco pop last week and yet didn't touch a drop on any particular day of the week. Odd. And the two samples are different sizes too. And by the way, in one of the surveys the 11 year olds say they drink more than the 13 year olds do.

[Hannah Barnes]

Very odd.

[Tim Harford]

Which is why I had a chat with Dr. David Regis, the research manager at the school's Health Education Unit. I wanted to see how he was going to defend his survey.

[Dr. David Regis]

Eagle eyed as you are, Tim, you've put your finger on. I think what's the key point is that the two different figures are from two different samples.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, right.

[Dr. David Regis]

The data set that we're reporting on is very big, tens of thousands of youngsters and it's very broad. There are many different questions in there, but it's also very scruffy. It's the accident of those schools and local authorities that have taken part in any one survey during the past calendar year. And so it may be that we've got different local authorities designing questionnaires with us and they don't all ask the same questions. The sample also, I should say, is not stratified and random sample in the way that you might expect a nationwide survey to be compiled. It's just to say those local authorities and those schools that choose to work with us in that year, put into a pot and given a stir.

[Tim Harford]

Dr. Regis job is to help schools conduct different surveys in different parts of the country tailored to local needs. The national summary of this patchwork of local surveys is put together because, well, why not? But I asked David Regis if people were trying to understand the drinking habits of 10 and 11 year olds, should they use his data or the nationally representative research conducted by the Health and Social Care Information Centre?

[Dr. David Regis]

Clearly Tim, that's almost a question that answers itself. I mean, given that we've got a national stratified and random sample that's done very carefully from the government that's obviously one to look at and rely on the report that you have in front of you, Tim, is sort of a by product of the work that we are more concerned with, which is to provide local authority clients with a picture of the young people in their area. And we discovered that doing this work in the 1970s and early 1980s, we were accumulating these large data sets based on schools from across the country and we thought it would be interesting to publish from them. I think the alcohol figures, possibly in the primary school, might be the weakest link in the whole thing. And many of the other bits of data do seem to queue up quite nicely against more nationally available figures done in a more orthodox way.

[Tim Harford]

And just to remind us, the national survey that David Regis himself says is self evidently superior for tracking national trends says that only 1% of 11 year olds have had a drink in the past week, not 10%. So in summary, 300 drunk 11 year olds in a year isn't an army. And we have no idea how many of the 300 drunk 11 year olds were in fact stone cold sober. The proportion of young people who are drinking is trending firmly downwards and the number of 11 year olds who've had an alcoholic drink in the past week is 1%, not 10%. Good news all round. Hannah Barnes Data Machine. Time for a celebration. These days no self respecting armchair Critic would watch BBC's Question Time programme without being logged into Twitter to watch all the other armchair critics taking potshots at the panellists. Last week the panel was opining on the subject of HS2, the planned high speed railway between London, Birmingham and beyond. And one intriguing statistical claim was made that swiftly did the rounds on twitter.

[Chris Giles]

Interesting stat.

[Jonathan Portes]

93% of today's UK population will be dead by the time HS2 is finished.

[Jonathan Emerson]

Wow.

[Tim Harford]

Wow indeed. This tweet was picked up and repeated by several prominent journalists, but it originated with an ordinary chap by the name of Charlie Hankers. We're all in favour of citizen journalism of the statistical kind. So naturally we wanted to talk to Charlie about the methodology behind this influential tweet.

[Charlie Hankers]

It was all done in my head.

[Tim Harford]

Mental arithmetic.

[Charlie Hankers]

Yes, you could say that. Yes, it was. It was arithmetic.

[Dr. Brian Faragher]

Yeah.

[Charlie Hankers]

And it went on in my head.

[Jonathan Portes]

Accurate.

[Tim Harford]

Any. Any facts behind it or did you just make it up for fun?

[Charlie Hankers]

The latter, really. Yes, I'm afraid. I thought if I said everyone would be dead, no one would believe it, So I thought 93% just sounds a little bit more believable. And obviously it's. That's ridiculous because it's only 20 years away.

[Tim Harford]

Charliehankers. Or on Twitter ankersforcharlie. A man who shocked himself at the ease with which dodgy stats can take off in the Twittersphere. And let's be honest, not just there. Time then, I think, for a change of pace and a return to a bustling market town where nobody ever sends a tweet or even uses a mobile phone. Previously in Trumpetonshire.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Trumpeton Fire Station.

[Tim Harford]

Hello, this is the treasurer of Trumpetonshire County Council. Can you please find Dibble and tell him he's been made redundant? This is a fiscal emergency. Cutbacks must be made.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Hello?

[Tim Harford]

Is that Dibble? It wasn't personal. Is there any way we can be friends?

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

If you will step into my. I will go and plaster your for you now. How's that?

[Tim Harford]

Good morning, Wendy Miller. It's Tim Harford here.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Nothing wrong, I hope.

[Tim Harford]

Well, Creswell says your flour prices have gone through the roof and he's had to put his biscuit prices up.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Oh, dear.

[Tim Harford]

But one year on, I believe my austerity measures have worked. There are clear signs that we've turned a corner. Morning, Mr. Mannings, says Mr. Platt, the clockmaker.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

How's the printing business?

[Tim Harford]

Not so bad, not so bad, says Mr. Mannings.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

And how are all the clocks, Mr. Platt? Oh, they have their ups and downs like the rest of us.

[Tim Harford]

And Dibble's found work as an estate agent.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Everything's all right now.

[Tim Harford]

I'm sorry about all that business, you know Dibble.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Yes, yes, dear. Never mind that now.

[Tim Harford]

My economics advisor, Jonathan Portez, is on secondment to Trumpetonshire from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He's been critical of my austerity policies in the past and he's quick to point out that I've been giving Trumpetonshire budget cuts good and hard.

[Jonathan Portes]

When you were elected to run Trumpetonshire's, County Council. You immediately put up the tax on suites in corner shops and at the same time you cancelled replacing the roof on the local school.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Good heavens. There's water dripping through the ceiling.

[Tim Harford]

But even Jonathan is quite encouraged.

[Jonathan Portes]

Yes, I think the recovery is here at the moment. The economy seems to be going at quite a reasonable pace in Trumpetonshire. We've seen expansion in business services, especially transport, distribution. Yes, we're doing pretty well here.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray.

[Tim Harford]

And another of my economic advisors, Chris Giles, who doubles as the Financial Times economics editor, is pleased with the outlook for the Chigli Biscuit factory.

[Chris Giles]

So far the biscuit factory isn't going to be selling biscuits around the world in great numbers, but all the reasons why they were struggling, many of those reasons have gone away. So the price of flour is no longer rising, squeezing the profits and reducing the scope for investment. And also there's some confidence there. In lots of ways, maybe the most important thing that's happened is that suddenly the owners of the biscuit factory feel that maybe now is the right time to turn on the extra production line and give it a go.

[Tim Harford]

Well, that sounds great. We've got a brilliant recovery going. Isn't that right, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Portes]

This is definitely the slowest recovery in recorded economic history. On the other hand, from your point of view, that's sort of a good thing because the fact that the recovery has been so slow up to now, that unemployment is still so high, means that Cromptonshire should have the potential to grow quite quickly. There are lots of unemployed people in Trumpetonshire, lots of people who are working part time. There are still factories which are not producing at capacity. The potential for fast growth is definitely there.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

In 10 minutes everything will be back to normal.

[Tim Harford]

Well, Dibble, perhaps not that quickly. The thing is, Dibble, you may have found a job in the private sector, but there are still plenty of public sector cuts to come.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Trompton Fire Station.

[Tim Harford]

Hello, this is the treasurer of Trumpetonshire County Council. Is that Captain Flack?

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Yes, it is.

[Tim Harford]

I'm afraid you're to lose another man. Can you find grub for me and sack him?

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

What did you say?

[Tim Harford]

Can you find grub and sack him?

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Yes, of course we will. Right away. Right away. Pew.Pew. barney McGrew. Cuthbert.

[Jonathan Portes]

Well, you certainly have got some fairly nasty future cuts programmed in. What I would hope though, is that while your initial cuts were clearly at the wrong time because you were cutting when Framingshire was already in a pretty bad situation and the rest of the world Wasn't doing that well either, so it was the wrong time to cut. Let's hope that your future cuts come at a time when the economy is much better able to support that sort of austerity.

[Tim Harford]

Let's hope. I like what I'm being told, but it does all seem risky.

[Jonathan Portes]

Lots of things could knock the recovery off course. Cramptonshire, which exports a lot of things to the Eurozone, was clearly down damaged a lot by what was going on in the Eurozone a couple of years ago, and things have improved quite a lot there. But the Eurozone crisis is by no means over and if it reappeared, as it may well do, then that could do significant damage.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, well, let's focus on the here and now. The property market near Trumpton is pretty hot right now, especially in the picture postcard village of Camberwick Green, the most desirable postcode in the whole of Trumpetonshire. Ten new apartments on for sale in a converted windmill have already been bought straight off plan. Oh, look, here's Windy Miller.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Oh, hello.

[Tim Harford]

You're looking pretty pleased with yourself. How's retirement suiting you? Not short of a few pence to spend on clothes.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Don't you like my new hat?

[Tim Harford]

Oh, I do. Very dapper.

[Chris Giles]

So Windy's going out spending money. What's he spending his money on? That's the issue. Is he going to the biscuit factory? Is he actually buying biscuits made in Trumpeton, Chigley, Trumpetonshire? Quite likely, because Windy is one of these people, quite like many other people in Trumpetshire, he's going to spend it on goods and services that come from abroad and maybe he's going to overspend. So he's going to start borrowing because he's so confident that his houses, his new properties are going to do so well that he's going to overspend. And that's very much what we're seeing, not just in Trumpetonshire, but we're seeing that in the UK at the moment. There is an element of consumption going on and we haven't really seen any business investment yet. So this is why there are quite a lot of people criticising that it's the wrong sort of recovery. Now, I think it's far too early to make that criticism.

[Tim Harford]

Wrong sort of recovery, but it's creating jobs. Look at Dibble Dibble.

[Jonathan Portes]

Getting a job as an estate agent is hardly rebalancing Trump and cheers economy, is it? It would have been perhaps better if he'd got a job in something that was producing for the export market. But Beggars can't be choosers.

[Tim Harford]

I am hoping, and I announced as much in a speech at the Village Square this week, I am hoping to balance the budget and then actually start paying down the debt over the course of the next five, six, seven years. Do you think I'm going to have to make some extraordinary decisions to get that done, or will it just happen naturally during the course of the recovery?

[Jonathan Portes]

Well, a lot of it will happen naturally. Remember that your predecessors in the 90s turned a deficit that was actually bigger than the deficit we have now into a surplus in five years and you're only promising to do it in seven or eight. Although things may be a bit more difficult this time now, it's not historically unprecedented at all.

[Tim Harford]

And Chris Giles, what do you think?

[Chris Giles]

You're going to have a lot of tough decisions to make because you already are taking a lot of tough decisions up to 2015, 16, you know, you've got to take a load more till 2017, 18, but you haven't even worked out what they're going to be yet. And now you've announced that you're going to do this again till 2019, 2020. And you don't know quite how you're going to do it, except you've said it won't come from increased taxes, so it will be more austerity, more spending cuts. And you've sort of suggested that people like Dibble, who was temporarily out of work, will take the brunt of it. But there's not a lot of those around, so it's quite difficult to make it all stick on people like Dibble, because people like Dibble now are back into work, so there's not a lot of money there to be taken away. So I think you're going to find it really hard.

[Tim Harford]

Well, I recently sacked Grub, actually, I'm afraid to say. Am I going to have to lay off Barney, Magru and Cuthbert as well?

[Chris Giles]

I think they should be pretty scared.

[Tim Harford]

Thanks to my economic advisors for their frank assessments. Chris Giles on secondment to Trumpetonshire from the Financial Times and Jonathan Portes on secondment to Trumpetonshire from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. You're listening to More Or Less. I'm Tim Harford. Last week we took on National Treasure David Attenborough on the subject of population. You would have thought Britain's national treasures would have got the message by now, but then this email came in from Jonathan Emerson.

[Jonathan Emerson]

While watching a repeat of QIXL last week, Stephen Fry said, half the number of people who have ever lived on earth have died due to the mosquitoes. It seems quite extraordinary to me. Has more or less ever looked at this statement?

[Tim Harford]

Stephen Fry, the nation may love you, but it's all about the numbers for us. Let's hear the claim.

[Stephen Fry]

What is the most dangerous animal in the history of the world? Yes. Sloth. Driving a petrol tanker. If I tell you this animal is responsible for the death of probably half human beings who've ever lived. Mosquito.

[Various Trumpetonshire Characters (e.g., Dibble, Windy Miller)]

Goldfish.

[Stephen Fry]

So close. Alan was in fact right. It is the mosquito. Half human beings who ever lived are reckoned to have been killed. 3,000 people die of malaria every day. That's 45 billion human beings in our history.

[Jonathan Portes]

Wow.

[Tim Harford]

Half of all the people that have ever lived. That is a lot of people. Loyal listeners will remember we tried to calculate how many people have ever lived last year to find out whether it was true that half the people who had ever lived were alive today. Not even close. The true figure is something between 5 and 10%, because we think the total number of people who've lived is roughly 100 billion. So have mosquitoes really killed 50 billion people or 45 billion? As Stephen Fry said, we're not going to argue about that kind of detail. Well, technically it's not the mosquito that kills, but the viruses and parasites that are transmitted by the mosquito. Diseases such as yellow fever, Rift Valley fever, ross river fever, St. Louis encephalitis, West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis. They're all mosquito borne, but by far the most serious is malaria. According to the World Health Organization's most recent estimates, 660,000 people are killed by malaria each year. Now, clearly malaria is not killing half the population at the moment. But what about in the past? I spoke to Dr. Brian Faragher of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Medicine.

[Dr. Brian Faragher]

It's difficult to find evidence to support that claim. It's a widely published claim, but it's very difficult to find the source of it. It's probably best to go back to the World Health Organization and look at their statistics for 1900. That was a very important year because there is a lot of belief that that's around the time when malaria and malaria deaths peaked. Now, at the moment, about 40% of the world's population is susceptible to the mosquito and therefore to malaria. Back in 1900, it was just over three quarters of the population, including parts of the southeast of England. So a very large part of the globe was suffering from malaria at that time.

[Tim Harford]

But would they all have died of it?

[Dr. Brian Faragher]

Presumably no. That's the thing, if you look at the available statistics, again, there's some guesswork involved here, but the feeling is that about 1 in 10 of people who got malaria would die from malaria. And so if you extrapolate that out further and try and work out the total percentage of people who would have died from malaria in 1900, and going back beyond that, it was probably somewhere between 4 and 5%.

[Tim Harford]

Dr. Brian Faragher. Now, QI aren't taking this lying down. They say they're in the best possible scientific company because the claim's been made by many reputable scientific nature, the US Library of Medicine, the Times, National Geographic and the Wellcome Institute, among others. And that's true. But we've discovered that the articles we've been able to access which make the claim don't try to prove it, they just say it. And when they do cite a source to back up the claim, when you follow it up, the trail goes cold. The original source, as our expert from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine said, can't be found. So the mosquito claim is difficult to prove conclusively, but we don't think it's true. Having dealt with Stephen Fry and David Attenborough, we'd like to lay down a warning to the rest of our country's national treasures. Bruce Forsyth, Dame Judi Dench, Claire Boulding, Mo Farah, Paul Lewis. We don't care how much the nation loves you, we just care about the numbers. And just time to announce the results of our competition. We've been teasing you with mysterious numbers at the end of each program. This series, 1 49, 100, 784, and last week, 1444. And I challenged you to write in if you could figure out which number came next in the series. And many of you did, with a large variety of theories. Special mention goes to our youngest entrant, Sakura, age 10 and living in New Zealand. With a little parental assistance, she went through the numbers and calculated that the next number would be 4356. Well, we're not so sure it was actually Peter Chamberlain that won it. Less than five hours after broadcast, he emailed us with his prediction that this program would be brought to you by the number 1521. He was not only the first to write to us, but also the only person who got the right answer, or at least the answer that we were thinking of. Peter Chamberlain rightly identified that the five numbers we gave in our sequence are the first five happy square numbers. Now, square numbers will be familiar to most listeners. Happy numbers are a little stranger. You take a positive whole number, take each individual digit in it and square it, add together the squares, repeat. So I'll give you an example. One of our numbers, 49, that becomes 4, 9, 4 squared plus 9 squared. That's 97, 9 7, that becomes 9 squared plus 7 squared is 130, that's 1, 301 squared plus 3 squared plus 0 squared. I hope you're keeping up. That's 10. Well, that turns into 101 squared plus 0 squared and that becomes 1. And that means that 49 is a happy number. Because if this whole process finishes on a one, you started with a happy number. If the process finishes on any other number or a cycle, you've got an unhappy number. As Peter Chamberlain told us, 1, 49, 100, 784 and 1444 are the first five happy squares. And so, as he rightly predicted, this episode of More or Less was brought to you by the number 1521. Thanks to everyone who wrote in. And that's it for this current series of More or Less. While we're away, do please keep on emailing us your questions and your ideas at more or lessbc.co.uk and you can surreptitiously download our secret weekly 9 minute edition of the program via our website, BBC.co.uk more or less. We'll be back fighting the statistical good fight in December. And until then, from all of the happy squares at More or Less. Goodbye.

More or Less was presented by Tim Harford, the Financial Times undercover economist. It was produced by Ruth Alexander and made in association with the Open University. You can Download many more Radio 4 programmes for free. Find [e-mail] Radio 4.