Does half the UK get more in benefits than they pay in tax?

Summary

More or Less: Behind the Stats

Episode: Does half the UK get more in benefits than they pay in tax?

Date: October 8, 2025
Host: Tim Harford, BBC Radio 4

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Episode Overview

This episode of More or Less tackles several much-discussed statistics surrounding UK society:

• Are elderly people cognitively stronger than past generations?
• Do young people really bring their parents to job interviews?
• Most centrally, are more than half of UK residents receiving more in benefits than they pay in tax—a claim recently highlighted in a Daily Mail article?

Tim Harford and the team break down headline-grabbing claims by tracking down the sources, testing the methodologies, and consulting experts to put these stats in perspective.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Do the World's Richest Earn More Overnight Than Bournemouth Earns in a Year?

[02:13–04:41]

• Context: At the Bournemouth Green Party conference, leader Zack Polanski made a claim: that some people earn more overnight than the entire population of Bournemouth in a year.
• Analysis:
  • Anthony Rubin from BBC Verify performs a quick calculation:
    • Bournemouth has ~200,000 population, ~120,000 working age.
    • Average salary: £37,500 ⇒ Total annual earnings for Bournemouth ≈ £4.5 billion.
    • For one person to earn that overnight would mean a (clearly impossible) annual income of nearly £5 trillion.
• Reality Check:
  • The Green Party later clarify the "overnight" line was meant to refer to the global top 1%, not a single UK citizen.
  • Tim Harford dryly notes, “It doesn't sound like he's talking about the richest 82 million people in the world, some of whom surely live in Bournemouth.”
    (04:41)

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2. Are 70-Year-Olds Smarter Today than 50-Year-Olds in 2000?

[05:05–10:53]

• Context: A statistic goes viral claiming the average 70-year-old in 2022 matches the cognitive ability of a 53-year-old in 2000.
• Expert Input:
  • Dr. Michaela Blumberg (UCL) explains this is from IMF research covering 41 countries and four cognitive domains (memory, orientation in time, mathematical and verbal fluency).
  • Cognitive test details, as Tim quips: "'orientation in time' is basically knowing the time and date. That's really a test of serious cognitive decline. Most people pass it." [06:33]
  • The improvement is “relatively small” on a single test but still meaningful.
• Why the improvement?
  • Longer time in education, better general health, less smoking, more stimulating jobs. Improvements are higher in less-wealthy countries due to "ceiling effects."
  • Blumberg: “There's a ceiling effect at play here, which is to say that on these particular cognitive tests, higher income countries may already be at or near the upper range, so further gains aren't well captured.” [09:03]
• Clarification: The findings do not mean the same person maintains their 50s mental peak into their 70s. Rather, successive generations start higher and decline from a better baseline.
  • Blumberg: “You have basically higher midlife cognitive abilities. And so when you start to cognitively decline, you do so from a higher starting point and as a result you perform cognitively better to an older age.” [10:25]

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3. Does Over Half the UK Get More in Benefits Than They Pay in Tax?

[11:13–18:22]

• Origin of the Claim: A Daily Mail headline asserts that “over half of the UK population live in households that get more in benefits than they pay in tax.”
• Expert Analysis: Mike Brewer, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation, explains:
  • The statistic is accurate and based on robust ONS data but the definition of "benefits" used is far broader than many expect.
• What Counts as "Benefits"?
  • The calculation includes not just cash benefits (like pensions and universal credit) but also “benefits in kind”—notably, NHS use, state education, social and health care, child care subsidies, etc.
  • Tim: “If someone uses the NHS, visits a GP, goes to A&E, they're on benefits at that point.” [12:51]
  • Brewer: “This definition of benefits is very broad. Yes...But it misses out what economists call your classic public goods. So that might be police, law and order, defence, environmental protection.” [13:05]
  • The calculation omits public goods spending.
• Who is Predominantly “Receiving” These Benefits?
  • 36 million receive more than they pay; 10.3 million are retired (mostly state pension recipients) [14:11]
  • Excluding retirees, 25 million non-retired still receive more, but the majority is in kind (e.g., education, NHS), with only about £6,000 per household as cash. Average non-retired household "in-kind" benefits are valued near £16,000.
  • Brewer: “It's only the minority of benefits that non-retired houses receive, they're actually coming in the form of cash... the ONS think we get £16,000 of value from the public services that it looks at.” [14:46]
• Why the Majority Receive More Than They Contribute:
  • Many people are in full-time education or are parents/carers/young children—not net taxpayers.
  • Retirees paid more in earlier life, now properly benefit.
• Trends Over Time: The share receiving more benefits (under the ONS definition) has grown for both retired and non-retired households.
• Distribution of Tax Burden:
  • The richest fifth pay 45% of all tax revenue, with high earners shouldering an increased share due to the progressive tax system and changes at the top of income distribution.

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4. Fact-Checking: Do 77% of Gen Z Bring Parents to Interviews?

[19:43–27:11]

• The Viral Statistic: “77% of Gen Zers have brought a parent to an interview.”
• Source: Resumetemplates.com, via mobile survey company Pollfish, allegedly indicating that up from 25% last year.
• Methodology Scrutiny:
  • Professor Annette Yecla (U. Essex)—expert in survey methodology—explains:
    • Respondents incentivised by free lives in games (not cash) on Android apps.
    • Only Android users were sampled, which biases against the roughly half of Gen Z who use iPhones (particularly those with higher incomes).
    • No population weighting; respondents self-reported age and full-time employment, which can also distort results given app use and age misreporting.
    • Distribution of responses (often clustered in round numbers like 25%, 50%, or 75%) suggests respondents may be “randomly clicking” to get through the survey.
    • For the 2024 survey: 1,000 respondents, 26% claimed to have ever brought a parent to an interview; but only 8 actually had a parent sit in during an in-person interview, with only 5 having their parent introduce themselves.
      • Lizzie: “We're talking about really small numbers here.” [24:54]
  • Final verdict: The claim is unsupported and reflects bad data, not a true generational trend.
    • Annette Yecla: “That's another indicator for me to think, I don't think people were really paying attention and answering these questions carefully.” [25:53]
• Harford's summary: “So, no, we cannot claim that all American Gen Zers take their parents to interviews.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On over-the-top comparisons:
  Tim Harford: “There obviously aren't people in the UK who earn anything like that overnight.” [04:03]

• On cognitive tests for the elderly:
  Dr. Michaela Blumberg: “So you kind of think of people being around near to their peak at age 50, and then 70 is when we've already started to see a fair bit of aging related decline.” [09:49]

• On the scope of ‘benefits’:
  Mike Brewer: “This definition of benefits is very broad. Yes, it captures people's use of the NHS. It captures all the spending on education, social care, childcare subsidies, transport subsidies, housing subsidies and so on.” [13:05]

• On the viral Gen Z job interview claim:
  Professor Annette Yecla: “That's another indicator for me to think, I don't think people were really paying attention and answering these questions carefully.” [25:53]

• Tim’s sign-off joke to Lizzie:
  “By the way, who's that sitting behind you?”
  Lizzie: “Oh, that's just my mum. Say hi, Mum.” [27:11]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Richest earners vs. Bournemouth: 02:13–04:41
• Are today's elderly cognitively stronger? 05:05–10:53
• The ‘benefits vs tax’ claim: 11:13–18:22
• Gen Z and parental job interview help: 19:43–27:11

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Takeaways

• Context Matters: Sensational claims, like most of the UK being “on benefits,” rely on unusual definitions and need careful unpacking.
• Survey Quality: Viral stats often come from dubious methodologies and should be taken with a grain of salt.
• Societal Trends: Improvements in population-level cognitive health are well documented, but individual aging patterns remain unchanged.
• Progressivity: The UK's tax system is progressive and the broad definition of ‘benefits’ includes services most people rely on, not just welfare payments.

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For questions or comments, contact the More or Less team at moreorlessbc.co.uk.

Transcript

[Tim Harford]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

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This is the story of the One. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Tim Harford]

This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger, because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Hello and welcome to More or Less, the show that puts the sass into statistics. Before we came along, it was just plain old T T tick. I'm Tim Harford. This week we ask if elderly people are sharper and smarter than they've ever been, and if young people are so hapless that three quarters of them are bringing their parents along to job interviews with them. Two separate stories there, and at least one of them is based on good data in the department of questions we never thought we'd have to answer. We ask whether some British billionaires earn more in a night than the population of Bournemouth earns in a year. And in more conventional ground, we are prompted by the Daily Mail to ask whether the UK is now a nation of benefit scroungers. So first new Green Party leader Zach Polanski took to the stage in Bournemouth last week to make his big speech at the party conference. A major theme was his desire to increase taxes on the UK's wealthiest 1%. And this is what he we need.

[Anthony Rubin]

To make sure that every single person in this country knows there will be people who go to sleep at night and without lifting a finger when they wake up, they will be richer, much richer. They will make more money in one night than everyone in this room could probably earn in an entire year, more than the whole of Bournemouth could earn in an entire year.

[Tim Harford]

The whole of Bournemouth, you say? The line caught the attention of BBC verifies Anthony Rubin.

[Anthony Rubin]

I did some back of an envelope calculations to get an idea of whether this claim is reasonably likely to be true. So first we need to get an idea of how much the population of Bournemouth could earn in a year. The population of Bournemouth is about 200,000 and we could take a reasonable guess that about 120,000 of them will be of working age. The average salary of a full time worker is about 37,500. So the approximate potential earnings of Bournemouth comes in at about 4 and a half billion pounds a year.

[Tim Harford]

So the back of the envelope provides one figure, 4.5 billion pounds. Zach Polanski says there are people who are making that money overnight. So how much are they earning in a year? We need a second envelope.

[Anthony Rubin]

If rich people sleep eight hours a night, that's a third of their day. So they're making three times the earnings of Bournemouth per day, which is £13.5 billion. Multiply that by 365 and they're making a touch under £5 trillion a year. That's a lot of money. That's double the UK's GDP. It's also more than three times the total wealth of Britain's richest 1%. According to the Office for National Statistics.

[Tim Harford]

There obviously aren't people in the UK who earn anything like that overnight. So Anthony asked the party what on earth was going on.

[Anthony Rubin]

The Green Party press office told me that Zach Polanski was not talking about a single very rich person or even the 1% of richest people in Britain, but the world's richest 1%. And he didn't really mean they earned that much in a night, he meant the whole day. But if that's the case, he was informing people that the world's richest 82 million people, that's the 1%, earn more in a day than 120,000 or so people in Bournemouth make in a year, which doesn't seem that surprising at all.

[Tim Harford]

I mean, it doesn't sound like he's talking about the richest 82 million people in the world, some of whom surely live in Bournemouth already. Thanks to Anthony Rubin, loyal listener. Alastair got in touch to ask about a surprising sentence he read in an article in the Economist about the aging of society.

[Lizzie McNeill]

The average 70 year old in 2022 had the same cognitive abilities as a 53 year old in 2000.

[Tim Harford]

Alastair thought that this may be implied that he had not aged at all during this century, cognitively speaking, which would be nice, but is that what this stat really means? I've been speaking to Dr. Michaela Blumberg from University College London, who Researches cognition and aging. This claim that the average 70 year old in 2022 had the same cognitive abilities as a 53 year old in the year 2000. Very exciting. Is it a sensible thing to say?

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

It is sensible in that it's drawn from a fairly robust study. It's sort of an average of 41 different countries. So there's going to be a lot of country variability.

[Tim Harford]

But they didn't just make it up.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

They didn't just make it up. Absolutely not.

[Tim Harford]

Let's zoom into the detail a little bit then. So who were they and what were they doing when they produce the data to make this claim?

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

Yep. So it comes from an IMF report. So it was a group of economists.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, as economists, what do we know about cognitive function? We don't know. Anyway, go on.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

But, but what they did is they looked at how cognitive function changed over time in these 41 different countries over a period of around 2000 to 2022. So they do that using these four different cognitive tests of memory, orientation, time, verbal fluency and mathematical ability.

[Tim Harford]

These tests vary pretty widely in difficulty. Orientation in time is basically knowing the time and date. That's really a test of serious cognitive decline. Most people pass it. Memory is remembering 10 nouns and repeating them back. This kind of test is even used on presidents. Person, woman, man, camera, TV. 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later they say, remember the first question, not the first but the 10th question. Give us that again. Can you do that again? And you go, person, woman, man, camera, tv. They say, that's amazing. How did you do that? I do it because I have like a good memory because I'm cognitively there. Mathematical fluency is taking 7 away from 100 over and over again. Then there's verbal fluency.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

You just name as many animals as you can within one minute. So that's the verbal fluency test. So.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, okay. Oh, well, I kind of want to do that, but I don't think we got a minute. So zebra and. Yeah, and the rest.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

Yep, yep, there you go.

[Tim Harford]

This study from the imf, that's the International Monetary Fund, compiled test results from all over the world and did a bit of statistical tweaking to line them all up. They found that average cognitive function has improved over the last couple of decades.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

The actual absolute improvement in cognitive scores is relatively small. That translates to a sort of large shift in the distribution. But the fact is that these cognitive tests, it'll be like a one point increase or something.

[Tim Harford]

And if you work in this field, this improvement in cognitive function from generation to generation is exactly what you'd expect.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

Yeah, it's not at all controversial. It's a very well established effect that there's birth cohort improvements in cognitive function and a lot of different health outcomes, which is to say just that there's generation increases in cognitive function. So with each successive generation, people tend to do better on these cognitive tests.

[Tim Harford]

My kids are smarter than me.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

Well, they might end up doing better on the cognitive tests.

[Tim Harford]

There are lots of reasons for this trend. One is that on average around the world people are spending more time in education. Another is that perhaps as a result, they're doing more cognitively stimulating jobs. And then our general health is better, we smoke less and have less cardiovascular disease. All of these trends improve the test scores, but the improvements are bigger in less wealthy countries.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

The improvement in the emerging economies is actually larger than that of the other countries. And that's what we'd expect because there's a ceiling effect at play here, which is to say that on these particular cognitive tests, higher income countries may already be at or near the upper range. So further gains aren't well captured.

[Tim Harford]

Still, in her own research, Michaela has found that even in a relatively wealthy place such as England, there has still been cognitive improvement.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

So what I found in England was that an average 70 year old in 2018 or 2019 had similar memory scores to someone in their late 50s in 2002 for fluency, that was early 50s and there was really no change at all in orientation and time.

[Tim Harford]

However, this claim is built around the assumption that for the average individual, cognitive function does eventually start to fall at around age 50.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

People are still doing very well on these cognitive tests and it's kind of around midlife is where we start to see decline. So you kind of think of people being around near to their peak at age 50 and then 70 is when we've already started to see a fair bit of aging related decline.

[Tim Harford]

So the fact that 70 year olds in 2022 score the same on these tests as 53 year olds in 2000 is a clear sign of improvement. But what this stat is not saying, sorry, Alastair, is that the same person has stayed at their 50 year old mental peak into their 70s.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

No, the thing is, is that you're declining from a higher starting point. So it's not individual decline, it's that you have basically higher midlife cognitive abilities. And so when you start to cognitively decline, you do so from a higher starting point and as a result you perform cognitively better to an older age.

[Tim Harford]

Right. So Bas. Today's 70 year olds had more marbles when they were in their 50s. And they may have lost some, but they had more marbles to lose.

[Dr. Michaela Blumberg]

Exactly.

[Tim Harford]

Thanks to Dr. Michaela Blumberg. You're listening to More or Less. Nick lynch got in touch, asking us to take a closer look at an article he saw in the Daily Mail which offered the headline, over half of UK population live in households that get more in benefits than they pay in.

[Anthony Rubin]

Tax and it's set to get worse.

[Tim Harford]

Nick asked, not once do they mention that a large proportion could be pensions.

[Mike Brewer]

Can we break the data down?

[Tim Harford]

Excellent instincts, Nick. Sounds like you're a loyal listener.

[Mike Brewer]

Thanks for the great presenters.

[Tim Harford]

Not just him. Loyalty is owed to the King, Nick, so let's all pretend you didn't say that. Anyway, back to your question. Over half the UK getting more in benefits than they pay in tax when it does sound alarming. To help us break the data down with some cool, calm analysis, we turned to Mike Brewer, chief economist at the think tank the Resolution Foundation.

[Mike Brewer]

Well, the figure is definitely correct. It comes from a high quality piece of research done by the Office for National Statistics and they are basing that on a large survey of households. And we know what they pay in tax, what they receive and benefits, and what sort of public services they're consuming. So yes, it's a good quality survey.

[Tim Harford]

Good quality survey. Okay. The devil will be in the detail. The first detail that immediately sprang to my mind was when they say benefits, are they including the state pension?

[Mike Brewer]

Well, it's probably worse than that, Tim, because the definition of benefits being used in the headline goes much further than the state pension. So it includes all of the cash benefits. That's what I think of when I hear the word benefits. So it includes the state pension, it includes all the other cash benefits paid to working age people, but it also includes some of the public services that the government provides, which in the article the Office of National Statistics call benefits in kind.

[Tim Harford]

So first of all, if someone is on the state pension, according to this headline, they're on benefits because they're receiving the state pension. So if someone uses the nhs, visits a gp, goes to ae, they're on benefits at that point.

[Mike Brewer]

This definition of benefits is very broad. Yes, it captures people's use of the nhs. It captures all the spending on education, social care, childcare subsidies, transport subsidies, housing subsidies and so on. But it misses out what economists call your classic public goods. So that might be police, law and order, defence, environmental protection. So it gets about two thirds and it misses the Other third, the Daily.

[Tim Harford]

Mail piece does mention that the term benefits includes both cash benefits and the value of public services. And in fairness, the Office for National Statistics, that's the, the ons, their write up of this data also uses the term benefits in this way, but it's not the way most people use the word benefits, of course, so readers of the Daily Mail might misunderstand what's being said. And the Daily Mail piece certainly doesn't mention that a good chunk of those currently getting out more than they pay in are retired, many of whom will be receiving the state pension.

[Mike Brewer]

Yes. So There are about 36 million people who are living in households that are receiving more than they're paying on this definition, 10.3 million of those are retired. That's about 29% of the total who are receiving more than they're contributing. So if you strip those out, we're down to 25 million people who are living in households that are not retired and are receiving more than they're contributing.

[Tim Harford]

So looking at these non retired households, are we able to break it down and say how much of the benefits they're receiving are benefits in kind versus how much are cash benefits?

[Mike Brewer]

Yes, the ONS article does that for us. And I think the surprising fact is that it's only the minority of benefits that non retired houses receive. They're actually coming in the form of cash. So on average that's about 6,000 pounds per household. But the ONS think that we get 16,000 pounds of value from the public services that it looks at. So that's more than two thirds of the total value is coming in these in kind benefits. And I think that's a really powerful reminder that what the welfare state is doing for us, it's not really in the cash redistribution, it's in providing a basic level of public services.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah. So people listening to this and thinking, well, I don't get anything in benefits. Well, your kids go to a school, you don't have to pay for that. You don't have to pay when you go to the doctor, you don't have to pay when you go to hospital. There's a vast range of services that, that most of us use either for free or for much less than they cost. So £16,000 per household?

[Mike Brewer]

Yes. Amongst non retired households. Yes. I mean, there is of course a very strong age gradient to this. I think all of us parents love our children, but we can't claim they are net fiscal contributors. So children do tend to cost the welfare state money. And of course, once you Read the state's pension age. You also cost the welfare state quite a lot of money.

[Tim Harford]

Now, no one's having a go at pensioners here. Today's pensioners are yesterday's heavy lifters. Their taxes paid for the functions of the state during their working life, including the state pensions paid out to those who were retired at the time. So it's hardly a shock to hear that the vast majority of retired people are receiving more in current benefits than they're paying in current taxes. I'm curious, has that tendency increased over time or reduced over time? Or is it consistent, this idea that there's a majority of people who are paying less in tax than they receive?

[Mike Brewer]

Well, the ONS article has been going on for decades and so we can see a long time series. And it is the case that more and more households on this definition are receiving more than they're contributing. And that's true both for non retired households and for retired households. So there is something going on here. Yes.

[Tim Harford]

So this is partly a story about the fact that most people living in the country are receiving a wide variety of benefits, including things they wouldn't normally think of as benefits. But it must also be about who pays most of the taxes. And I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the progressiveness of the tax system and who is paying taxes and whether that's changed over the last few years.

[Mike Brewer]

So the ONS tells us very clearly that richest people pay more taxes. In particular, in the last year of data, 45% of all tax revenues they look at come from the richest fifth in society. And that's for two reasons. That's firstly because rich people are rich, so they have a lot of income to pay tax on. But it's also because we have a progressive tax system. So we skew our tax rates, our tax rates go up the more income you have. So totally unsurprising, therefore, that rich of people do tend to pay a lot more than their share of tax revenue. But the other thing that's going on is that the distribution of income is changing, particularly at the top. And who contributes to our income tax revenues is really very dependent on the number of very high earners and exactly how much they're earning. And that has changed over time too, in a way that has also concentrated our tax take among the very richest people.

[Tim Harford]

Our thanks to Mike Brewer from the Resolution Foundation.

[Grainger Advertiser]

This is the story of the 1. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers. All so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Lizzie McNeill]

America is changing and so is the world.

[Tim Harford]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Lizzie McNeill]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Tim Harford]

Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Tim Harford]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Our loyal ish editor, Richard came across this while doing his usual thing and scrolling on Twitter.

[Lizzie McNeill]

77% of Gen Zers have brought a parent to an interview.

[Tim Harford]

Now, I am all for hands on parenting, but that seems excessive. Awkward. Now that's not quite the word. What's the word?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Unlikely. Unlikely is the word, Tim.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, hello, Lizzie. Yes, unlikely might just be the word. But here to provide adult supervision during this story is Lizzie McNeill herself.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Hi Tim.

[Tim Harford]

Now, in the interest of impartiality, I need to check. Lizzie, you're not Gen Z, are you? No.

[Lizzie McNeill]

I mean, I did originate in the 90s, but I'm an older vintage.

[Tim Harford]

Good. So what is the story?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Well, there are actually two claims knocking around, both from the same source. An American resume writing website, resumetemplates.com and they commissioned a company, Polefish, to conduct two questionnaires for them about how much parental assistance Gen Z get during the job application process. And the questionnaire last year found that one in four Gen zers took a parent to a job interview with them. And the questionnaire this year found that three in four did.

[Tim Harford]

That is a big rise. A suspiciously big rise.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah, it will probably get a bit less mysterious as we go through this.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, so did they find that 1 in 4 Gen Zers take their parents to job interviews or 3 in 4 whatever.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yep, that is what the surveys found. However, the story isn't quite as simple as all that.

[Tim Harford]

I am shocked.

[Mike Brewer]

Shocked.

[Lizzie McNeill]

I'm sure the first wrinkle. Well, it's really less of a wrinkle, more of an ironed increase is how the survey was conducted. I spoke to a friend of the program to find out more.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

My name is Annette Yecle. I'm professor of survey methodology at the University of Essex and I'm deputy Director of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, an.

[Tim Harford]

Academic who knows how to run a survey. So what did she make of it?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Well, first things first, the survey was conducted by Polefish, who use random device engagement specifically for Android phone users.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

This is an interesting methodology where developers of mobile apps for Android phones can monetize their apps by including a piece of code that will link the app itself to a survey platform. And so users of their app will, at random moments be invited to participate in surveys and they will be offered an incentive to do so.

[Tim Harford]

What kind of incentives?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Non monetary. So things like extra lives in the game they're playing on the app.

[Anthony Rubin]

Right.

[Tim Harford]

Well, if someone's midway through playing a game, I can see how offering them an extra life in the game would incentivise them to do the survey. But would it incentivise them to do it?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Well, probably not.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

So most likely their main motivation is to get through this questionnaire so they can get their bonus. And that's a very different scenario from situations where we ask members of the general population to take part in surveys for official statistics or run by universities. Academic surveys, where I think it's very clear to the respondents that they're contributing to research and that what they say matters, you know, the quality of their answers matters. I don't think that would be clear to respondents in this case at all that what they say matters in any way.

[Tim Harford]

That is an issue for reliable data.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Quite so. And there's another issue with this method of recruiting people.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

This is only for mobile apps developed for Android devices, so it excludes any part of the population that uses iOS.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Or Apple devices, which is half of all Gen Z phone users in the us.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

And we know in the us but also in Europe, on average Android users have lower incomes. These devices tend to be cheaper than the Apple devices, so there's already a selection there.

[Lizzie McNeill]

In each survey they had about 1,000 respondents. The only screening they did was to check respondents were aged between 18 and 28 and that they worked full time. But the problem with that is that some apps and games have an age limit. So people often lie and say they're over 18. They might not actually be that age. And the working full time part also requires people to be genuine about it. They also didn't weight the population. So all in all, it's very unlikely that this group of people surveyed were a true representation of the whole of Gen Z.

[Tim Harford]

Understood. But what about the results themselves?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Well, let's start with the 2024 survey. Over a thousand people took part in this survey, and of those people, 26% said that they had brought a parent to a job interview. So there's your one in four.

[Tim Harford]

So that's about 300 people bringing a parent.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah. Of them, 31% said it was an in person interview.

[Tim Harford]

So about a hundred. And the others were online.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah. So the parent was just in the house with them.

[Tim Harford]

Right, but what does that even mean brings a parent to an online interview? So is the parent sitting shoulder to shoulder or is the parent behind the camera holding up coaching notes on flashcards?

[Lizzie McNeill]

I wouldn't worry about it too much, Tim, for reasons that will become clear, but just sticking with the in person interviews, there were about 100 people who said their parents came with them, but only eight said their parents sat in on the interview. And only five of those parents introduced themselves to a manager.

[Tim Harford]

So we're talking about really small numbers here.

[Lizzie McNeill]

We are. Plus, I love the idea that three parents sat in the interview and didn't introduce themselves.

[Tim Harford]

Such a power move.

[Lizzie McNeill]

It really is. The most recent study has similar breakdowns, although the numbers are much higher. But Annette is doubtful that this reflects a true rise in people taking their parents into the interview room.

[Tim Harford]

So what is happening then?

[Lizzie McNeill]

So a lot of the questions offered a scale of frequency with four responses. So, for example, from doing something all the time down to never doing it, there was a pretty even split of people clicking on each question. Two answers had 23%, one had 16% and the other said 13%.

[Tim Harford]

Right. And if you're trying to work out whether more people have done something rather than never done it, and the scale is frequency from always to never, then if people are just randomly stabbing their thumbs at an answer so that they can get back to their game, you're going to get more people saying they have done it at least once because there are more of those options to randomly hit.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Exactly.

[Professor Annette Yecla]

And so reading through this report, it struck me that there are an awful lot of answers where the report says round about 50% said this or that. And there are others where the sort of most frequent numbers that come up are about one third or about two thirds of respondents, about half or about three quarters. And that suggests to me this is consistent with people just randomly picking answers. So if they only had two answer categories, you know, and people are just sort of randomly clicking, then you'd get a roughly 50, 50 distribution. If you had four categories, you know, then depending how they've combined the response categories, you might get these three quarter, one quarter distributions. So reading the report, that struck me as really unusual, the response distributions. So that's another indicator for me to think. I don't think people were really paying attention and answering these questions carefully.

[Tim Harford]

Right. So, no, we cannot claim that all American gen zers take their parents to interviews. It is likely that many parents drive them to interviews. It's likely they help write resumes, but it isn't likely that they sit in and answer questions for them. Thank you, Lizzie. By the way, who's that sitting behind you?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Oh, that's just my mum. Say hi, Mum.

[Tim Harford]

Thanks to Lizzie McNeill and her mum and to Professor Annette Yecla. And that's all we have time for this week, but please keep your questions and comments coming in to more or lessbc.co.uk. we will be back next week and until then, goodbye. More Or Less was presented by me, Tim Harford. The producer was Tom Coles with Nathan Gower and Lizzie McNeil. The production coordinator was Maria Ogundele. The programme was recorded and mixed by Duncan Hannant. And our editor is Richard Varden.

[Anthony Rubin]

Nature.

[Tim Harford]

Nature Bang.

[Anthony Rubin]

Bang.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Hello. Hello and welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley. I'm Emily Knight. And in this series from BBC Radio 4, we look to the natural world to answer some of life's big questions, like how can a brainless slime mold help us solve complex mapping problems?

[Grainger Advertiser]

And what can an octopus teach us.

[Lizzie McNeill]

About the relationship between mind and body?

[Grainger Advertiser]

It really stretches your understanding of consciousness.

[Lizzie McNeill]

With the help of evolutionary biologists. I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other species philosophers.

[Tim Harford]

You never really know what it could be like to be another creature.

[Lizzie McNeill]

And spongologists, is that your job title? Are you a spongologist?

[Tim Harford]

Well, I am.

[Lizzie McNeill]

In certain spheres, it's science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist.

[Tim Harford]

It really gets to the heart of.

[Mike Brewer]

Free will and what it means to be you.

[Lizzie McNeill]

So if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze and single cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sound. America is changing and so is the world.

[Tim Harford]

But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Lizzie McNeill]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, dc.

[Tim Harford]

I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Tim Harford]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts?