The Stats of the Nation: Sex, drugs and empty homes

Summary

Podcast Summary: More or Less

Episode: The Stats of the Nation: Sex, Drugs and Empty Homes

BBC Radio 4 | January 7, 2026 | Host: Tim Harford

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Overview

In this episode of More or Less, Tim Harford and guests tackle the statistics behind four hot-button issues in UK public discourse: empty homes and the housing crisis, rising pharmaceutical costs for the NHS, recent trends in violent crime, and the UK's record-low fertility rate. As always, the team dissects headline-grabbing numbers, uncovers the nuance behind them, and highlights how statistical understanding is crucial to forming sound opinions on public policy.

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Empty Homes & the Housing Crisis

[01:19 - 08:52]

Main Points

• Claim Under Scrutiny: Are there truly 700,000+ empty homes in England just waiting for new occupants?

• Source of the Number:

  • The 700,000 figure is accurate (from Council Tax data, England only).
  • As of October 2025, there were 754,280 homes classified as empty.
    Lizzie McNeill: "So the data for last year tells us about the state of homes on Monday 7th October, and on Monday 7th October 2025, there were 754,280 houses classed as empty." [03:29]

• Nuance – What Does “Empty” Mean?

  • 24% empty for less than six months: typically transition periods (renovations, between lets or sales).
  • ~200,000 have exemptions (owners deceased, in care, or in prison).
    "Over half are exempt as the owner has died... You can also get exemptions... such as when owners have moved into long term care or are in prison." [04:15]
  • 300,000+ long-term empty (6+ months): Often stalled sales, disputes, or renovations, not always available immediately for new occupants.
  • ~150,000 truly empty (1+ year, no exemption): Lizzie McNeill: "Just over 150,000." [05:48]
    • Only these face an extra council tax premium and are most likely the kind of “empty homes” people imagine.

• Empty Homes vs. Housing Crisis:

  • Even if all 150,000 suitable empty homes were magically reoccupied, that’s just 10% of the government’s target to build 1.5 million new homes.
  • Conclusion: Empty homes aren't a “silver bullet” for the UK housing shortage.

Building New Homes

• Government's Pledge: 1.5 million “new homes” by the end of the current Parliament.

  • Their target is for “net additional dwellings” — includes conversions, changes of use, minus demolitions, not just brand new builds.

• Current Progress:

  • Only 208,600 added to the UK housing stock in 2024-2025, 12,000 fewer than the year before.
  • Target requires 300,000 per year.
  • Obstacles: High inflation affecting materials, changed buy-to-let laws, sluggish sales.

• Connection Back to Empty Homes:

  • New builds unsold get counted as empty homes.
  • In 2024, 124,000 new builds completed, but only 38,000 sold in the following twelve months. Lizzie McNeill: "The northern counties have the most units that haven't been sold." [08:29]

Quote of Note

• Tim Harford: "So we can't solve the housing crisis by using empty homes. We aren't building enough new homes and some of the new homes we are building are becoming empty homes." [08:41]

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NHS Drug Costs & Pharmaceutical Economics

[08:53 - 15:21]

Main Points

• Current Spend: NHS spends ~£18 billion annually on pharmaceuticals — around 10% of its overall budget.
  Hussain Naji: "At the moment, around 18 billion pounds are spent on pharmaceuticals in the NHS and this accounts for around 10% of the overall NHS expenditures on an annual BAS." [09:54]

• NHS Purchasing Power:

  • A monopsony (single buyer), giving strong negotiating power but balanced by pharmaceutical companies’ patent leverage.

• How Are Drug Prices Assessed?

  • NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) bases recommendations on cost per “Quality Adjusted Life Year” (QALY).

    • Threshold: historically £30,000 per QALY, rising to £35,000 in April under new US-UK deal.

  • The NHS generally spends about £15,000 per QALY from existing services. Hussain Naji: "When we look at what NICE does... uses a cost effectiveness threshold that's around 30,000 pounds for the same health gain." [11:46]

  • Implication: NHS may pay double for health gains from new drugs relative to other services.

• International Comparisons:

  • UK spends a lower share on medicines (10%) than Greece (27%), Japan (16.5%), Germany (14%).
    Tim Harford: "Does that mean we pay less for medicine in general?" [12:49]
  • But true comparisons are difficult due to opaque, confidential pricing agreements.

• Rebate Schemes:

  • VPAG: Caps NHS drug spending growth per year (2-4% cap); Pharma companies pay rebates if exceeded.
  • From 2029, those rebates will be reduced — so the NHS will recoup less and likely spend more.

• Health Outcomes:

  • Spending more doesn’t guarantee better results — the US example is cited, with higher costs but often worse health outcomes.

Notable Quotes

• Tim Harford: "It's tempting to look at how England compares with other countries and feel a bit smug... But does that mean we pay less for medicine in general?" [12:49]
• Hussain Naji: "Just because one country pays more doesn't mean that they're getting it right... The US... expenditures are substantially higher... but they don't achieve better outcomes. And in some cases outcomes like life expectancy seem to be deteriorating..." [15:00]

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Violent Crime Trends

[16:37 - 22:48]

Main Points

• Two Main Data Sources for England & Wales:

  1. Police Data: Only covers reported and recorded crimes; police have improved record-keeping, changing comparability over time.
  2. Crime Survey for England and Wales: Large, long-running survey asking people about victimisation, considered more consistent.

• Police Data Trends:

  • Crime up 25% in the last 10 years (1.8m to 2.3m offences).
  • Violent crime up 85%, nearly doubled. Nathan Gower: "If you look at the police data on just violent crime, it's increased by about 85% in 10 years..." [17:51]
  • BUT: Improvements in police recording, not necessarily more crime.

• Survey Data Trends:

  • Crime down 40% over the same period.
  • Violent crime down about 50%. Nathan Gower: "...if you look at that data, it says crime has been falling by how much? So between 2014-15 and 2425, it's down by about 40%..." [19:31]
  • Most experts trust the consistency of the crime survey.

• Caveats:

  • Lower response rates on the crime survey (from ~70% to mid-40% post-pandemic) could reduce reliability, especially for the most vulnerable. Nathan Gower: "She argues that as response rates fall, the survey could be increasingly failing to reach the most at risk of violent crime..." [20:17]
  • ONS reviewed and concluded sample remains representative.

• External Corroboration:

  • Hospitalisation data for violence shows a 30% fall over the decade — matches survey trend.

• Devolved Nations:

  • Scotland: long-term decline in violent crime, recent uptick.
  • Northern Ireland: Data volatile; historical decline noted.

Notable Quotes

• Tim Harford: "The police data suggests violent crime has nearly doubled while the crime survey suggests it's halved. That is what we call a disagreement." [20:01]
• Nathan Gower: “The trend on this data is also a really good fit for the trends that the crime survey shows for violent crime.” [22:03]

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Fertility Rates: Are We Facing a Crisis?

[23:11 - 30:03]

Main Points

• Record Lows:

  • England & Wales TFR (Total Fertility Rate) at 1.4 in 2024 (lowest since at least 1938).
  • Scotland TFR 1.25 — lowest since 1855. Tim Harford: "The fertility rate in England and Wales hit its lowest level since comparable records began... 1.4, down from 1.41 the year before." [23:11]

• Is This ‘News’?

  • Historically, UK TFR has been below replacement (2.1) since the 1970s.
  • The current rate is a sharp drop from 1.94 in 2010. Jennifer Dowd: "We were at 1.94 in 2010, so it has been quite noticeable. And I'd say 1.4 is very low historically." [24:43]

• Rate Calculation Quirk:

  • TFR is based on age-specific childbearing rates applied to a hypothetical woman.
  • If women delay motherhood, it looks like a bigger drop than may actually occur, but eventually falls are typically real (just lagged).

• Postponement vs. Actual Fewer Children:

  • Age at first birth has risen to ~29 (from ~24 decades ago).
  • Completed fertility (actual number of children when women finish childbearing) for recent cohorts: ~1.95.
  • "Most women still have two children; only small changes in the share having one or none."
    Jennifer Dowd: "The rate of having zero children also hasn't increased dramatically. For women who've completed their fertility, it was about 16% for this latest cohort." [28:29]

• Unknowns:

  • Nearly 50% of women now reach age 30 childless. If they don’t have children later, a true drop will play out in coming years.
  • UK far from alone: US TFR ~1.6; France similar; Italy, Spain ~1.2; South Korea “well below one”.

Notable Quotes

• Tim Harford: "Long story short, we might be in the midst of a fertility crisis and we might not, and it'll take time before we know for sure." [29:10]
• Jennifer Dowd: "The question is, will women have enough kids in their 30s and early 40s to make up for the drops that are happening under 30? And that's, you know, that's something we don't really know." [27:34]

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Memorable Moments & Humour

• Harford’s wit about “More or Less” inception:
  "Yes, Radio 4 has gone full inception. In this case, we're keeping with the theme..." [01:19]
• On council tax data:
  Tim: "I'm going to lean on years of experience to conclude that 754,280 houses is more than 700,000." [03:48]
• Harford jokes after a complex segment:
  "If there's one thing we love here at More or Less, it's drugs. Sorry, something in my throat there." [08:53]
• Bantering over spending days in the recording studio:
  Tim: "They'll never let me out. They'll never let me out."
  Nathan: "Well, the beard is coming on nicely." [23:05]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Empty Homes: [01:19 - 08:52]
• NHS Drug Spending: [08:53 - 15:21]
• Violent Crime Trends: [16:37 - 22:48]
• Fertility Rates: [23:11 - 30:03]

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Contributors

• Tim Harford (Host)
• Lizzie McNeill (Housing & NHS segments)
• Hussain Naji (Pharmaceutical policy expert)
• Nathan Gower (Crime analysis)
• Jennifer Dowd (Demographer, University of Oxford)

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is a tour-de-force in evidentiary humility: for every headline number, there’s a story about its complexity and context. More or Less doesn’t simply fact-check — the team highlights statistical quirks, changing definitions, and data limitations. Whether about bricks, babies, or burglaries, the real answer is usually "it depends” — but you'll come away better equipped to understand the numbers that shape our national conversation.

Transcript

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[Tim Harford]

Hello and welcome to the third of our special series of More or Less with me, Tim Harford. Every day this week we're replacing the usual 9am shows on Radio 4 with our stats of the nation. And today we're replacing a fascinating and incredibly well presented numbers program called More or less. Yes, Radio 4 has gone full inception. In this case, we're keeping with the theme and in honour of those super cool guys who are normally in this slot, we're going to do sex, drugs and cancel tax. Empty home exemptions. Well, ok, not quite that. It's fertility rates, pharmaceutical economics and rock n roll. Wait, what? We actually are doing council tax exemptions. Fair enough. Oh, and violent crime. Well, stats on violent crime anyway. In any case, I'm sure the folks on More or Less will approve. One of the things most on people's minds is the state of housing. Yes, I'm partly thinking about whether your neighbour's lawn is as green as yours and why the new conservatory is so tastelessly done. But for the purposes of the next item, the state of housing means why there never seem to be enough houses. And yet, if you look out of your window, behold houses. The current Labour government pledged to build 1.5 million new homes during their five year term of office. But Some suggest that instead of building more, we need to look at our current housing stock. Loyal listener Colin asked us to look into the claim that there are 700,000 empty homes just waiting for a new occupant. Lizzie McNeill has been looking into this. Hello, Lizzie.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Hi, Tim. Should we begin with the 700,000 empty homes?

[Tim Harford]

Sure.

[Lizzie McNeill]

So these numbers cover England only as housing is devolved. 700,000 figure is correct and comes from the government's council tax database, which is a collection of local authority data on houses that pay council tax. The database records whether the properties are exempt from paying and whether or not the house is occupied.

[Tim Harford]

OK, and does this data show 700,000 empty houses?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yes, but not in the way you might think.

[Tim Harford]

Do tell.

[Lizzie McNeill]

So the data is taken from a snapshot of all houses liable for council tax on the first Monday of October. So the data for last year tells us about the state of homes on Monday 7th October, and on Monday 7th October 2025, there were 754,280 houses classed as empty.

[Nathan Gower]

Hmm.

[Tim Harford]

Well, I'm going to lean on years of experience to conclude that 754,280 houses is more than 700,000. So the number checks out. It's a lot of houses. But what does empty really mean? Are they languishing without an owner?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah, so let's break that 750,000 odd figure down. Nearly a quarter of these homes have been empty for less than six months, which is not really a long time. These will often simply be rental properties with a brief gap between lets or homes that are being renovated or are in the process of being sold. Sold. And this number is constantly in flux. These don't really seem to be houses that could fix the housing crisis. There are also around 200,000 homes that are empty but receive an exemption from paying council tax due to a variety of reasons. Over half are exempt as the owner has died. But you can also get exemptions for other reasons, such as when owners have moved into long term care or are in prison.

[Tim Harford]

So I'd imagine those houses are in a bit of a state of flux too. They either have have owners who are going to return to them or probate will be settled and then they'll be sold and so they'd be able to rejoin the housing market. So what about the houses we hear about in the news? Houses that have been empty for a long time and aren't necessarily going to be returned to.

[Lizzie McNeill]

So there are 300,000 empty homes that are known as long Term empties. And these are properties that have been empty for over six months.

[Tim Harford]

So 40% of all empty homes have been empty for six months or longer.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yes, but again, this could be due to stalled sales, ownership disputes or renovation works. Not necessarily empty and free.

[Nathan Gower]

Right.

[Lizzie McNeill]

I think the properties that most accurately characterize what people think of when they think of empty houses are properties that have been empty for a long time, so a year or more, and are not receiving an exemption. And these properties are generally charged a premium on top of their regular council tax. If a property isn't eligible for an exemption, then councils are allowed to levy this premium after a property has been empty for at least a year.

[Tim Harford]

So how many of those are there?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Just over 150,000.

[Tim Harford]

So if we suggest that these are homes which potentially could and should be part of England's housing stock, and I'm fairly sure it's a bit more complicated Thus that, these 150,000 are only 10% of the 1.5 million that the Government has promised will be built.

[Jennifer Dowd]

Yeah.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Empty houses definitely aren't a silver bullet to the UK's housing issues.

[Tim Harford]

No. But let's talk about these 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.

[Podcast Advertiser]

Hooray.

[Tim Harford]

Or not. How's it going?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Well, estimates suggest that the government needs to pick up its pace. Also, we need to be a bit careful with semantics. Now, what would you think of as new housing?

[Tim Harford]

New houses. You know, where once there was a field, now a cul de sac.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah, that would be nice. But the government are actually basing their figures on net additional dwellings and they're not the same. No. So net additional dwellings, look at the change in total housing. So it counts new builds, but also includes conversions, changes of use and takes demolitions into account.

[Tim Harford]

So in a way, it's more of a difficult target, because if you build four houses, but then you also knock down a derelict house, that's going to affect your housing numbers, even ifl was living in that house.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah. But, you know, that's the one they go for, which is commendable in a way. So, looking at these numbers, there were 208,600 homes added to the UK stock in 2024, 2025, which is 12,000 fewer than the year before.

[Tim Harford]

Right. Just over 200,000. To hit their target, the government needs to make sure 300,000 are added for each year of their five year term.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yes. Now, there are a lot of issues here. There's been a slowdown in both starts and completions of new houses. Partly driven by high inflation, which has put up the cost of materials and the market has been less appealing generally. Plus, laws about buy to let have changed. So fewer landlords are buying up properties, which some see as a good thing. But some housing developers are reporting that it's harder to sell properties they've built. Which incidentally brings us back to empty homes.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, yeah?

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yeah. So new builds become liable for council tax when construction is completed. So any new housing that takes a while to sell will end up on the list of empty houses we spoke about earlier, as will houses that have been bought. But the owners cannot move in yet.

[Tim Harford]

They can't move in yet because something. Something to do with bureaucracy.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Yep. Before owners can move into, say, a new build flat, the building's regulator needs to inspect the flats and give them a safety certificate to say it's safe for people to move in the. However, there have been serious delays with these buildings being signed off. Other new build developments aren't selling well and as they're complete, they'll be liable for counts attacks, so again will be on the list. Land Registry and ONS data shows that 124,000 new builds were completed in 2024, but only 38,000 new build houses, flats, terraced houses and so on were sold from March 2024 to March 2025. The northern counties have the most units that haven't been sold.

[Tim Harford]

Yikes. So we can't solve the housing crisis by using empty homes. We aren't building enough new homes and some of the new homes we are building are becoming empty homes.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Sounds about right. Yeah.

[Tim Harford]

Fun. Thank you, Lizzie. If there's one thing we love here at More or Less, it's drugs. Sorry, something in my throat there. Drug price economics. Specifically how much the NHS spends on pharmaceuticals. Recently, the pharmaceutical industry has been putting pressure on the UK government to cough up more money for medicines, with headlines.

[Lizzie McNeill]

Declaring Big Pharma set to pull investment unless NHS spends more on drugs.

[Tim Harford]

In December 2025, the government announced a deal with the US that they claimed was a good deal for us because the US would promise not to levy any tariffs on drugs exported to the US from the uk. But critics say the other concessions would add billions to the NHS bill for medicines. These changes aren't coming in overnight. Some of the current arrangements are in place until 2029. So how much do we spend on pharmaceutical drugs?

[Hussain Naji]

At the moment, around 18 billion pounds are spent on pharmaceuticals in the NHS and this accounts for around 10% of the overall NHS expenditures on an annual BAS. My name is Hussain Naji. I'm an Associate professor of Health Policy at the London School of Economics and I direct the Pharmaceutical Policy Lab within the lse.

[Tim Harford]

The NHS in England operates under a monopsony, which is a fancy way of saying a market situation where there's only one buyer. And that gives the NHS a lot of power over prices. Although drug companies also have a lot of power, especially when they patent a new drug they have exclusive rights to sell. The UK has two mechanisms that govern how much we spend on new drugs. The most famous was set up by the Blair government in 1999, largely because there was a huge debate over whether Viagra should be available on the nhs. I have no opinion about that.

[Hussain Naji]

So there is a system in place that looks at the costs and benefits of new medicines once they are approved to go onto the marketplace. So this is the responsibility of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, or nice.

[Tim Harford]

NICE assesses the effectiveness of a drug on the metric of Quality adjusted life years. That is, how much does it do to extend healthy lifespan or improve the quality of life of patients. For drugs, that threshold has been £30,000 per quality adjusted life year since 1999. And if you think that means that after adjusting for inflation, our lives are less and less valuable, well, I have no opinion about that either. So maybe it's time to raise the bar a bit and be willing to spend more on new, effective but expensive medicines. But Hussain isn't so sure when we.

[Hussain Naji]

Look at products that actually provide an added therapeutic benefit. According to assessments in Germany, Canada and France, 90% of those are also available in the NHS. With a positive recommendation from Nice, the NHS currently spends about £15,000 to generate one additional year spent in good health from existing services like GP care, A and E visits, hip and knee replacement procedures and so on. But by comparison, when we look at what NICE does when it evaluates new products and recommends them for funding in the NHS, NICE uses a cost effectiveness threshold that's around 30,000 pounds for the same health gain.

[Tim Harford]

Under the new agreement, that threshold will be going up to £35,000 in April.

[Hussain Naji]

And what that means is NICE is willing to pay roughly twice as much for the health benefits of new drugs compared to what the NHS currently spends on other funded activities. So that's evidence that we're actually paying too much for the health benefits of pharmaceuticals compared to other services in the NHS.

[Tim Harford]

Despite this, part of the UK's new deal with the US pharmaceutical industry is a promise that the UK will raise its threshold for spending on new medicines by 25%. Now, it's tempting to look at how England compares with other countries and feel a bit smug on the face of it. We do seem to spend less than similar countries. As mentioned earlier, the data show that 10% of UK health spending is currently on pharmaceuticals. Greece spends 27%, Japan 16.5% and Germany around 14%. But does that mean we pay less for medicine in general?

[Hussain Naji]

So the big picture, I would say is that the data are not comparable across different countries. We don't really observe what the net prices are for pharmaceuticals. We tend to observe what is the sticker price, the list price. But governments negotiate confidentially with companies behind closed doors and we don't have access to those final prices that are agreed between companies and the government in most cases. So it's a really opaque landscape.

[Tim Harford]

Although we can't compare ourselves directly with other countries, we do seem to spend a bit less than most.

[Hussain Naji]

It seems like the UK is spending a lower share of its NHS or healthcare budget on pharmaceuticals.

[Tim Harford]

Hussain says one of the reasons for this is that the UK is very good at using generic medicine once the patent runs out on branded drugs. But there's another mechanism at work too, a rebate scheme known as vpag, which means drug companies have to repay a proportion of government spending on drugs that goes over an agreed annual growth rate.

[Hussain Naji]

And the latest version of this agreement caps the annual growth in new pharmaceutical spending between 2% and 4%.

[Tim Harford]

The UK government recently announced that the UK will also lower rebate rates for branded medicines from 2029, meaning the NHS will recoup less of the cost from drug companies. So it seems that the UK will be spending more money on pharmaceutical drugs in the future. Can we be confident that that will improve people's health? Not necessarily. Just look at the US itself.

[Hussain Naji]

Just because one country pays more doesn't mean that they're getting it right. And one case in point is the US where healthcare expenditures as well as pharmaceutical expenditures are substantially higher than many other high income countries. But they don't achieve better outcomes. And in some cases outcomes like life expectancy seem to be deteriorating in some segments of the population.

[Tim Harford]

Seems like you don't always get what you pay for, thanks to Hussain. Naji.

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[Tim Harford]

In early November last year, 10 people were stabbed in an attack on a train traveling through Cambridgeshire. It was a shocking incident and it prompted a lot of debate and discussion about violent crime. Loyal listener Matt Turner got in touch to ask what the statistics tell us about different forms of crime. And we asked more or less reporter Nathan Gower to look into it. Hello, Nathan.

[Nathan Gower]

Hi, Tim. So, if we're talking about England and Wales, we've got two main sources of data and it really matters which one you pick. I'll start with police data and I'm not going to talk about all crimes. We're only looking at crime that gets reported to the police and we're not including things like computer fraud because otherwise these crime stats are going to get very messy. Excluding these, it helps us when we're trying to compare and identify trends.

[Tim Harford]

Stop your watches, everyone. I make that about 15 seconds before your first methodological caveat.

[Nathan Gower]

Nathan, new record. I'll try and do better next time.

[Tim Harford]

If only it was a new record. Anyway, you were telling me about the police data.

[Nathan Gower]

So on those figures, crime overall has been rising for the last 10 years, from about 1.8 million offences in 2014-15 to 2.3 million in 2425. And that's roughly a 25% rise.

[Tim Harford]

And what about violence specifically?

[Nathan Gower]

If you look at the police data on just violent crime, it's increased by about 85% in 10 years, nearly doubled. It's not a pretty picture, but. But that's if you just rely on the police data.

[Tim Harford]

Should we?

[Nathan Gower]

Most crime experts don't, because there are well known problems with the police data on crime and weirdly, the biggest is that the police have actually got much better at record keeping in recent years.

[Tim Harford]

Explain.

[Nathan Gower]

So, back in 2014, there was a big police inspectorate report that found that only about 81% of crimes which were brought to the attention of police and should have been recorded as a crime actually ended up recorded in the data. But it looks like there's been a big improvement. So a follow UP report in 2021 put that figure at 92% and the improvement's even sharper for violent crimes specifically. So that went from 67% to 90%.

[Tim Harford]

I mean, I'm glad to hear it's improved, but if you're trying to find the true trend over time, then it might be better to have consistently bad records rather than steadily improving ones.

[Nathan Gower]

It is all a bit counterintuitive. The Office for National Statistics, the ons, they say that this improvement in record keeping can largely explain the rise we've seen in police recorded crime. And that means we shouldn't use police data to get a sense of long term trends.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, so the police data says crime's increasing, but we've got good reason to doubt that. You said there was another option.

[Nathan Gower]

Yes. So the ONS run what's called the Crime Survey for England and Wales. It's a big, long running survey that asks the population about their experience of crimes. So it's not going to be affected by changes in how effective the police are. Most experts think this crime survey data is more robust. And if you look at that data, it says crime has been falling by how much? So between 2014-15 and 2425, it's down by about 40% from 2.2 million offences to 1.5 million. Again, that's for crimes generally. If we're just talking about violent crimes, it's about a 50% decrease. And to remind you, we're talking about just the crimes the survey respondents said they reported to the police.

[Tim Harford]

The caveat?

[Nathan Gower]

Indeed.

[Tim Harford]

So the police data suggests violent crime has nearly doubled, while the crime survey suggests it's halved. That is what we call a disagreement. But you said most experts prefer the crime survey because it's a consistent method over time.

[Nathan Gower]

They do, but we should say the consensus isn't universal. Professor Sylvia Walby at Royal Holloway, she told me that she's worried by a recent decline in the crime survey's response rate. So for many years it had a high response rate in the 70 percents, but this declined to 64% immediately before the pandemic and the response rates now are down in the mid-40s. She argues that as response rates fall, the survey could be increasingly failing to reach the most at risk of violent crime, creating the false impression of a drop in Violent crime.

[Tim Harford]

And what did the ONS say?

[Nathan Gower]

So they did a quality review of the crime survey data that they got in 2022-23, immediately after the pandemic, when the response rate was 42%. The big question was whether the survey was still representative of the population. The quality review concluded that it was. And in fact, relative to the background population as measured by the census, this post pandemic sample was actually a closer fit than the pre pandemic sample, which had enjoyed a higher response rate. Now, that doesn't rule out some hidden bias in the new survey, but it is encouraging. And also, the sample size didn't change when the response rate fell. The ONS just kept asking more people until the total number of respondents was as high as they needed.

[Tim Harford]

So the ONS doesn't think the fall in response rate has affected the quality of the sample. Are there any other kinds of data that we can look at to help us judge whether the fall in violent crime is likely to be real?

[Nathan Gower]

So academics at Cardiff University and their Violence Research Group, they produce estimates for how many people in England and Wales are hospitalised because of violence. These are just estimates and are obviously only going to capture incidents that end up with someone in hospital. But the data does suggest a substantial decline. It's a fall of about 30% in the last 10 years. The trend on this data is also a really good fit for the trends that the crime survey shows for violent crime.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, that does sound encouraging. We've just been talking so far about England and Wales. What can we say about violent crime trends in other nations?

[Nathan Gower]

Northern Ireland and Scotland. They also run surveys monitoring crime. Interestingly, Scotland has generally seen violent crime decline over the last 15 years, but recently there's been an increase for Northern Ireland. It's more difficult to say. They changed their survey methodology during the pandemic, which means we can't compare the data now to before COVID hit. If we just look at the data from the old survey, it's pretty volatile year to year, but we do see a substantial fall in violent crimes since the early 2000s to the late 2010s, from about 70,000 a year to more like 40,000 a year.

[Tim Harford]

Thank you, Nathan.

[Nathan Gower]

I should thank the many experts who've helped me. Professor Andrew Macchi Cielloni, Professor Sylvia Wolby, Professor Graham Farrell, and the experts at the Office of National Statistics. And thank you, Tim. I think you're on day three of recording so far. How long have you been in the studio?

[Tim Harford]

They'll never let me out. They'll never let me out.

[Nathan Gower]

Well, the beard is coming on nicely.

[Tim Harford]

An important slow burning statistic, not the kind of thing that makes headlines, but which does shape the world, is the total fertility rate. The tfr, the number of babies women in the country are having. If that rate is below 2.1, then you're below replacement level. You're not producing enough new people to replace the ones who die. So, all things being equal, the population will start to fall. British fertility rates are much lower than that. Last year we found out that in 2024, the fertility rate in England and Wales hit its lowest level since comparable records began. Began in 1938 with a total fertility rate of 1.4, down from 1.41 the year before. In Scotland, the rate was 1.25, the lowest rate since 1855. Now, the UK's population is still rising because people keep arriving from elsewhere. But as national existential crises go, the decline in fertility is regularly singled out as a big problem. So what's going on? We asked Jennifer Dowd, a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford, and there is one thing everyone agrees on. The fertility rate is low.

[Jennifer Dowd]

It is low.

[Tim Harford]

It is at record lows. That is obviously new by definition because it's a record. Is it news that the rate is on the low side?

[Jennifer Dowd]

I would say it is news. It is about 1.4 in England and Wales right now. Scotland's even a little bit lower and this has declined quite rapidly. We were at 1.94 in 2010, so it has been quite noticeable. And I'd say 1.4 is very low historically.

[Tim Harford]

I was looking at some of the numbers and the total fertility rate's been below 2, really since I was born. And I'm not a young man. I mean, basically since the early 1970s. So it's not new for it to be somewhat below replacement rate.

[Jennifer Dowd]

I think that's right. And I think that comes back to this kind of strange way in which the total fertility rate is calculated.

[Tim Harford]

The TFR is calculated by working out age specific childbearing rates for women at different ages, then applying them to a hypothetical woman who's all the ages at once. Suppose women are postponing having children until later in life, but are still having the same number of children. In the end, that change would look like a drop in the tfr. The birth rate for the young women will be low because they haven't had kids yet, and that for older women will also be low because they already have. And the age women have their first child is going up.

[Jennifer Dowd]

The average age at first birth for women was around 24 several decades ago, and it's about 29 years now. And so the question is, you know, will these lower fertility rates, you know, really reflect the completed childbearing of women, or is this another example of postponement that won't be quite as dramatic as it looks right now?

[Tim Harford]

The trouble is we can't know for sure how much of the current falling rate is a statistical artifact and how much is real. We only get clear data after a big time lag from the women who've had all their babies.

[Jennifer Dowd]

That last cohort that we have data for, for women born in 1978 who are now kind of in their late 40s, they still had on average 1.95 children. So we haven't seen any, you know, completed cohort of women with dramatically lower fertility. Now, we do usually see that these, you know, these changes in the TFR do reflect some ultimate change in completed fertility. So that's not to say that postponement would account for all of this change. It's just that it tends to kind of exaggerate the magnitude of the change, even though I think it does capture the direction of travel of these changes.

[Tim Harford]

What we know for sure is that the fertility rate for women under 30 is falling while the fertility rate for those over 30 is increasing.

[Jennifer Dowd]

And the question is, will women have enough kids in their 30s and early 40s to make up for the drops that are happening under 30? And that's, you know, that's something we don't really know. Again, if we look at the completed fertility from this, women who are already in their late 40s, I would say the completed family size hasn't changed as dramatically over 30 years as we might expect. Still, the modal number of children is two. So women born in 1978, 38% of them were having two children, compared to 43% of women born in 1950. So it's a little bit less, and I think those have gotten redistributed a little bit to having one or zero children. But the rate of having zero children also hasn't increased dramatically. For women who've completed their fertility, it was about 16% for this latest cohort. And that hasn't changed, you know, too much over the last few decades. So I think that's the real question because we have seen an increasing number of women, almost half now, who reach their 30th birthday without having a child. And, you know, that could be a big shift if those Women don't, you know, catch up, so to speak, in their 30s and 40s, but it's something we're gonna have to see play out. But interestingly, we also haven't seen a big change in the number of women having or more children. That has stayed pretty Constant at about 10% for women who have already completed their fertility.

[Tim Harford]

Long story short, we might be in the midst of a fertility crisis and we might not, and it'll take time before we know for sure. But things are certainly changing and the UK is definitely not alone in that.

[Jennifer Dowd]

This has been quite a global phenomenon, these falling fertility rates, especially since around 2008, 2010. So it's happening almost everywhere. It's not unique to the uk, but I'd say the UK is a little bit middling compared to other high income countries. The U.S. for instance, now has a fertility rate of around 1.6, as does France. But there are places like Italy and Spain that are down around 1.2. And a lot of us have heard about South Korea these days, which is actually well below one, and their fertility rate.

[Tim Harford]

Our thanks to Professor Jennifer Dowd and that's your lot for this third programme in our special series. Get yourself to Sounds if you missed any. We're back tomorrow with statistical tales about pensioner millionaires, education in Finland, overcrowded prisons and the weirdening of our weather. As always, send us your questions and comments to more or lessbc.co.uk.com until tomorrow. Goodbye. More or Less was presented by me, Tim Harford. The producer was Tom Coles with Nathan Gower, Charlotte MacDonald, Lizzie McNeil and Katie Sulliveld. The programme was recorded by Sarah Hockley and the series was mixed by James Beard, Neil Churchill and Sarah Hockley. The production coordinator was Maria Ogundele and our editor is Richard Varden.

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