The week that kills

Summary

Podcast Summary: More or Less – "The week that kills" (BBC Radio 4, Jan 10, 2014)

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Episode Overview

Theme:
Host Tim Harford and the More or Less team examine how statistics are interpreted and (mis)used in public debate, with a focus this week on patterns in UK mortality, winter deaths, public misconceptions about the Iraq War death toll, and some bonus mythbusting on pensioner millionaires, nautical miles, and Luxembourg.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Week of Death" – Does One Exist? (00:09–04:38)

• Myth Bust: There is a misconception that the second full week of the year is the "week of death" in the UK, i.e., when most people die.
• Ben Carter (Researcher): Actually, the first week of January (not the second) records the highest actual number of deaths; the figures for the second week are skewed by administrative delays in reporting after Christmas.
  • "The first full week of January is typically the week when most deaths actually occur in Britain." (Ben Carter, 01:34)

Why more deaths in winter?

• "Excess winter deaths" are 25,000–30,000 per year, about 15% higher than average (02:04).

• Numbers fluctuate greatly: 2012–2013 winter = 31,000 excess deaths, 29% up on prior year (02:17, Carter).

• Claudia Wells (ONS): Colder winters in the UK do increase excess deaths, but colder Scandinavian countries have fewer excess deaths than the UK, and warmer southern Europe has more.

  “If you look at, say, Scandinavian countries, which generally have much, much colder winters than we do, the number of excess deaths ... are much lower. Whereas if you look at warmer countries ... their excess winter deaths are much higher.” (Claudia Wells, 02:40)

• Multiple factors: housing quality, preparedness, social practices.

• No consistent link to social deprivation; winter excess deaths aren't concentrated among the poor (Claudia Wells, 04:38).

  • "That north-south divide that you see with all cause mortality ... is just not there for excess winter deaths." (Wells, 05:16)

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2. Cold Weather, Flu & Myths About Getting Sick (05:16–06:47)

• Flu vs. Cold: Cold weather doesn’t directly make people catch colds.
  • "People are not any more likely to get sick [with colds or flu] when exposed to cold temperatures." (Rachel Vreeman, 05:31)
  • Rhinoviruses (common cold) peak in spring and autumn, not winter; flu viruses peak in winter (06:09).

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3. Hospitals, Mortality & The Deadliest Week (06:47–09:42)

• Hospital Crowding: Dr. Roger Taylor (Dr. Foster Intelligence) points out that hospital crowding peaks before and after Christmas, mortality is highest in the first and second week of January (especially among those admitted to hospital).
  • "You can actually operate a hospital at over 100% occupancy... And that makes it very hard to maintain the quality of care." (Taylor, 07:09)
  • “The month of greatest risk is almost always December... But hospital mortality data does back up what you're saying... the highest number of deaths in hospital does occur in the first and the second weeks of January.” (Taylor, 07:58, 09:06)

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4. Pensioner Millionaires: Numbers in Context (10:19–12:11)

• Stat in Question: Are there "2 million pensioner millionaires in the UK"?
• Actually, it’s 2 million people over 60 living in "millionaire households" — counting household, not individual wealth.
  • “A million pounds split two or three ways ... doesn't make you a millionaire all by yourself.” (Tim Harford, 11:27)
• Figures include value of property and pension pots.
• There are 14+ million people aged 60+ in the UK, so context is essential (12:11).

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5. Nautical Mile vs. "Normal" Mile (13:20–15:30)

• Listener backlash after comedian Matt Parker called a nautical mile "just like a normal mile, but wetter".
• Correction: A nautical mile is about 15% longer than a land mile (1,852m vs. 1,609m), and is based on one minute of Earth's latitude.
  • “A nautical mile is based on the circumference of the Earth ... equal to one minute of latitude.” (Tim Harford, 14:58)
• Officially standardized at 1,852 meters in 1929; UK signed up in 1970.

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6. Iraq War Death Toll: Estimating the Real Figures (17:53–22:55)

• John Pilger claims “scientific studies report that up to a million Iraqi men, women and children died” due to the Iraq war.
• Dr. Glenn Rangwala (Cambridge):
  • Wide-ranging estimates due to different methodologies:
    • Direct counts of violent deaths: ~100,000 (Iraq Body Count, 18:30)
    • Survey-based excess deaths: Johns Hopkins/Lancet study found 655,000 excess deaths (19:12)
    • Opinion polls: ORB suggested up to 1 million, but methodologically weak (20:14)
    • Most credible studies range between 400,000–655,000 excess deaths.
  • "All those different analyses ... have themselves come to different estimates, anywhere between 405,000 to ... 655,000." (Rangwala, 20:14)
• Public perceptions are low: A UK poll showed most people believe fewer than 10,000 Iraqis had died (21:13).
• Rangwala: It’s important the public appreciates the scale of consequences of foreign intervention (22:33).

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7. Iraq's Growing Population — How? (23:06–25:30)

• Despite war and mass emigration, Iraq’s population has grown from 25 million (2003) to 33 million (2014), due to high fertility rates (~4 children per family).
  • “Every year you keep having about 600,000 more people in the country.” (Patrick Guerlain, United Nations, 23:59)
• Iran’s population growth is slower due to proactive health policies and family planning.

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8. Other Statistical Nuggets & Listener Corrections

• Alcohol Consumption Reduction (25:54–26:34):
  • Claim: Government removing 1 billion units of alcohol from national consumption.
  • Reality: This works out to “one fewer small mouthful of wine per week” per person, not a substantial reduction.
• Luxembourg Railway Satisfaction (26:47–27:25):
  • Listener notes Luxembourg’s railway satisfaction is influenced by cross-border travel complexity.
• Luxembourg’s Glory:
  • Host quips about the country’s high standard of living, diversity, and low crime, but notes no time to explore further.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “The first full week of January is typically the week when most deaths actually occur in Britain.”
  – Ben Carter (01:34)
• “That north-south divide that you see with all cause mortality ... is just not there for excess winter deaths.”
  – Claudia Wells (05:16)
• “People are not any more likely to get sick ... when exposed to cold temperatures.”
  – Rachel Vreeman (05:31)
• “You can actually operate a hospital at over 100% occupancy... and that makes it very hard to maintain the quality of care.”
  – Roger Taylor (07:09)
• “A million pounds split two or three ways ... doesn't make you a millionaire all by yourself.”
  – Tim Harford (11:27)
• “A nautical mile is based on the circumference of the Earth ... equal to one minute of latitude.”
  – Tim Harford (14:58)
• “All those different analyses ... have themselves come to different estimates, anywhere between 405,000 to ... 655,000.”
  – Glenn Rangwala (20:14)
• “Every year you keep having about 600,000 more people in the country.”
  – Patrick Guerlain (23:59)
• “My alcohol consumption will be one fewer small mouthful of wine per week this time next year.”
  – Paraphrased listener (26:33)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:09–05:16 | Winter deaths and the "week of death"
• 05:17–06:47 | Flu, cold viruses, and winter illnesses
• 06:47–09:42 | Hospital occupancy and mortality data
• 10:19–12:11 | Pensioner millionaires: statistical subtleties
• 13:20–15:30 | Nautical mile correction and explainer
• 17:53–22:55 | Iraq War death toll: methods and misconceptions
• 23:06–25:30 | Iraq’s population growth and fertility rates
• 25:54–26:34 | Alcohol "unit" policy impact
• 26:47–27:25 | Luxembourg’s railway satisfaction and statistics humor

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Tone

The tone is inquisitive, dryly humorous, and gently sceptical. The hosts and contributors are friendly, precise, and focused on clarity—debunking myths where needed and encouraging the audience to think critically about the numbers and statistics they see and hear.

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This summary provides a thorough guide to the episode’s topics, evidence, and engaging moments, ensuring you can grasp both the substance and the spirit of the show.

Transcript

[A]

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.

[B]

Hello and welcome to More or Less the programme which takes a look at the numbers around us in the news and in life this week. Do you know how many people have been killed in the Iraq war? We'll be thinking through the numbers and we'll be considering millionaire pensioners, the glories of Luxembourg and most importantly, the nautical mile. But first, we start the programme with some good news. We at more or less thought that next week was the week of death, the week of each year in which the largest number of British people tend to die. But it turns out that next week is not the week of death. Ben Carter is here to explain.

[C]

Tim ON I've looked at both the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish National Records Office weekly mortality figures. The mortality figures do indeed tend to be highest for the second full week of the year next week.

[B]

So, hang on, next week is the week of death?

[C]

The weekly figures do say next week is the week of death, but no, it turns out that's just the week in which most deaths are recorded.

[B]

Ah, okay, so it's a recording issue. It's an administrative catch up from Christmas. So which week really does kill more people than any other than?

[C]

The first week of January is the week of death.

[B]

So that's this week. Just finishing, actually. Ben, are you sure the echo is in good taste?

[C]

No, I'm sorry, Tim, but it is true. The first full week of January is typically the week when most deaths actually occur in Britain.

[B]

But that's hardly a surprise, is it?

[C]

Well, that's true, but the reasons why might be. Firstly, we need to explain the phrase excess winter deaths. This is the difference between the number of deaths which occur in winter December to March, and the average number of deaths during the preceding four months, August and November, and the subsequent four months, April to July.

[B]

And we typically see about 25 to 30,000 of these excess winter deaths each year across the four winter months. And that's about 15% higher than the background rate at which we shuffle off the mortal coil.

[C]

But the number fluctuates a lot. Last winter 2012-2013 saw over 31,000 excess deaths, and that was 29% more than the year before.

[B]

And that doesn't seem surprising considering that the first few months of 2013 were bitterly cold. In fact, we had the second coldest March on record. Well, here's Claudia Wells, the head of mortality analysis at the Office for National Statistics.

[D]

Usually the temperature starts to rise in February and March. We didn't see that. And we saw a corresponding increase in deaths. But what's unusual in England and Wales, if you can compare that to perhaps other countries in Europe, you look at, say, Scandinavian countries, which generally have much, much colder winters than we do, the number of excess deaths they have in those countries are much lower. Whereas if you look at warmer countries, look at Portugal and Spain, their excess winter deaths are much higher.

[B]

So why is that?

[D]

That could be to say a preparedness for sort of the winter period, a difference in the types of housing that you have, and people just being more aware of what.

[B]

So let's run through this. Last year, Britain suffered a colder winter and an increase in the number of excess winter deaths. But looking at Europe, the Scandinavian countries, which are colder, have fewer excess winter deaths than countries in southern Europe which are warmer. And just to add to the confusion, Claudia Wells also told us that the British winter of 2009-2010 was a cold one, and yet the number of excess winter deaths didn't go up.

[C]

And last winter, the smallest proportion of excess winter deaths was recorded in London. Yet the year before that, the largest proportion of excess winter deaths was also recorded in London.

[B]

There is one thing that's got to be true, though, you would think, given the number of headlines. Surely it's the people in poverty, it's the people who don't have the cash to turn up the central heating. It must be those people who end up making up these sad statistics. And yet, even though that seems obvious, studies carried out in the UK consistently show that winter deaths aren't linked to socioeconomic status. We have these old truths about people living longer in Kensington than in Glasgow, and they are truths, but they don't apply when it comes to the extra deaths in winter. Here's Claudia Wells.

[D]

You can look at it in terms of area deprivation, but actually when you break the figures down by area, they are extremely variable and there's no consistent pattern over time. You can predict sort of the areas which have high and low life expectancy each year. You know, that sort of local areas within the southeast, for example, Kensington and Chelsea, will have a high life expectancy, whereas those in the north may have a lower life expectancy. But that pattern, that north, south divide that you see with all cause mortality and in fact mortality from some causes is just not there for excess winter deaths, which is actually very interesting.

[B]

Claudia Wells of the Office for National Statistics. The other obvious thought is surely flu and colds are Worse when it's colder? Well, I put that question to Rachel Vreeman, who's a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

[E]

Many of us think that when the weather is cold outside, we're going to be much more likely to get sick. And that actually is not true at all. When they test how humans do when they're exposed to either flu virus or cold viruses, people are not any more likely to get sick. In fact, they test this by putting cold viruses right into people's noses and then exposing them to either very cold temperatures, having them wear warm clothing or not warm clothing, having them have hats on, or no hats, and they see no difference in how likely you are to get sick.

[B]

And does the cold virus follow a seasonal pattern?

[E]

The cold virus does follow a seasonal pattern, and interestingly enough, it does not come to us in winter. In the uk, for example, the cold virus comes most often in the spring. So while things like influenza and RSV are around more in December and January, the cold virus, or rhinoviruses, which are what cause most colds, actually peak in the spring and fall.

[B]

So cold doesn't make you catch a cold, winter doesn't make you catch a cold, but nevertheless, flu itself is a winter disease.

[E]

Exactly. Flu tends to be around in the winter, but the cold is not going to give you a cold, and it's not going to make you any more susceptible to the flu.

[B]

So, Ben, we started with a mystery, and to a certain extent, we end with one. We see that winter brings with it a rise in the number of deaths. But it's hard to know exactly why these deaths are happening.

[C]

And perhaps the final piece of the puzzle that we should look at is why this week, the first of the year, is the deadliest.

[B]

Well, here's Dr. Roger Taylor from research company Dr. Foster Intelligence.

[F]

It's the peak period for crowding in hospitals. Many hospitals find themselves working at a hundred percent, or bizarrely as it sounds, you can actually operate a hospital at over 100% occupancy, which means every bed is full and there's often a patient waiting to go straight into that next bed. And that makes it very hard to maintain the quality of care that people would like to.

[B]

And is there a particular month or a particular week that stands out as being a very bad time to go into hospital?

[F]

Well, interesting you should say that. We know that the peak occupancy weeks are just before and after Christmas. And then you get this curious lull in Christmas when hospitals are much emptier and people don't want to go into hospital at Christmas, understandably. But we do find that that is also the period where mortality rates reach their peak.

[B]

Now, I can see you've got in front of you a list of your. Is that your seasonal adjustments you make for major conditions, that sort of gives a sense of which months are particularly bad.

[F]

That's right. And what's interesting about this list is two things. Firstly, the month of greatest risk is almost always December. Not January, not February, not January is December. There's a couple of areas where it's different. There's one here that's January, but the vast majority here are all Decembers. The other thing to say about it is some of these things are what you would expect to see. So we have respiratory illnesses, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, we have some fractures here. We have some of the things.

[B]

People sleeping on arms.

[F]

Exactly. But there are some rather more surprising things here. We've got things like cardiac dysrhythmias here. Now, when you look across a whole mass of different conditions and look for seasonal variations, you will, of course, see all sorts of things popping up.

[B]

Now, purely by chance, some of them, it could.

[F]

Exactly. I don't personally know of any particular reason why that would be appearing on this list, but there is a significant difference between your chance of death in summer than in winter.

[B]

Just looking at the excess mortality rate in the population as a whole, not particularly to do with hospitals, we found that the first week of January seemed particularly bad. I mean, is that something you see in the hospital data as well? That's also a bad week.

[F]

It's true, actually, that hospital mortality data does back up what you're saying. And we can see that the highest number of deaths in hospital does occur in the first and the second weeks of January, where we have about 4,300 deaths occurring in hospital. But that's happening against a background of much higher numbers, 80, 90,000 people coming into hospital. Whereas in the last weeks of December, we have a lower number of Deaths, just over 4,000, but there's only 63,000 people coming in, so it's a much smaller number of people coming in. So your risk of death over that period is in fact much higher if

[B]

you are unfortunate enough to be admitted to hospital.

[F]

If you're unfortunate enough to be admitted to hospital. Absolutely right.

[B]

Roger Taylor, director of research at Dr. Foster Intelligence, and our very own Ben Carter. Thank you, Ben. You're listening to More or Less. Pensions are one of the hot topics of the week, with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, promising to protect and enhance the State pension if he's still in number 10 after the next election. Loyal listener Clive Giles contacted us at more or lessbc.co.uk to say he was in the middle of listening to a debate on the radio when he heard it said that there are 2 million pensioner millionaires in the UK. Is that right? Ruth Alexander's here. Ruth, you've been looking into this.

[A]

I have. And the figure comes from the Intergenerational Foundation, a group which wants the government to look after people of all ages, it says, not just pensioners. And actually they didn't say quite what Clive Giles thought he heard. Here's Angus Hanton from the foundation on

[B]

BBC 5 live in the over 60s group. We have 2 million people who live in millionaire households and it's hardly appropriate, it seems, for young people to be making sacrifices so that those wealthy or older people can be getting an increased state pension. I see the subtle distinction. 2 million over 60s living in millionaire households. So they're including people who aren't pensioners and their threshold is household wealth, not individual wealth.

[A]

Yes. The current state pension age for men is 65 and for women it's 61 and rising. And even people over retirement age may still have a job or be looking for a job. Taken as a whole, almost a quarter of people that the Intergenerational foundation are talking about are still in the labour market. And as you say, they're counting households, not individuals. All this data, by the way, comes from a wealth and assets survey done by the Office for National Statistics.

[B]

This wealth is spread among everyone in the household, not just the individuals the Intergenerational foundation is trying to count. So a million pounds split two or three ways is obviously still worth having, but that doesn't make you a millionaire all by yourself, to say nothing of

[A]

the fact that the pensioner may not have the money at all. If an elderly and penniless aunt goes to live with her millionaire nephew, say she becomes a millionaire according to the Intergenerational Foundation's way of calculating things.

[B]

And we should also make the point that this isn't saying that people are making a million pounds a year, nor is it saying that they have a million pounds in the bank.

[A]

Note the survey captured the value of all assets and investments, including pension pots and the value of your property less any mortgage outstanding.

[B]

Now, with property prices being what they are in London and the south east, homeowners who've paid off their mortgages may well get over the million pound mark. That doesn't mean they'll be hiring A butler, a chambermaid and a chauffeur. They all that said, it is still a lot of money. It's a million pounds. And the Intergenerational foundation number is accurate. One final thing missing though, is a bit of context. There are more than 14 million people in the country aged 60 or over. Whether you think 2 million is a large proportion of them or not is entirely a matter for you. Thank you, Ruth. In last week's programme, some listeners enjoying Number Hub mathematician Matt Parker's guide to the imperial measurement system were in for a nasty shock. In the middle of his performance, which itself was an apology for an earlier dissing of the imperial system, he was heard to say, if you take 100 fathoms, you get a cable. Now each cable, if you have 10 of those, you get a nautical mile. If you take each nautical mile. So nautical miles are the same as ordinary miles. They're like normal miles, but wetter. Uh oh. The more or less inbox was battered by the high winds of Lysna.

[F]

Ire, dear.

[B]

More or less. Did I just hear somebody on the station, which is home to the shipping forecast, say that a nautical mile is just like a normal mile, only wetter? Away with you, you scurvy landlubbers.

[G]

Did I just hear someone say that?

[A]

A nautical mile.

[B]

I don't want to appear petty, but a sea mile. When I was navigating in the Merchant Navy. A nautical mile. Another nail in your coffin full of mistakes and assumptions, according to my Naval

[F]

Ratings Handbook, 1965 edition from my illustrious.

[B]

Well, Matt Parker's here to apologize for his apology. Matt, I just wanted to get something clear. You call yourself the stand up mathematician?

[C]

That is correct, yes.

[B]

And you are currently on tour around the UK with a show called Festival of the Spoken Nerd, full of jokes about mathematics.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

30 dates across the UK. And when you said that a nautical mile was like a standard mile, only wetter.

[C]

Yes.

[H]

Yeah.

[B]

It seems to me there are two possible explanations. One is that you really believe that a nautical mile is like a standard mile, only wetter. And the other is that you were making one of your so called jokes, which was it? Yeah, yes, it was indeed a joke

[C]

and I mean obviously it's very clear joke, because a nautical mile is not

[B]

wetter than a standard mile, because of course the nautical mile is buoyant and so it would remain perfectly dry while

[C]

still being precisely the same length as a standard mile.

[B]

Incorrigible. Matt Parker, stand up mathematician, demonstrates that jokes about maths are no laughing matter. Now, clearly the nautical Mile, which, just to be absolutely clear, is. Is about 15% longer than the regular mile has its fans, and many of those fans are to be found in the more or less audience. And when you examine it closely, I see why. What a fine unit of measurement it is. A nautical mile is based on the circumference of the Earth around the poles and it's equal to one minute of latitude. Not only does it help sailors and pilots find their way around the globe, it curiously varies in size depending on where you are, or at least it used to. For the expert explanation, I turned to John Graves, curator of ship history at the National Maritime Museum. Because of the shape of the Earth, because it's not a perfect sphere, because it's slightly flattened at the poles like a tangerine, the length of the nautical mile varies slightly depending on which latitude you're in, it being shortest at the equator and longest towards the poles. And so just imagining now I'm sailing north from the equator and what we're doing is we're actually, we're tracking really the degrees north as I go north. And because actually the Earth is flatter near the pole as I get further north, the mile is getting slightly longer for each further degree north that I'm going to. Yes, but at the first international Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference In Monaco in 1929, it was recognized that these variations were not always very helpful and that different countries had their own different standards. And in 1929, it was agreed to fix the length of the nautical mile at exactly 1852 metres, which makes the nautical mile about 242 metres longer than the Landlubbers mile. And by the way, the British only signed up to this international standard for the nautical mile in 1970. You're listening to More or Less, and I'm Tim Harford. Recently we heard this on Radio 4's Today programme from the campaigning journalist John Pilger. A recent poll asked people in Britain how many Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion of in 2003. The answers they gave were shocking. A majority said that fewer than 10,000 had been killed. Scientific studies report that up to a million Iraqi men, women and children died in an inferno lit by the British government and its ally in Washington. No doubt they got letters about that claim because the next day on the same program we heard, is that figure

[G]

of a million deaths since 2003 cited by John Pilger accurate? It looks as though he was basing his information on a study in the Lancet in 2007.

[B]

No wonder people are confused over the death toll in Iraq. Estimates ranging from a little over 100,000 deaths to over a million deaths are often cited. We've looked at the difficulties of counting the war dead before. Many deaths will certainly go unreported and others may be counted twice. But even so, the range of uncertainty in the case of Iraq seems to be very wide indeed. So I spoke to Dr. Glenn Rangwala from Cambridge University to guide us through.

[I]

One explanation for why the results are so different is because they're counting different sorts of things. Some people are just counting the immediate victims of acts of violence. They just tally the number of death reports that come in from morgues and police stations and from journalists that are attributing deaths to violent conflict and generally come to something in the range of 100 up to the present day. Many people, from the US army to the Iraqi government to a British organization called Iraq Body Count, do that. However, not all deaths that occur in a conflict are caused by immediate acts of violence.

[B]

So how do we try and record those deaths?

[I]

So what a number of organisations and institutes have tried to do have been to do a sample based survey within Iraq. So they've asked households whether any members who were resident ordinarily at that household have died and then they've extrapolated from that to a crude death rate in the country. So how many people per thousand per year are dying in Iraq? And I've compared that to the pre invasion death rate. So probably the most famous study was one conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public health in 2006, published in the Lancet, which found that that gap between the pre invasion death rate and the post invasion death rate is then scaled up to produce a figure of 655,000, what are called in the terminology excess deaths that have occurred in Iraq in that period of just three and a half years.

[B]

Was it reasonable for John Pilger to say that a million people had died in Iraq as a result of American and British involvement?

[I]

John Pilger was drawing upon a series of polls conducted by a London based organisation called Opinion Research Business, which conducted these polls in Iraq, asking people if any of their family members had died in the conflict from violent causes. And extrapolating from that, they came to a figure firstly of 1.2 million later 1 million deaths in Iraq. Unfortunately, that organization, I don't think has produced the most reliable study of death in Iraq since 2003. There have been five other studies of much greater detail with clear methodological review. That said, all those different analyses since 2003, conducted by established researchers, have themselves come to different estimates, anywhere between 405,000 to the 655,000 in 2006 by the Johns Hopkins team.

[B]

Glenn Rangwala. In short, there are two ways to count the dead in Iraq. You can try to tot up the violent deaths, a method which produces a stark total of around 100,000 or 120,000. Or you can try to compare some broader measure of the overall death rate with what that death rate used to be before the war, which suggests perhaps half a million deaths with a considerable margin of error. There's a third method, and it doesn't seem to work. You listen to the headlines. Nearly 50 people have been killed in Iraq. 30 people have been killed in three suicide cars. Officials in Iraq say 26 people have been killed in a suicide. The media don't seem to be shy about reporting spectacular deadly attacks. But is. Is John Pilger right to complain that they've not been clearly communicating the mounting fatalities? 60% of respondents in a survey in the UK thought that fewer than 10,000 Iraqis had lost their lives since 2003. And that's certainly way below any reasonable estimate of the true figure. And John Pilger says that ignorance is disgusting. But maybe it's not just Iraq that we're ignorant about. The British public have been shown to have a very poor grasp on all sorts of statistics. The crime rate, the number of immigrants in the country or the rate of teenage pregnancy. But when I put this to Glenn Rangwala, he didn't think that was much of an excuse.

[I]

I can understand what you're saying, Tim, but when one comes to debates about military intervention abroad, to appreciate the consequences of those actions, for good or for ill, does become specifically important. One could say that there is a high political salience in making sure that people do remain informed about the consequences of military action abroad.

[B]

Glen Rangwala. When we were researching this item, we were pretty stunned by John Pilger's number of a million deaths. And it got our reporter Charlotte MacDonald thinking.

[G]

Yeah, the thing that got me is that a million people is such a big number. That's more than half the population of Northern Ireland, a fifth of the population of Norway.

[B]

And even if a better estimate is, say, 400,000 deaths, according to Glenn Rangwala, you would expect that kind of death toll, that scale, to have a huge impact on Iraq's demographics.

[G]

Exactly. And loads of Iraqis have left the country to seek refuge elsewhere, so I expected that the population would have fallen sharply.

[B]

And has it?

[G]

Well, listen, to this, there were 25 million people in Iraq in 2003, the year of the British and US invasion. But there are around 33 million people in Iraq today.

[B]

So the population has risen by 8 million people, almost a third over the last decade.

[G]

And that's because there are many more births than deaths there. Patrick Guerlain from the UN's Demographics team has been talking me through the numbers.

[H]

Because a lot of families have a relatively large number of children, about 4 on average or more. The end result is that every year you keep having about 600,000 more people in the country. The end result is basically an overall continuous population increase.

[G]

Iraq's fertility rate is high then, and although it has been dropping, it was almost double that a generation ago. It's not fallen as fast as it has in neighbouring Iran. Now, while Iraq has been going through a decade of uncertainty and war, Iran has been quietly modernizing its public health system. Patrick Guerlain again, one or two generations

[H]

ago, they had somewhat, let's say, similar kind of characteristics. But. But after the Islamic Revolution, Iran had a very proactive family policy, but especially with a strong component on public health to help mothers and children. So Iran had set up, for example, when a young couple wants to get married, they have a one hour counseling with a medical doctor that give a briefing about health, but especially family planning, to both the future husband and the future wife. Iraq over the last 20 plus years has faced a number of challenges and this has resulted in the situation where both in terms of access to education, in terms of access to professional opportunities, women have probably not experienced as much or as many options and as many opportunities.

[B]

An average Iranian family has two children compared to Iraq's four. Thanks to Patrick Guerlain and thanks also to Charlotte MacDonald. Loyal listener Peter Marnham emailed more or lessbc.co.uk, this week after hearing this exchange on the Today programme between John Humphries and the Government Minister for Public Health, Jane Ellison. We take too much is not very good for you.

[G]

We're taking 1 billion units of alcohol out of the nation's alcohol intake by 2015.

[B]

You're doing what?

[G]

One billion units of alcohol is coming out of the nation's intake of alcohol

[B]

by 2015 through things like, for example,

[G]

some people reformulating their wine.

[B]

One billion fewer units of alcohol. Is that a big number? Peter picked up a pen and got to work on the back of a fag packet. My back of a fag packet calculation resulted in her meaning. As a result of government policy, my alcohol consumption will be one fewer small mouthful of wine per week this time next year. Have I misrepresented the government's planned impact

[F]

over the next year?

[B]

No, Peter, but you're absolutely right. And just Time to be chided by listener Pat Olver, who was irked by our study of the European Rail Passenger Satisfaction Survey in last week's programme.

[G]

Yes, Luxembourg may only have 250 miles of track within the country, but their railway system links across borders with Belgium, France and Germany. So a large factor in their customer satisfaction scores will be to do with how successfully they manage the scheduling of international services, an issue that the UK does not have to deal with. Making jokes at Luxembourg's expense is a cheap shot. Do you want to broadcast some of their other stats? High standard of living, high proportion of foreign residents combined with minimal racial tensions, low crime, etc etc.

[B]

Thank you for writing to more or lessbc.co.uk but we just don't have time to do justice to the glories of Luxembourg because the show's about to end. You can download this program and many other editions at our website BBC.co.uk more or less do please keep your comments, your questions and your ideas coming until next week. Goodbye.

[A]

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 programs for free. Find these at BBC CO UK Radio 4.