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Troubled families and unneutered cats. (R4)
00:27:56
Troubled families, nursing numbers and the mathematical consequences of unneutered cats.
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- [00:00]
A
This is more or less your statistical guide to life, the universe and everything. The programme now airs year round on the BBC World Service, but this is a full length episode from Radio 4. Hello and welcome to More or Less Current affairs by Numbers. This week, hard done by nurses and the mathematical consequences of hard partying cats. But first, an important message from the Prime Minister.
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B
I want to talk specifically about troubled families.
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A
And so do we. The Government says it has identified 120,000 troubled families who are responsible for a disproportionate share of society's ills.
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B
Let me be clear what I mean by this phrase. Officialdom might call them families with multiple disadvantages. Some in the press might call them neighbours from hell. Whatever you call them, I think we've all known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source of a large proportion of problems in our society. Drug addiction, alcohol abuse, crime. A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades through generations. Now, we've always known that these families can cost a huge amount of money, but today we're actually coming up and announcing the figures. Last year, the state spent an estimated 9 billion pounds on just 120,000 families. That is around 75,000 pounds per year per family.
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A
Let's put the money to one side for a moment and think about who these 120,000 families actually are. The Government is pretty sure they exist. There is now a Troubled Families team within the Department for Communities and Local Government set up to deal with them. The Department for Work and Pensions singled out the same 120,000 families in its social justice policy, saying they cause serious problems and antisocial behavior. Professor Ruth Levitas from Bristol University is working on a study of poverty and exclusion in the UK. She's been looking at this 120,000 figure.
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C
The 120,000 is a rounding up of 117,000. It actually comes from a piece of secondary analysis of the 2004 Families and Children Study.
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A
Okay, so it's eight years out of date.
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C
So it's eight years out of date. And in that study they found that 2% of the families had five of a list of seven characteristics. And it's very important to know what those seven characteristics are. No parent in the family is in work. The family lives in overcrowded housing. No parent has any qualifications. The mother has mental health problems. At least one parent has long standing limiting illness, disability or infirmity. The family has a low income, below 60% of median income, and the family cannot afford a number of food and clothing Items, which is a measure of material deprivation. So what we have is a study in which 2% of those families surveyed had five or more of those seven characteristics and were therefore severely multiply disadvantaged.
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A
The 2% figure, how accurately was that pinned down? I mean, of course, whenever we hear a number like 120,000, we sort of mentally assume that Ian Duncan Smith has a list of them somewhere. We know exactly who they are, but of course it's never quite like that. So, I mean, is it 2% plus or minus 0.1% or.
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C
That's a very good question. Normally speaking, you would say if this is a random sample, which is a kind of table technical term referring to the way the sample's drawn, you would expect to say it's 2% plus or minus 3%. So that's the first problem. There's a range, and the 120,000 is the midpoint of that range and that
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A
range is over 300,000 wide. So there's a pretty big problem with the estimate anyway.
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C
So it's a pretty big problem with the estimate. The other thing you have to take into account is, is that in a sample of that kind, it never is completely random because we know that the poorest and the richest sections are less likely to respond. And this is a longitudinal survey which tracks people over time. The poorest people are also more likely to drop out. And so it probably underestimates the number of multiple disadvantaged families.
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A
Okay, so we've got this number, 120,000, and we don't really have much confidence that the number itself is accurate. It's also interesting to ask ourselves what this number is really supposed to be referring to. I mean, David Cameron and other government ministers have talked about Neighbours From Hell. They've talked about the amount of money being spent trying to deal with these families, the trouble that they cause. Is it reasonable to read off that list of seven deprivations and, and infer that these are families who cause trouble?
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C
Well, absolutely not. I mean, Ian Duncan Smith in the Social Justice Strategy, says that the government has identified a group of 120,000 troubled families whose lives are so chaotic that they cost the government some 9 billion pounds in the last year alone. Well, we have no evidence to suppose that these people's lives are chaotic, certainly deprived. And Cameron, in talking about them, says, we've known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, crime, a culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades through generations. I Mean, there is no evidence that the group of families that identified in the family and children surveyed are actually troublemaking families. But the whole discourse that is being created around this is making a slippage from families that undoubtedly have troubles to being troublemakers.
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A
It's slightly odd because presumably, I mean, there are troublesome families in the country, there are drug addicts, there are noisy neighbours, there are people who commit crimes. Why doesn't the government count them instead?
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C
Well, partly because it's difficult to do, but I think that what is going on here is an attempt to suggest that, as it were, poverty and specifically social justice are about, in quotes, dealing with these 120,000 families. And what that suggests is that it's actually a quite small and residual problem, whereas in fact the problem of poverty is much, much wider than that. I mean, the households below average income data shows that in 2009, 10, some 13 and a half million people in the country were living in poverty calculated after housing costs. And so if you can say, oh, well, we've got to deal with 120,000 troubled families, it does two things. It makes the problem much smaller than it actually is in demographic terms, and it blames the behavior of the poor for their circumstances.
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A
Professor Ruth Levitas, this is an interesting example of a very common statistical crime. Count something according to one definition and then either allow people to leap to their own misleading conclusions about what's actually being counted, or, as in this case, actively muddy the waters. We think Professor Levitas is making a pretty serious accusation. The government has counted extremely deprived families and then announced that it has counted extremely disruptive families instead. So we called the Department for Communities and Local Government and asked for an interview with someone from the Troubled Families team or for a minister. They said, no, thanks, but they did give us a statement. Since we can't interview a minister, let's interview the statement instead.
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D
We have always made it clear that the 120,000 figure is an indicative estimate, using the best available data, of the number of families across the country who have multiple problems.
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A
Well, actually, you haven't made it clear at all. You've found families with problems, not problem families.
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D
We used this survey as it was the closest to what we wanted to capture.
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A
Well, perhaps, but it wasn't that close, was it?
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D
Our discussions with those who will actually be working with these families suggest their local estimates of families with these problems is very similar to the 120,000 figure we have been using as our indicator.
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A
That's very interesting. What you're saying is you don't actually have any decent statistical evidence at all. You're just relying on discussions. Well, let's leave it there.
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D
What matters most is that there are 120,000 families that will receive intensive help support.
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A
Oh, sorry, I have to move on. Enough. Goodbye.
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D
Now.
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A
Wesley Stevenson, quite a number of people have been in touch about your piece last week. When you looked at the claim that it would be cheaper to send Greek rail passengers by taxi. And many listeners think there are other ways of looking at it. What if four people shared a taxi? Would the journey be cheaper if the taxi driver had a full fare on the return journey? What about the ticket price? What if the passenger still paid the same fare to the government whether that passenger was travelling by train or by taxi?
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E
Yes, they're all very good questions. Now you may remember that we calculated that each kilometer traveled by each passenger on the Greek Railways in 2010 cost €60 cents. And we worked out that a taxi cost €1.20 per km. But this was based on one traveler in each cab.
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A
Ok, so what if we altered this calculation based on all these suggestions from the listeners?
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E
Well, we need to know a little bit more information here. So I called our friendly Greek cab driver, Greg, Mr. Taxi in Thessaloniki, to get another quote.
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B
Hello?
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E
Oh hello, is that Greg?
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A
Yes, Greg speaking.
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E
Hi there Greg, it's Wesley here from the BBC in London. How are you? I've got another quote for you if that's. If that's possible. Last time you said it would be €700 to travel from Thessaloniki to Athens. What would happen if we had four passengers?
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B
The cab can accommodate up to four passengers.
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E
So you can get four passengers in your cab. And would the price be the same?
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B
Yes, that would be €700 from Thessaloniki to Athens.
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E
And what if we were to have a return journey in there? How much would it be then if the cab was full both ways?
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A
Well, if you go directly to Athens and Bath, that would be €800.
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E
That's great, Greg. Thank you very much for your help with that. That's brilliant. Thank you.
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B
You're welcome, Wesley.
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A
So if you put four people in each cab, the taxi would cost €30 cents per passenger kilometre. And what if we then take into account the discount for Greg having a full cab on the return journey?
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E
Well, then this would cost around €18 cents per passenger kilometre.
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A
And when passengers take the train, they're paying something for their ticket. What if we assume that the passenger taking the taxi is also contributing his train fare to the government and thus reducing the cost? What difference does that make?
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E
Well, the Government could put this towards the taxi fare. So the Passenger pays around €6 cents per kilometre for the train when they pay for their ticket. Now, if they paid the same for their taxi fare, that would bring down the cost of each passenger kilometre in the taxi to €12 cents, which is vastly cheaper than the subsidised train, which are €60 cents. So, using the list of suggestions, this would mean that Stephanos Manos, who's the former Greek finance minister who first suggested this, was actually right.
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A
Well, you could look at it that way. Although I think when people heard Stephanos Manos saying it would be cheaper to put everyone in taxes, I don't think everybody would have imagined this complicated taxi sharing scheme. Nevertheless, that's. It's one way to look at it. And thank you very much to everybody who wrote in with their alternative views on this. And thanks to you, Wesley. You're listening to More or Less in association with the Open University and I'm Tim Harford. Now, here's a question. If one female cat was allowed to go about her business, how many cats would she and her descendants have created in two years? Would you believe that it was as many as 370,000? Neither would we. But it must be true, because it says so in an advertising campaign being run by the Mayhew Animal Home, a London animal charity. Little light googling reveals that staff at the Mayhew Home aren't the only ones to use this statistic or statistics very like it. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, say one cat and her offspring will produce 370,000 new cats in seven years. Others say the magic 370,000 number will be achieved in six years. We called the Mayhew Home and they told us their claim is mathematically possible
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F
if an unneutered cat has a litter between seven and eight cats on January 1st of 2012, and those seven or
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G
eight cats have a litter of the
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F
same size starting at 5 months of age and every 3 months thereafter. Assuming this trend continues, it is mathematically possible to produce upwards of 370,000 cats by December 31, 2014.
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E
Whoa.
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A
We more or less puzzled over this. And then we puzzled some more and then we built a spreadsheet that tracks, month by month, the birth of new female kittens, their growth to breeding age at five months, and an ever growing population of mature and perpetually pregnant cats. It's a bit fiddly and I'm not 100% sure we've got it right, but the bottom line is we can't See how to get to 370,000 cats with four female kittens being born every three months to every mature cat, and even assuming that the whole process starts with the birth of four female kittens, we can still only get to 63,000 female cats after two years, and presumably another 63,000 tomcats roaming around with big smiles on their faces. We haven't been able to figure out where the Mayhew home really got their figures from, nor why they just happen to offer the same number but a different time horizon as other animals organisations. Suffice it to say, we have our doubts. There's a second question, which is whether the assumption of eight kittens every three months is plausible. We asked Dr. Jane Murray, a feline epidemiologist, which means an epidemiologist who studies felines from Bristol University, and she reckons that even in the most conducive circumstances, you know, soft piano music, candlelight, plenty of champagne, that sort of thing, the net result at the end of year two would be 98 cats. And that's 369,902 short of our goal if we're going to make the Mayhew Animal Home statistics look plausible. But I wonder if this whole business with spreadsheets isn't rather missing the point. I called Dr. John Bradshaw, another cat expert from Bristol University, and outlined the thinking behind these endlessly multiplying cat spreadsheets. I asked him if they really were a realistic way of modelling a cat population explosion.
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H
Well, I think at first, maybe for the first year, that is probably what could happen. Although all of those numbers kind of assume that the cats are going to get plenty to eat and that they are going to start reproducing at a rather younger age than perhaps they normally do. But certainly after the first year or two, you're going to have so many cats around that all sorts of other things begin to limit the cat population. Finding enough to eat, finding enough places to go to have litters and that sort of thing, and the population starts to stabilize.
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A
So if I had a cat breeding farm, presumably after a couple of years, it would need to be a very large cat breeding farm, and I was doing nothing other than ensure that these cats got it on with each other, had baby cats, the baby cats were all well fed and then they went on to make more cats. If that's all I was doing, I could start to approach these population growth rates. But in the real world, we get nothing like that.
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H
Precisely. I mean, the only time I suspect that has ever happened has actually been in ancient Egypt when they used to breed cats for sacrifice and mummification. And it looks as if those assembly lines, if you like, were incredibly efficient. But in the real world, when the cats are having to find homes, they're having to go through rescue or just roam around and look for homes, then all sorts of other things will limit the population.
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A
Presumably we observe that the world is not actually made entirely of cats and this should be evidence that cats don't produce 370,000 copies of themselves every two years.
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H
Absolutely. And even, I mean, with females couldn't do that anyway. That would require you to extrapolate from males, which of course, can father litters at a much higher rate than females can produce litters.
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A
Do we have a sense of what a reasonable, realistic growth rate is of the cat population? In ordinary circumstances, if somebody should have neutered a cat and they don't, and that cat becomes feral, do we know how many cats are going to result from that decision not to neuter the cat?
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H
I don't know of any reliable figures. I think you can look at it from the other end, though, which is that if you stop reproduction by females, by neutering them, what proportion of females need to be neutered for the population to stabilise because the cat is so reproductively active and fecund, then it's actually very high. It's around 98%.
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A
Do you have to neuter pretty much all female cats to have any impact on the cat population?
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H
That's right. I mean, if you get above 98%, you do start to see the cat population shrinking in a particular area. But anything much less than about 98% of females being neutered within an area, there are enough kittens to satisfy the demand.
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A
What are neutering rates?
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H
Well, they vary tremendously in this country. There are some areas where neutering rates are above 98%, some more affluent areas of cities, the Isle of Wight, the neutering rate is reputed to be very high and kittens actually have to be imported sometimes to satisfy demand there. But in less affluent areas and in cities and in the countryside, it's almost definitely lower. So there are kittens born that will never find homes.
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A
And presumably that's actually what this is about. Then the cat population in and of itself is irrelevant, because that's going to be what it's going to be. It's actually about. We don't really want unwanted kittens to be born because they're not going to live long and happy lives.
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H
That's right. I mean, it's essentially a change in our ethical approach to dealing with cats. 100 years ago, a female cat would have a litter and if it looked as if there were going to be no homes for the litter, they were. The kittens were put in a bag and they were drowned. And we don't do that sort of thing anymore. And so kittens continue to grow to the point where decisions have to be made about whether they're actually ever going to find anywhere to live.
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A
Dr. John Bradshaw. This week, government ministers have been arguing with the Royal College of Nursing about job losses in the NHS in England. But it seems they've also been arguing between themselves. Here's Health Minister Simon Burns.
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H
There have been about 450 less nurses than there were in September 2009.
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A
I think you'll find that's fewer nurses. But anyway, here speaking just hours later, is his boss, the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley.
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B
The number of nurses, the number of qualified nurses has gone down. Number of health. Yes, I know. By nearly 3,000 in two years. By nearly 3,000 in England.
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A
Fiona woods, what's going on?
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F
Well, let's start with Mr. Burns. We think he's guilty of cherry picking the data to get to that figure of 450 jobs. You might have noticed there that he compared the most recent figures on nursing levels with numbers from September 2009.
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A
I did, and it struck me as slightly odd. I mean, he wasn't even in government then, so why pick that specific date?
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F
Well, who know? Maybe because September 2009 was a particularly low point in nursing staff numbers, which
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A
would make the number of job losses since then look smaller. Naughty. Mr. Burns, what about the Secretary of State's figure of 3,000?
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F
Well, Andrew Lansley did do better. If you look at the data between May 2010 and January 2012, the equivalent of nearly 2,600 full time nursing posts have gone. That's since the coalition came to power. And if you look at the actual number of staff who have gone, that number is over 3,670, because a lot of staff part time.
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A
So the whole concept here is slippery. Should we be looking at full time equivalent posts or should we be looking at all positions?
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F
Well, it depends whether you're worried about NHS staffing or NHS staff. If you sack two half time nurses, the NHS has lost the equivalent of one nurse, but two people have lost their jobs. I don't really think there's a single right way to measure this.
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A
Okay. And Mr. Lansley also said this.
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B
Clinical staffing levels overall have gone up the issue of the balance of staffing. I'm sorry, but they have by nearly 4,000 additional professionally qualified clinical staff.
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A
And that jeering you can hear is from members of the Royal College of Nursing, where he was speaking. Now, the Royal College of Nursing probably understand what he means when he says clinical staff. But let's be specific. What are we talking about here?
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F
Clinical staff includes doctors, nurses and midwives, as well as radiographers, medical scientists, speech and language therapists and others.
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A
And the figure of nearly 4,000 extra clinical staff, is that accurate?
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F
In fact, the number's higher. Between May 2010 and January 2012, the number of full time equivalent clinical jobs went up net by 4628. The mix, however, has changed. There are fewer nurses. But Andrew Lansley is right when he says overall, there are more clinical staff. And just to be clear, a lot of the extra staff are. Are doctors.
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A
Now, a lot of the people listening will be thinking, all of these figures are relatively small compared to the big numbers that have been reported in the media. I mean, there have been headlines suggesting 60,000 posts will go well so far
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F
we've been talking about what's actually happened so far. That 60,000 figure is a projection by the Royal College of Nursing of the total number of NHS jobs they expect to go by 2015. Now, that's not just nurses or even just clinical staff, that's all staff. It's a projection based on their own analysis of things like NHS Forward planning documents and intelligence from their members. But we can't be sure how reliable that figure will turn out to be. The Government has told us they don't recognise it. What we can say is that the equivalent of around 17,000 full time NHS jobs, that's more than 22,000, including part time posts, have been cut so far in England since the coalition came to power.
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A
Well, thank you, Fiona. And Ruth Alexander's also here. Ruth, you've been trying to put some of these numbers in context for us.
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G
Yes. Let's step back for a moment to look at the bigger picture. As Fiona said, 17,000 jobs have already gone in the NHS in England and more will follow. 60,000 if the nursing union's figures are right. That's a lot of people, however you look at it. But the NHS is a massive organisation and it's worth pointing that out.
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A
I suppose it's also worth looking at the wider trend, how NHS staffing levels have changed over time. Been looking back to 2001.
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G
Yes, because NHS spending started to rise rapidly at that point. There were just over 900,000 full time equivalent posts in the NHS in England in 2001. By 2010, that number had grown by 250,000, an increase of more than a quarter. We don't have the full figures for 2012, but the most recent stats show that there are still more people employed in the NHS than there were 10 years ago. Even if another 60,000 jobs go, there will still be more NHS staff in the were in 2001.
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A
Well, that's interesting. Although I suppose a lot of people would say the NHS was understaffed back in 2001.
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G
Yes, and demand for healthcare is always growing.
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A
When you look at these overall figures, though, it does sound like a lot of people. In fact, it's often said the NNHS is the third biggest employer in the world after the Chinese Red army and the Indian State Railway. And this is a claim we looked at recently for the World Service edition of More or Less.
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G
We certainly did. If you add up all NHS staff In the UK, not just England, you get to about 1.7 million staff, making it not the third, but the fifth biggest employer on earth.
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A
Still massive.
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G
Yes, it's just ahead of the mighty China National Petroleum Corporation, in fact.
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A
Go on then, let's have the rest of the top five.
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G
At number four is McDonald's with 1.9 million employees.
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A
Hang on a moment, I thought most McDonald's restaurants were franchises.
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G
Yes, 8% of them are actually. Which means that one and a half million workers are actually employed by different companies, but they wear the uniform. And if push came to shove, I reckon they could probably take on the Chinese Army. At number three is the Walmart supermarket chain in the US with 2.1 million staff. At number two is the People's Liberation army of China with 2.3 million employees. And at number one, it's not the Indian State Railway with 3.2 million employees, it's the United States Department of Defence.
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A
McDonald's arguably doesn't count, which makes the National Health Service the world's fourth biggest employer. And it is in fact bigger than the Indian State Railway. Which comes where in your chart of employers?
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G
In eighth place, with 1.4 million employees, behind the State Grid Corporation of China and the head of the Indian Armed forces. And in 10th place, Hon Hai Precision Industry.
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A
Ah, yes, Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn. The manufacturers of well known products like the Apple iPhone and the Sony PlayStation. Now, Ruth, as much as I hate to rain on your hit parade, I have to quibble with your placing of the US Department of Defence at number one.
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G
Yes, I know the numbers for the US Department of Defence include many thousands of civilian administrative staff. The count of the Chinese army doesn't. If I had numbers for the Chinese army civilian staff, maybe it would move up into first place. But you tried getting those numbers out of them.
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A
Yeah, I can imagine. Thank you, Ruth and thank you, Fiona. And that's all we've got time for this week, but we'll be back same time, same place for the last program in the series. As always, our website is BBC.co.uk More or less the place to listen again or subscribe to our podcast. And remember, a shorter version of More or Less is now on all year round on the World Service and on the podcast. And please do send us your non taxi related comments at More or less Less at BBC Co uk. We look forward to hearing from you. Goodbye. More or Less was presented by me, Tim Harford, the undercover economist at the Financial Times. The producer was Richard Knight and the editor, Richard Varden. More or Less was produced in association with the Open University.