To remind: No one - at all - measures life expectancy by place of birth

We’ve pointed this out a number of times before. No one - absolutely no one at all - measures life expectancy by place of birth:

It is a league table that no one wants to top. For the first time in 20 years, Blackpool, a once-glamorous seaside resort, this week overtook Glasgow to have the lowest average male life expectancy in the UK.

Men born in Blackpool will now live until just after their 73rd birthday on average, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) study, six years less than the average in the rest of England.

The figures highlighted an uncomfortable truism about modern life in Britain: wealth brings health and poverty kills, in what the ONS called a “clear” north-south divide.

The first paragraph could well be correct. The second is not. Yea even the ONS is wrong on this:

The 10 highest local area male life expectancies at birth were all located in the south of England; the 10 lowest were in Scotland, in the north of England and in Wales.

We do not measure lifespan by place of birth. We measure life span by place of death.

To give a personal example, as and when - hopefully long delayed - the Grim Reaper comes for me I will contribute to life span figures for a small town in the Alentejo, in Portugal. Not my place of birth (Torquay), my place of upbringing (Bath, relevant for any measures about Sure Start, primary school and all that) or any of the other places I’ve lived (the US a couple of times, Italy, Russia and so on). Now, yes, I’m probably more mobile than most over life so far. But it’s still vital to grasp this point.

At the level of detail the ONS is reporting there are some 400 (-ish) local areas in the UK. What is being measured is age of death of a person then registered against the one of those local areas that death happened in. OK, useful number. Interesting to know. But what it is not is the expected lifespan of someone born in that local area.

For people move around during their lives. Few move country quite as much as I have done but there’s always a certain amount of internal migration. And the lower we go in our area measurement the greater will be that migration rate. It’s almost certainly true that the vast majority of deaths in the UK happen to someone born in the UK. This becomes less so when looking at the constituent nations, less again when looking at county, lower again at this local area and who, really, thinks that anything more than a distinct minority dies in the same council ward they were born into?

The importance of this is that without knowing the rates of internal migration - which we do not know - we cannot now ascribe conditions at birth to length of lifespan. Sure, sure, we all agree there will be influences. Obviously. But our expected lifespan numbers are a proxy for this. And a proxy that does not work at the more detailed levels of population study. Therefore we cannot use the more detailed numbers for smaller geographical areas as guides to policy.

Anyone who now tries to say that we’ve got to do something about babbies in Blackpool is not just wrong they’re ignorant. Because the information we’ve got doesn’t tell us anything about babbies in Blackpool. It tells us the age people in Blackpool die at, but it’s “people in Blackpool” not “people born in Blackpool”. Those two are only the same if there’s no migration at all across local authority boundaries in and or around Blackpool. Something that simply is not true.

Yes, yes, statistics are nice to know and all that. But before we use them to do anything we need to know exactly what is being measured. Expected lifespan statistics are the age at which people die in a particular location. Not, not at all, the age at which someone born there is going to die. We simply do not have, in any shape or form, statistics relating lifespan and place of birth at any detailed geographic level.

Tim Worstall

Shining a Light: Why Britain Needs a Public Works Register

In an era where private companies routinely provide detailed financial disclosures to their shareholders, the British government's approach to transparency remains stubbornly outdated. Each year, hundreds of billions of pounds flow through government coffers, yet British citizens – the true shareholders of our public institutions – have remarkably little insight into how their money is being used. While the government’s recent promises to focus on "value for money" sound appealing, without genuine transparency, such commitments amount to little more than political rhetoric.

The opacity of government operations creates a perfect environment for inefficiency and waste to flourish. Information about public sector projects and procurement is currently scattered across departments, buried in obscure reports, or simply unavailable to the public altogether. This fragmentation of information doesn't just frustrate taxpayers trying to understand how their money is being spent – it actively hampers parliamentary oversight, prevents meaningful media scrutiny, and makes it nearly impossible for researchers to identify patterns of wasteful spending.

The solution to this challenge lies in embracing the digital age: Britain needs a comprehensive Public Works Register. This would be more than just another government database; it would serve as a searchable, real-time window into the operations of our public sector. By leveraging the newly boosted authority of the centre of digital government at DSIT as a coordinating department, with oversight from the announced Office for Value for Money (OVfM) at the Treasury, we could create a powerful tool for accountability that transforms how citizens interact with their government. More importantly, it would make these two bodies actually have something to do that serves the country rather than just one political party’s design. 

The beauty of this proposal lies in its practicality. Much of the necessary infrastructure already exists. The Government Digital Service has already demonstrated some ability to build user-friendly platforms for citizens and civil servants. Dashboards were proving useful in tracking government delivery and Starmer has said that he wants tracking of targets – so let's expand beyond this. Departments already collect vast amounts of data about their operations, spending, and outcomes – they simply aren't required to make this information accessible to the public in a meaningful way. What's missing isn't technical capability but political will.

The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has implemented a dashboard of its own. Using Tabluea’s API, it tracks 6,058 projects from commission to completion, setting overall project deadlines broken down into different stages. Users are able to filter the projects by the Ministry undertaking the works, the type of project, and where in the country it is. The British government could very easily copy such a system.

Critics might argue that creating such a system would be costly or place an undue burden on civil servants already busy with delivering a new programme for the government. However, this argument misses a crucial point: most of the required data is already being collected for internal purposes or for bodies like the Public Accounts Committee. It’s just fragmented. That means accountability is fragmented. The real change would be in making this information accessible and standardised. Furthermore, the potential efficiency gains from reduced waste and eliminated duplication would likely far outweigh any implementation costs. Citizens, researchers, private sector firms looking to supply into government, the media, and politicians in Parliament would all benefit from simply knowing what’s going on, what’s being spent in detail on what, and how it’s going in terms of delivery.

Security concerns on certain projects could be addressed through careful system design. Not all government information needs to be public – sensitive data related to national security or personal privacy can remain protected while still allowing unprecedented access to information about how public money is spent and what results it achieves.

The timing for such a reform could not be better. Labour's emphasis on value for money provides a natural opening to push for greater transparency. The recent establishment of the Office for Value for Money, combined with existing digital infrastructure and expertise within government, makes implementation more feasible than ever before, and so too does the development of recent AI products and software adoption and diffusion across government. 

What's needed now is sustained pressure to make it happen.

The technical implementation would require several key elements working in concert. The system would need standardised reporting protocols across all government departments, integration with existing government systems, and a mix of automated and manual data collection methods. Non-Executive Directors across departments could be given responsibility for data accuracy, while a cross-departmental verification team within DSIT and the OVfM could ensure consistency and reliability.

But the true value of a Public Works Register would extend far beyond simple transparency. By making government operations more visible, we would create natural pressures for better project management and more efficient use of resources. Departments would be incentivised to demonstrate value for money when their activities are open to public scrutiny. The availability of comprehensive data would support evidence-based policy making and enable researchers to identify best practices across government.

Moreover, this transparency would foster innovation. When government data is made accessible, developers, researchers, and civil society organisations can build tools and conduct analyses that further enhance public understanding and oversight. The private sector has long understood that sunlight is the best disinfectant – it's time for the government to embrace the same principle.

The contrast with the current system could not be starker. Today, citizens trying to understand government spending must navigate a labyrinth of departmental websites, freedom of information requests, and dense financial reports. A Public Works Register would transform this landscape, offering a single, comprehensive view of government activities that any citizen could access and understand.

If you’re a firm that has government contracts there is a clear win too, instead of waiting on personal relationships with civil servants to know what’s happening you’d know what’s delayed across a department. Your credit risk and political risk would be decreased, too many firms looking at the state of government finances know the risk of arbitrary cancellation of projects that happen at fiscal events in government. An early heads-up means better planning and more efficient resourcing. More realism, fewer corrections. With the government taking up an increasing amount of economic activity, this is more and more important. 

Let's be blunt here. This is basic stuff. Knowing what the government is working on, all in one place, line by line itemisation, delivery schedules, all of us citizens are able to know if civil servants or partner firms are falling behind. Everyone is able to see if the Government and the party in power has been honest with the electorate over its promises and its ability to deliver. 

For those serious about government accountability and efficiency, supporting a Public Works Register should be an obvious choice. The technology exists. The infrastructure exists. The only question is whether there's political will to shine a light on government spending. In an age where citizens expect and deserve transparency from their institutions, it's time for the government to step into the light.

As Torsten Bell doesn’t quite say, we should be more like the US

We assume that this is not mentioned out of embarrassment for Torsten is of course far too bright not to have noted it.

If talent and opportunity were equally distributed, the average winner would come from a middle income background. The reality? The average laureate grew up in a household just below the top 10%. More than 50% come from the top 5%. Dads of laureates are likely to be business owners, doctors or engineers (not politicians, sorry kids).

So either talent is hugely unequally distributed, concentrated among richer families, or opportunity is. It’s the latter. Reinforcing the case that a more equal sharing of opportunity would mean more scientific progress, the authors show that cities that have more intergenerational mobility produce more laureates.

Seems a reasonable explanation to us. We can imagine that the leisure to ponder the world was something in short supply when all hours had to be worked just to survive. But that sorting mechanism, is there a way to do it so that it is the brains and talent of this generation - not the hangover of the last - which determines? From the paper:

Access to opportunity doubled from 1901–2023, but remains highly unequal. Barriers are higher for women, but lower for Americans.

So, the problem being complained of is a smaller problem in the United States. Therefore, in order to make the problem smaller we should become more like the United States. Say, government at 28% of the economy not 45%, that might leave more room for talent to rise without bureaucratic stifling? We say that as just one of the differences. But it is still true - we are told this is a problem, we are also told of the place that has done more than others to solve it. Therefore, obviously, we must all become more like the US in order to keep solving the problem.

Tim Worstall

This might be a Mencken Violation but….

To remind: “For every complex problem, there's a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” OK, so when there’s a simple, neat, solution we must consider whether it’s wrong.

At which point:

The safety of tap water in the UK could be at risk because water companies are unable to use products to clean it, industry insiders have said, as all the laboratories that test and certify the chemicals have shut down.

People in the industry have called it a “Brexit problem” because EU countries will share laboratory capacity from 2026, meaning that if the UK was still in the EU, water companies would be able to use products that passed tests on the continent.

But UK rules mean products cannot be tested abroad; they have to be tested in the country in a certified lab, of which there are now none.

At which point the simple and neat solution is to just adopt the EU testing regime was being sufficient. Any remainer cannot complain at this - we’d have to accept that regime if we had remained or we in the future rejoin. Any leaver, well, why not accept this rule if it’s simple and neat to do so?

After all, the point is not that we must have a different regulatory regime on everything. Rather, that we get to pick and choose where we’ll have the same, or similar, or different regulations. We get to choose from that smorgasbord of options by which Brussels tries to suppress an economy.

To put it another way. Where Brussels are not being idiots - if such cases exist - why not just say that something tested to their standards is fine for us? Say, on raising chickens. Or testing metals. Or lightbulbs. Or chemicals for use in water systems? Where they are being idiots then we diverge.

Brexit means we get to choose. So, why not exercise that option of choosing? There is no need to recreate an entire parallel system, only to accept what works and not what doesn’t.

Now, to be a Mencken Violation that simple and neat solution has to be correct. So, is this a Mencken Violation? That is, why is just accepting EU testing on water chemicals - at the saving of being able to use them given that we have no relevant laboratories - wrong?

After all, it is simple and neat. The problem would be solved by a one line bill we could get done by Tuesday afternoon. “EU approved water chemicals are cool for use in the UK” might not be quite parliamentary language but it does the job.

So, why’s it wrong?

Tim Worstall

Assisted Suicide and Classical Liberalism

As Assisted Dying is an emotive topic, we remind readers that as with all our publications, ASI does not have a “house” view.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect any views held by the publisher or copyright owner. They are published as a contribution to public debate.

Much has been made that the case for assisted suicide (to use the legally correct term, as the legislation creates an exception to the offence of assisting suicide) is not a conservative one but is a liberal one. This, however, concedes too much. It is by no means obvious that liberal principles require support for assisted suicide. An obvious practical liberal objection is that the safeguards are inadequate to protect against the risk of coercion. But even assuming that there are adequate safeguards, classical liberal principles do not commend a single answer on this debate.

The common law has long held that consent to the intentional infliction of harm or death is not, with very limited exceptions, a valid defence. Such doctrines existed at the time of J S Mill and it is noteworthy that he did not criticise them.

For classical liberals, Mill’s Harm Principle is foundational. According to it the sole purpose for which power may be exercised is “to prevent harm to others.” Mill adds that “His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” It follows on Mill’s Principle that suicide may not be prohibited. But what about assisted suicide and euthanasia?

If D assists P’s suicide or indeed kills him consensually, is he not harming another? Nowhere does Mill explicitly consider this issue but in he does have a discussion of a related matter:

“In cases of personal conduct supposed to be blamable, but which respect for liberty precludes society from preventing or punishing, because the evil directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do, ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or instigate? This question is not free from difficulty. The case of a person who solicits another to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct. To give advice or offer inducements to anyone, is a social act, and may therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects the first impression, by showing that if the case is not strictly within the definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons on which the principle of individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. If people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only themselves, to act as seems best to themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free to consult with one another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and give and receive suggestions.”

The key point is that Mill concedes that a principle against criminalising instigators does not strictly fall within the harm principle and the answer Mill gives acknowledges nuance and complexity: in cases where the instigator derives a benefit from it, he considers prohibition to be appropriate. The examples he gives are those who run gambling houses or brothels.

The point, though, is not to engage in exegesis of Mill but to note that there is a tension between two liberal principles. On the one hand, the person who assists suicide (or kills someone at their request) does “a social act, and may therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed amenable to social control.” On the other hand, if someone wants to commit suicide they “must equally be free to consult with one another”.

To put it more generally, there is a tension between the harm principle and respect for autonomy. These are both important liberal principles and, in the case of assisted suicide, a classical liberal could very well reach the conclusion that the prevention of harm should win out over autonomy.

It is notable that the ASI a few years ago published a paper arguing that the common law rule that consent cannot be a defence to ABH and GBH should be overturned. But as the learned author noted “There must, of course, be limits” and it is notable that he did not think that rule should be overturned when death is concerned. Indeed, I understand that he opposes the legalisation of assisted suicide.

To conclude, classical liberal principles do not give a single answer to the question of whether assisted suicide should be legalised or not. But what I would hope that they can all agree on is that this should not be added to already long list of state functions as the Leadbeater Bill proposes to do. The Swiss model of decriminalisation as a matter of general criminal law (unless it is done for selfish motives) but with no state involvement in the provision appears to be more aligned to classical liberal principles than what is being proposed. However, as I argued, a good case can be made that the status quo is also consistent with classical liberal principles.

Britain’s planning system: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Apologies for coming over all Believe It Or Not but this is the correct solution to Britain’s planning problems. Rather than the Prime Minister’s suggestions of minor changes, we need to destroy the system as a whole:

Marks & Spencer has won a years-long battle to bulldoze and rebuild its Oxford Street department store after Angela Rayner approved the scheme on appeal.

The Housing Secretary on Thursday greenlit the renovation of M&S’s Marble Arch shop after “taking into account all of the evidence” in the case. It comes after the proposal was initially blocked by Michael Gove, the former housing secretary, provoking anger from the retailer.

Super and all that. The building belongs to Marks & Spencer and if they want a new one then that’s up to them. We think this a fairly simple suggestion.

But we also need to consider that wider world and environment, of course we do:

The decision comes almost five years after M&S first submitted plans to demolish the art deco building near Marble Arch and replace it with a new 10-storey complex.

The economy - or gross domestic product if you prefer - is the value added by activity. Economic growth is an increase in that value add. We can also describe economic growth as being the speed at which people do new things, old things in new ways or even - and least important - more of the same old things. That speed - and therefore economic growth - is constipated by the planning system, as we can see here.

A major reason that we Britons are poorer than we need to be is the planning system resulting from the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. So, blow it up, proper blow up - kablooie.

This isn’t just about houses on the Green Belt - and damn good idea if we’ve ever heard one. It’s about the economy as a whole. The TCPA makes us poorer and let’s not be that poor any longer, eh?

Tim Worstall

Guardian columnist stumbles close to an economic truth

Of course, having got, vaguely, in the right space on the field there’s still a fumble of the pass:

Or to put it another way: the “abundance” in any given transaction is not what’s on offer from the retailer, but a much more precious resource….

That’s true, yes. The fumble is the next bit:

….– that of the consumer’s time.

The value in a transaction is not what is being presented by the retailer, yes, but it’s the value perceived by the consumer. Whatever that value is - whether it be of time, use, fashion, social status or any of the other things which interest human beings.

This is an important observation of course. For it’s what underpins everything about a market economy. Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Because that is the measure of what the consumer values them at - at least. People will not pay more than that value they attach after all.

This then kills, stone dead, the labour theory of value. For we do not, we fellow members of the species, assign that value according to any calculation, at all, of the labour that went into the creation. Therefore the LTV might be useful as an intellectual exercise but not as a guide, rule or description of an economy which contains us.

Still, we do need to applaud a Guardian columnist at least beginning to stumble around in the right part of that economic playing pitch. We assume that this near success is a result of everyone being on strike - no doubt normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

Tim Worstall

MiliEd’s plans get a firm thwack on the logical botty

Professor Helm:

On top of all this, the UK’s net zero electricity target by 2030 is not going to be achieved. In failing to meet a very short-term target, it is going to maximise the costs of trying. If a target is set to do the practically impossible in around 60 months, then the logical consequences is that it will cost whatever it costs. The target is supreme. This is not pay-what-can-be-afforded, but rather pay-whatever-it-costs. The faster the required pathway, the more each part will cost. Want some transformers? Suppliers have full order books. What will it cost to pre-empt other customers in Europe and the US? The top price is the answer. Want the stuff produced at breakneck speed? Pay the overtime and additional labour and equipment to the manufacture.

There is much more there. We recommend reading all of it. But this particular part of it. It’s an essential part of the Nordhaus and Stern analyses of the problem. Given that the British government did pay Nick Stern - now M’Lud such for having written it - to write the 1200 page report it would, we think, behove British government planning if it understood, even contained, the major point made.

Beating climate change will produce benefits. Beating climate change will have costs. Humanity is best served when the benefits of the beaten are greater than the costs of the beating. Thus the target is not emissions by some date, a temperature by some other, it’s the costs and benefits of the beating or beaten.

It is price that matters. This carries with it the insistence that as the price rises we should do less of it. Also, that we should be efficient in our methods because that’s the way we’ll do more of that beating.

Which is why a simple carbon tax and leave be of course. Prices are the efficient way to change human behaviour. Prices also - obviously - contain all that information about what is worth doing and what is not.

As Helm notes here, and as both the govt’s own commissioned report and that Nobel-winning work insist, doing everything in a hubba-hubba-hurry is the wrong way to expensively increases costs over benefits.

Not that we expect this firm beating on the logical fundament to make any difference. There are those out there firmly insistent upon ignoring reality, sadly including our current Sec of State on the matter.

Tim Worstall

The Polly Toynbee problem explained

Even, the Polly Toynbee problem explained in her own words:

The mantra for a long time was that wealth taxes don’t work. But that can no longer be the answer. In a recent paper for the Institute for Public Policy Research, Tom Clark lays out the reasons why, showing how much faster the value of wealth has grown compared with the value of work.

It could be true, or not true, that wealth taxes work or do not work. Whether or not they do or not is a function of reality. But the claim here is that wealth taxes must work because Polly thinks that they should. This is not - not necessarily - coincident with reality. Which is indeed that Polly Toynbee problem writ large in her own words. Desires are to be imposed upon reality.

As to the Tom Clark report. Just roughly,. you understand, without being so tiresome as to actually look up the exact numbers. Household wealth is about £15 trillion. Some £2 trillion of that is financial assets. The sort of thing we think of as billionaires waving in our faces as they shout “Loadsamoney!” at us. The other £13 trillion is - v roughly - equally split between pensions and property.

Property - by which is meant here housing - is grossly expensive. It is so because we have the idiot Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors which - as so often with the nationalisation of something, here the use of land - has left us with a shortage of land that can be used to build upon and thus grossly extortionate pricing. It is - again, roughly - true that about half the value of Britain’s housing (let us not be so gauche as to actually look up the number) is the chitty that allows a house to be built on that piece of land. Destroy the TCPA - proper blow up, kablooie - and we solve that problem neatly. Yes, there will still be positional differences in price but that gargantuan mugging of the general householder will cease.

The other half, pensions. Which brings us to the bit that an actual economist really should have noted:

Over the 30-odd years from 1980, the ratio of private wealth to national income steadily doubled, from the typical post-war ratio of about 3:1 to roughly 6:1 by the time of the financial crisis….(and a very large elision here)…..Intellectually, Thomas Piketty’s unlikely but perfectly timed blockbuster, Capital in the 21st Century (2014), woke the world up not only to the vastly unequal facts, but also to certain dynamics which could – without action – propel us towards a new “patrimonial capitalism”

What also happened from the 1960s to today was that expected time in retirement moved from a mere handful of years after the gold watch presentation to a mere handful of decades. Those 20 and 30 years requiring financing. Which is why pensions savings are now a several times multiple of annual national income.

That ratio of wealth to GDP is down to just those two factors. The idiocy - no, too weak, gross and rampant stupidity - of our planning system and the very welcome expansion in lifespans and the associated saving so as to have a crust to nibble upon during retirement.

Once we take account of those vast majority parts of household wealth there is no problem with that remaining financial wealth. It’s still under annual national income after all.

Kill, kablooie, our planning system and we’re done.

And wealth taxes still don’t work whatever Polly’s desires.

Tim Worstall

An unfit economy

My local gym is to close. I have been using it, usually every day, for over three decades. It was badly hit during the lockdowns, as everyone was, but it survived. But the most recent budget has overwhelmed it.

 It is labour intensive, and an increase in the minimum and living wage, coupled with a rise in so-called employer National Insurance and a halving of the threshold at which it is paid, have combined to make it unviable.

I was very sorry for the staff who spent a distraught weekend after being told on Friday that they would lose their jobs four days before Christmas.

 Unfortunately, the recent budget forgets the core lesson of economics 101: if you raise the price of something, then all other things being equal, people will demand less of it. This applies to labour as well as to goods. Reeves has made labour too expensive for many businesses, leading them to cut back on hiring, and to shed labour if they can. The hospitality industry, much of which depends on low cost labour, will be particularly hard hit. Pubs, bars and restaurants will close, taking their jobs with them.

The budget was called a growth budget, but it was immediately obvious that this was an anti-growth budget. Jobs will disappear, are already disappearing, and with it the consumption their wages generated.

 The UK economy has been set on a slope to decline for some time, and the budget has hammered too many nails into its coffin. It seems to be too much to ask that the status quo economic thinking be replaced by something at least more sensible to market forces.