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By Jane Falkingham
Dean of the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences
University of Southampton, Southampton, England.

The life expectancy of human beings will soon exceed 90 years for the first time, scientists have predicted. An international study suggests that people will be living far longer in 2030, with the gap between men and women starting to close.

The decline in mortality and associated improvement in survival is one of the great success stories of the 20th century.

Given the mortality rates prevailing at the start of the last century, a baby boy born in the UK in 1901 could on average expect to live to the age of 45.

By the beginning of this century, average male life expectancy had risen to 75 years.

This is an increase of 30 years in life expectancy over a century.

Broken down further, it sounds even more extraordinary: an increase of three years in every ten, or three-and-a-half months every year. That's over seven hours every day across the century.

These improvements in life expectancy reflect advances in medicine and public health, as well as rising standards of living, better education, improved nutrition and changes in lifestyles. They also naturally lead to discussions around the meaning of age itself.

There is no commonly accepted definition of when old age begins. For some, the cut-off for when old age starts is 65 years, but this is somewhat arbitrary and is often simply associated with the age one can begin to receive a pension and other benefits.

One alternative approach is to look at the levels of mortality associated with different ages. If one thinks of the onset of old age as being when there is a 1% chance of dying, and the onset of "older old age" as being when there is a 10% chance of dying, it is clear that old age is being increasingly postponed.

Levels of mortality that used to prevail in people's early 50s are now prevailing in the their early 60s. For men, the age where there is a 1% chance of dying has risen from 52 in 1955 to 63 in 2015. For women, it has shifted from 58 to 68. Similarly, the onset of "older old age" has moved from 77 for men in 1955 to 86 in 2015, and from 80 to 88 among women. So the good news is that 60 really is the new 50.

The mortality assumptions included in the population projections of the Office for National Statistics suggest that the onset of old age for men born in 1955 will be around age 65 and for women this will be at age 70. However "older old age" will not occur until age 91 for this group of men, and at 92 for women.

Given that some of those born in 1955 are now starting to retire, this suggests that they will be able to look forward to an active and healthy retirement.

If we believe the projections, a boy born in 2015 might expect to reach 75 before the onset of later life and will reach 98 before older old age sets in, while a girl born in 2015 who has survived her first year of life is likely to reach 100 before she faces a year where the mortality risk reaches 10%.

Time to make plans

What do these increases in survival mean? People currently in mid-life commonly underestimate their likely life expectancy and thus the time period over which they will need to stretch their pension saving.

However, for those young women and men entering their 20s, if they knew with a high degree of certainty that they were likely to survive well into their 90s in good health and might even survive into their 100s, how many might choose to re-prioritise their life course.

At present, the period of leaving education, establishing a career and having a family all overlaps during people's 20s and 30s, resulting in the "rush hour of life". Perhaps it is time to rethink and to slow down.

What society needs is a system that will allow people to redistribute time and resources across the life course, facilitating investment in family life at one stage and work at another. Of course, there are uncertainties around the latest projections but if the past is a guide to the future, the time to start thinking is now.
PHOTO: Via Wikipedia [CC] Jane Falkingham, Dean of the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Rising life expectancy and why we need to rethink the meaning of old age | LocalHealthGuide

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By Jane Falkingham Dean of the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences University of Southampton, Southampton, England. The life expectancy of human beings will soon exceed 90 years for the first time, scientists have predicted. An international study suggests that people will be living far longer in 2030, with the gap between men and women starting to close.

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Britain is facing a "crisis of fatherlessness" in which almost half of all children born today will not be living with both parents by the time they are 15, the new chief executive of the thinktank founded by Iain Duncan Smith has warned.

Andy Cook, who runs the Centre for Social Justice, which is chaired by the former cabinet minister, argued that regular contact with a father figure reduced criminal behaviour in children and boosted cognitive skills including reasoning and language development.

Cook claimed there was too much of a "throwaway culture" to parenting, adding: "Over the last 40 years, the meteoric rise in family breakdown has blighted the lives of the poorest children the most. The relationship children have with their father affects their self-esteem, how well they do at school, even whether they are able to form happy, long-lasting relationships as adults."

The Observer can reveal that tackling family breakdown was going to be at the heart of David Cameron's "life chances strategy", which was to be released as his government's flagship policy within days of June's EU referendum result. But after taking over as prime minister, Theresa May ditched the proposals, which some see as controversial because they include a value judgment and risk stigmatising single parents.

However, sources have told the Observer that a new social justice green paper - due to be published within weeks - will have family stability at its heart. The plans will focus on helping parents to develop a strong working relationship, but they will stress the need to target efforts not only on couples but also on those who have separated.

Cook said it was inevitable that relationships would not always work out, but argued that a culture shift could reduce the prevalence of family breakdown, and stressed the importance of parenting once couples had separated. "We need a societal shift in perspective from regarding fathers as a dispensable extra to recognising their value as a crucial pillar in a child's life," he said.

He said he first started a small charity after meeting two 17-year-olds, Ash and Terry, on an estate in Loughborough, Leicestershire, with no prospect of employment. Cook was taken aback by their lack of life chances, claiming "if it is happening in leafy Loughborough, what is happening in Leeds or London?" The "lads" each had five or six siblings, and all with different fathers, he said.

He argued that it was important to help people to be resilient as relationships go through ups and down, saying "there's quite a throwaway culture; if things aren't working, people try something new. We are trying to find a way to support people like Ash and Terry to find a relationship and try to stick with it."

Cook said policy ought to be focused on longer-term thinking, and emphasising the potential impact on children of troubled relationships, stressing the disproportionate effect on the poorest. His thinktank's figures show that by the age of five 48% of children in low-income families are not living with both parents, compared with 16% of children in middle- to higher-income families.

He said his work would also focus on four other factors that contributed to poverty: educational failure, worklessness, problem debt and addiction. Looking only at income levels skewed policy, he added. Despite controversy in the education sector about the growth of grammar schools, allowed by May in one of her first acts as prime minister, Cook argued that there was evidence they could be successful if headteachers tried to find the most talented children from poorer families.

The work on Cameron's strategy was led by a former chief executive of the Centre for Social Justice, Christian Guy, who became the PM's poverty adviser. He said the hope of the previous strategy was to "start a parenting revolution - for too long politicians looked away as family instability and poor child development blighted lives in the poorest neighbourhoods".

"Parents want what's best for their children, but great advice tends to be the preserve of the better off. This has to change if we want to see children starting school ready to learn, to communicate and forming healthy relationships."

Guy said that supporting parenting should be a top priority for those trying to tackle poverty. "Whatever Theresa May calls her strategy, stronger parenting should be at its heart," he added.
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Iain Duncan Smith thinktank in 'fatherless society' warning

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Britain is facing a "crisis of fatherlessness" in which almost half of all children born today will not be living with both parents by the time they are 15, the new chief executive of the thinktank founded by Iain Duncan Smith has warned.

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A Republican plan to repeal key provisions of the Affordable Care Act would leave 32 million people without health coverage and double the cost of insurance premiums over the next decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The budget office report, released on Tuesday, analyzed the likely impact of a Republican proposal approved by Congress in 2015 and vetoed by Barack Obama that would repeal major provisions of the healthcare law while leaving other parts in place. The estimate does not account for a replacement plan, which Republicans have vowed to propose soon.

The report follows a weekend of action by Democratic lawmakers and liberal groups to protest against the law's repeal and adds to the pressure on Republicans in Congress to craft replacement legislation that would avoid losses in coverage for millions of Americans and disruptions to stability in the market.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump promised that a Republican plan would provide " insurance for everybody ". He has also demanded that his party immediately repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and pass a healthcare law "simultaneously".

The CBO report, which was requested by top Senate Democrats, estimated that 18 million people would lose their insurance and premiums would rise by 20% to 25% in the first year following the dismantling of the law. The number of uninsured could rise to 32 million by 2026, while causing premiums to double in that timeframe.

The report arrived at 32 million people by estimating that 23 million fewer people would have coverage through the individual insurance market and 19 million fewer people would have coverage under Medicaid. These changes would be partially offset by an estimated increase of 11 million people who are covered through insurance offered by their employer.

"This projection is meaningless, as it takes into account no measures to replace the law nor actions that the incoming administration will take to revitalize the individual market that has been decimated by Obamacare," said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the House speaker, Paul Ryan.

Democrats seized on the report, arguing that a repeal of the law would throw millions Americans off their insurance plans.

"Nonpartisan statistics don't lie," the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement. "It's crystal clear that the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act will increase healthcare costs for millions of Americans and kick millions more off of their health insurance."

Nonpartisan statistics don't lie

Chuck Schumer

Expressing a similar response, the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, called Republican efforts' to repeal the law "nothing less than a nightmare for the American people".

"While President-elect Trump promises 'insurance for everybody', Republicans are moving to destroy the health coverage of tens of millions of Americans and drive up costs for millions more," Pelosi said in a statement. "The GOP plan isn't repeal and delay, or repeal and replace - it's cut and run."

Republicans moved quickly with a plan to repeal the law in the first two weeks of Congress but have yet to provide details on which parts of the law they will dismantle - and what their plan is to replace it.

Over the next few weeks, four congressional committees will be working on a draft of the repeal legislation. Though Republicans have provided few details on this process, they are thought to be using as a framework the 2015 bill assessed in the CBO report.

The bill would eliminate the tax penalties against people who do not have insurance, the linchpin of the law that is known as the individual mandate. It would also eliminate a provision expanding Medicaid eligibility and subsidies available to lower-income people to buy insurance through the marketplaces. However, the bill does not remove the requirement for insurance companies to provide coverage regardless of pre-existing health conditions.

A spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said that the report assumes a "situation that simply does not exist and that no one in Congress advocates".

"After years of devastating news about the consequences of Obamacare, I can see why Democrats would want to change the subject. But Democrats face a choice now: do they agree with their leader and refuse to work together on any reforms at all?" said Don Stewart, the McConnell spokesman. "Or do they agree with us that doing nothing is not an option, and work with us on a series of step-by-step reforms to prevent the scenario envisioned by the CBO report."

But as Republicans move to unwind the law, they may face a changing landscape. According to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the law has "never been more popular". The poll released on Tuesday found that 45% of respondents believe Obamacare is a "good idea" - the highest percentage since they began asking the question in April 2009.

Meanwhile, the poll found that half of Americans say they have "little to no confidence" that Republican proposals would improve the law.

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Repealing Obamacare would leave 32m without health coverage, analysis finds

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A Republican plan to repeal key provisions of the Affordable Care Act would leave 32 million people without health coverage and double the cost of insurance premiums over the next decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

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The government's horrific start to the year is not only fully deserved, it is completely appropriate. The Centrelink shemozzle and entitlements abuses are a wonderful amalgam of the absence of respect for those on welfare and the tin-eared political nous which characterises this government.

Let's not pretend that Centrelink issuing faulty debt notices is just a case of IT gone wrong.

Faults where people are issued debt notices of $14,000 due to the system incorrectly duplicating employers, or because it hamfistedly averages annual income over 52 weeks are not really IT glitches, but rather are part of the policy design.

Such faults are implicit in a data matching system designed notionally to catch fraud, but which is used instead to raise revenue by targeting over-payments that occurred due to honest mistakes.

Data matching is actually a rather sensible tool for governments to use. But there is a world of difference between using it to better discover cases of fraud, and to discover instances where, for example, a person was overpaid $54 four years ago because he received the dole for one day longer than he was supposed to.

The system is not designed to be so precise, and the government clearly knew this before the mass of complaints began occurring late December and into this new year.

You can use data matching to precisely "catch" that $54 overpayment, but it requires human involvement - the paying of public servants to go into sharper detail than the obtuse data-matching system. But that can cost the government more in labour than is recovered when dealing with such small amounts.

If raising revenue is the only concern, the key is to make the system as cheap as possible, and thus you remove the "costly" humans and make it automated. But you would only do this if your desire for revenue outweighed your respect of the people who you know will receive erroneous (and dare one suggest, fraudulent) debt notices.

And we know the government has no respect for those on welfare.

And we know the government has no respect for those on welfare.

Social services minister Christian Porter was so determined to have people believe that those on welfare are over-paid and lazy he spent last year putting out absurd figures that attempted to convince voters the welfare system was either being rorted or was too generous - such as when he suggested a single mum with four kids was better off on welfare than if she had a job.

So when you hear Porter argue that the automated system is "about as reasonable a process as you could possibly derive", you need to understand that "reasonable" in his mind includes spouting nonsense designed to vilify some of the poorest in our society.

Little wonder that this fetid government happily signed off on this mail scam of a program - after all there's revenue to be gained, in this case, $2.1bn over four years.

Human services minister Alan Tudge highlights the primacy of the system as a revenue gathering exercise when he claimed this week it has recovered $300m since July, despite that figure only being the amount of debt "identified".

Given the many instances of erroneously identified debts that have come to light in the past two weeks, questions surely need to be asked about how solid is the $2.1bn revenue figure.

Rather nicely, the Centrelink debt scam has also folded into the entitlements scandal, with Tudge suggesting that of the abuses of political entitlements there was no malevolent intent. He argued that "I don't think, in relation to some of the examples that I have seen in recent times, that people have deliberately sought to defraud the system."

It's a pretty generous assessment from the man who last year told Channel 9's A Current Affair of those who owed a Centrelink debt that "we'll find you, we'll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison."

So a minister claiming $13,000 in charter flights between capital cites gets the benefit of the doubt, but welfare recipients are left to prove their innocence while being threatened with jail and forced to pay back the debt even while the amount is in dispute.

The entitlements scandal, which has seen health minister Sussan Ley resign, is also fully deserved. The government had plenty of opportunity fix the current system which allows politicians to claim expenses for the flimsiest of reasons.

The government failed to act on the recommendations of a review into entitlements after the Brownyn Bishop "choppergate" scandal, despite it being one of the issues which annoyed voters the most.

A government with any understanding of the political mood of the electorate would have known ignoring the report would come back to bite them, and bite them hard. But given you have government ministers such as Steven Ciobo suggesting voters "expect" politicians to claim travel entitlements to attend sporting events, understanding the political mood would not seem to be one of the government's strengths.

That it took this scandal for the prime minister to announce he will implement the recommendations of the review and also introduce an independent authority suggests he is a leader very good at closing the door after the horse has bolted.

That the latest scandal also involves a minister using a Comcar to buy a $795,000 investment property only makes it more deserved given the Turnbull government has fought against any measures to water down negative gearing and attack housing affordability.

Having a minister claim entitlements while buying an investment property is probably the best example of an out of touch government as you could imagine. About the only better example would be a minister claiming entitlements to attend a polo event. But that would just be too much of a caricature to believe.

Oh hello, Julie Bishop.

There is however one silver lining for the government on this whole awful start to the year. Normally a government would be caught off guard by a having senior minister resign. Fortunately this government has Arthur Sinodinos, who already has experience of standing aside from a ministerial role during the Independent Commission Against Corruption's investigation into Australian Water Holdings , ready to step in and take over Ley's role.

Experience matters at such times.

This article was amended on 16 January 2017 to clarify Arthur Sinodinos did not face a corruption investigation. Sinodinos gave evidence in an Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into Australian Water Holdings, of which he was deputy chairman and chairman before becoming a senator. There are no corruption findings against Sinodinos.

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The government's horrific start to the year is fully deserved and completely appropriate | Greg Jericho

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The government's horrific start to the year is not only fully deserved, it is completely appropriate. The Centrelink shemozzle and entitlements abuses are a wonderful amalgam of the absence of respect for those on welfare and the tin-eared political nous which characterises this government.

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This research identifies 'cultural models' - shared assumptions and patterns of thinking - which members of the British public broadly share and draw upon when thinking about poverty.

The 'non-negotiable needs' model

Poverty is understood as the lack of basic, absolute needs - food, shelter, clothing and warmth. All other things are understood as 'wants' or luxuries. This cultural model can help to garner support for a limited form of welfare support that meets basic needs, and action to address the costs of housing. However, it undermines support for a more robust welfare state and leads the public to focus on tightening up the benefits system.

The 'spectrum of self-determination' model

People reason that material resources are important because they both satisfy wants or needs and enable people to freely choose or determine their own path in life. This allows people to see a spectrum of poverty, where more resources means more self-determination. This expands public thinking about the support people need to live an autonomous life, but it can also undermine the sense that society should provide a basic level of welfare support to all.

The 'post-poverty' model

There is a strong tendency to identify poverty with other places - such as the third world - and the UK's past. Drawing upon this model, the public assumes UK society is prosperous and has progressed beyond poverty, undermining concern for the issue in the UK today.

The 'poverty romanticism' model

People romanticise poverty as a form of freedom from unnecessary consumer goods and modern materialistic society. This model directly impedes thinking about poverty as a serious social problem that must be addressed.

The 'game is rigged' model

People draw upon an assumption that economic outcomes, such as poverty, are controlled by elites who employ government policies to benefit themselves and keep others down. This model helps to highlight inequality, but makes change through government-led reform seem unrealistic.

The 'economic naturalism' model

People view the economy as shaped by mysterious market forces beyond individual or societal control. This leads people to assume that there are significant limits on society or government's ability to reduce or eliminate poverty by affecting the economy.

The 'self-makingness' model

People frequently attribute an individual's circumstances to their personal choices and level of motivation. They understand poverty to be the result of inadequate effort and poor choices, undermining the public's ability to appreciate the environmental and systemic contexts that enable or constrain individuals to shape their lives.

The 'culture of poverty' model

This model perceives certain communities to have a set of shared norms and values - particularly worklessness - which result in an unbreakable intergenerational cycle of poverty. This model shifts blame from the individual to the community, and undermines support for any solution other than fundamentally changing cultural norms among certain groups of society. It can lead members of the public to support a tightening of the benefits system to prevent exploitation.

The 'opportunity structures' model

People understand poverty to be caused by a lack of adequate opportunities, such as good education and strong social networks. This model enables people to appreciate the impact of social structures on the chances of an individual experiencing poverty. It can move people beyond a 'basic needs' view of poverty, and make them more receptive to education and skills development policies.

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Talking about poverty: how experts and the public understand UK poverty

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This research identifies 'cultural models' - shared assumptions and patterns of thinking - which members of the British public broadly share and draw upon when thinking about poverty. Poverty is understood as the lack of basic, absolute needs - food, shelter, clothing and warmth. All other things are understood as 'wants' or luxuries.

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Right Relevance : Influencers, Articles and Conversations

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Discover fresh relevant content to your interests, save interesting articles, follow influential experts, be the first to share soon-to-be viral content and much more

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Going circular on education. Pexels

When James Callaghan, then prime minister, launched his great debate on education at Ruskin College Oxford in 1976, the content and role of education became a hotly contested subject. Schools today, however, are now less concerned with education, and more with how social engineering can achieve a variety of external goals external. The legacy of New Labour, in particular, is that schools have become the focus for resolving all "social ills", from obesity to radicalisation.

The call for school well-being league tables along with an obsession with character, self-esteem, and happiness is the most recent expression of this social engineering. So in this new year, enough is enough - it's time to take education back to basics, with my seven suggestions for 2017.

1. Put subjects at the heart of the curriculum

In the current climate, the true meaning of education has been lost. In its purest form, education is the simple means of passing knowledge and understanding on to a new generation. But the number of debates, enquiries and books with titles such as "What is education for?" or "What are schools for?" is indicative of a crisis of meaning.

Despite the Association of Teachers and Lecturer's views that "subjects" are old-fashioned, elitist and inappropriate for today, school subjects actually provide the best access to powerful knowledge based upon the consensus in the academic disciplines, rather than just the arbitrary whims of teachers.

The way I see it is simple: teach a knowledge-based curriculum and "character" and the rest will take care of itself. But teach character, and you will be denying pupils an education.

2. Stop reducing education to 'skills' and 'learning objectives'

Education is different from skills-based training, and all the talk of "learning objectives" means that education is now something with specific and determined ends - making it no longer differentiated from training.

Even at doctoral level students are now expected to set out their "aims" and "objectives". But just because it is so familiar and rarely challenged doesn't mean that it isn't an error. Schools may, and do, waste children's time by offering various bits of training - but that is schooling not education.

3. Take things back to basics

Education is something we should value for its own sake, not for another purpose - it is an end in itself not a means.

Almost every teacher and teacher trainer now believe that the instrumental purpose of education is to promote social justice, which embodies a rather patronising view of ordinary people as "vulnerable victims", or the poor and "needy". But if you actually educate children and young people properly they will learn to think for themselves rather than just being indoctrinated - which is what "education for social justice" actually means.

4. Recognise that education is for all

Education begins with the premise that all children can be educated in all subjects to the highest level possible. But today's error is that some children are thought to require a different sort of education. Or it is believed that certain children can't do certain subjects such as mathematics, physics, or languages. Or that some pupils - most recently white working class boys - can only reach a low level in a subject.

If you think any of this you can't teach and should not be in a classroom.

Pexels

5. Get rid of the obsession with pedagogy

In 1981 Brian Simon wrote his seminal paper: "Why no pedagogy in England?" Today if he was alive and writing it might be titled "Too much pedagogy in England".

Pedagogy isn't just a pretentious term for "teaching", but an attack on subject-based education, which it tries to replace with technological know-how or some "transformative" activity that encourages critical reflection on pupils' beliefs and knowledge - which they barely have. Or it offers them some "therapeutic" activity such as mindfulness.

6. Trust teachers to teach

Traditionally, education was based on a commitment to knowledge and understanding and the need to find ways of teaching subjects to children. And it was a messy business that teachers had to work out through experience - which meant a lifetime spent in the classroom.

But calls for "evidence-based" education has led to an attack on subjects and teachers no longer trusting themselves to teach - a point well argued by teacher Mark Taylor who argues that:

There's simply no sense in seeking what we might call an evidence-based moral purpose.

This needs to change. We need our teachers to be confident in their abilities to teach their subject.

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7. So that there will be more real teachers

There are few educators today and there are too many trainers and facilitators concerned with soft skills. This has produced what has been lampooned as the "snowflake" generation of students who can't cope with difficult subjects and ideas. This is an indictment of a whole generation of educators and their antipathy to knowledge.

We need to grow more teachers committed to Matthew Arnold's vision of getting children to learn "the best that is known and thought in the world" - as the inspector of schools and English poet famously said. That is the noble task of a noble profession and we need to rebuild it.

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Seven ways education needs to change in 2017

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When James Callaghan, then prime minister, launched his great debate on education at Ruskin College Oxford in 1976, the content and role of education became a hotly contested subject. Schools today, however, are now less concerned with education, and more with how social engineering can achieve a variety of external goals external.

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» Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century The Sociological Imagination

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» Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century The Sociological Imagination

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TED have come to the rescue of those who, like me, only got 50 pages into Piketty's Capital before getting distracted:

French economist Thomas Piketty caused a sensation in early 2014 with his book on a simple, brutal formula explaining economic inequality: r > g (meaning that return on capital is generally higher than economic growth). Here, he talks through the massive data set that led him to conclude: Economic inequality is not new, but it is getting worse, with radical possible impacts.

Categories: Rethinking The World

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Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century

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TED have come to the rescue of those who, like me, only got 50 pages into Piketty's Capital before getting distracted: French economist Thomas Piketty caused a sensation in early 2014 with his book on a simple, brutal formula explaining economic inequality: r > g (meaning that return on capital is generally higher than economic growth).

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There is no inevitable negative effect of immigration on the quality of people's lives in the UK

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Many people think that migrants take jobs away from citizens, reduce wages or both. Others argue that immigrants benefit the economy because they take risks and start businesses. In three short vi...

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In 2014 Peter Walsh identified extensive self-plagiarism (as well as some actual plagiarism) in Zygmunt Bauman's work and made his findings public. He was subject to some remarkable attacks by senior figures (including Brad Evans and Henry Giroux invoking the image of "a Stasi witch hunt" to attack the "micro-fascist" Walsh) which I found as hyperbolic as they were off-putting. Not least of all because such internationally renowned figures seemingly didn't even bother to engage with Peter's published paper (co-written with David Lehmann)detailing his findings.

It's always seemed obvious to me that this was interesting work in the sociology of intellectual life, motivated by a genuine curiosity concerning the figure of the 'academic celebrity' and what it means for the future of social theory. Furthermore, I remain convinced this is an important conversation for us to have and it is not, as yet, being had in any meaningful way.

Therefore I recorded a podcast with Peter about these issues. Apologies for the sound quality, I hadn't expected that a light wind could cause such problems for a discussion we recorded outside.

Categories: Higher Education

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A conversation with Peter Walsh about Zygmunt Bauman, Academic Celebrity and Social Theory

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In 2014 Peter Walsh identified extensive self-plagiarism (as well as some actual plagiarism) in Zygmunt Bauman's work and made his findings public. He was subject to some remarkable attacks by senior figures (including Brad Evans and Henry Giroux invoking the image of "a Stasi witch hunt" to attack the "micro-fascist" Walsh) which I found as hyperbolic as...

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Foodbanks, social justice and why we need a new conversation about poverty

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In her speech from The future of social justice event we held on Monday, Kayleigh Garthwaite, author of Hunger Pains, talks about her experience of volunteering at foodbanks and how we can harness and express the collective shame that should be felt over the existence of emergency food aid.

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Donald Trump says thank you to Ohio. John Minchillo AP/Press Association Images

Most explanations concerning the reasons that led Trump to victory in the US presidential election are unconvincing for two simple reasons: they brush off the issue of class and the rise of China in the global political economy. In fact, these two factors were key to his success.

Let's take a look at the numbers. It is often assumed that it was white men who won Trump the White House. But his support was, in fact, relatively broad - and was far more bolstered by class than race or gender.

Some 53% of white women opted for Trump and more black and Hispanic female voters voted for him than for Mitt Romney in 2012. As a percentage of votes cast, all racial groups swung more towards Trump in 2016 than Romney in 2012 - but white voters atually showed the lowest swing to Trump (1%), compared to Latinos (8%), Asian-Americans (11%) and African-Americans (7%).

Crucially, however, Trump registered support in the so-called "Rust Belt", the de-industrialised and depressed zones of Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He flipped a third of the counties there that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 and this is what gave him the presidency.

The rich and the affluent voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for Obama in 2012. Some 3.46m with an income above $250,000 voted for Clinton, compared with 2.16m for Obama in 2012, a jump of 60%. But is was the working-class votes in the "Rust Belt" that made the difference.

This annoyed some feminists, such as Monica Potts in The Nation, who went as far as to insinuate that the (white) working class in the "Rust Belt" is a reactionary force. There is nothing more wrong than that.

If "identity politics" (politics that put an emphasis on gender or racial issues, for example) is on the wane in terms of electoral-political significance, it is because class inequality is on the rise. Since the late 1970s, the US - and, for that matter, the UK - has embarked on a programme of de-industrialisation and outsourcing, decimating the workforce, slashing real wages, augmenting a rather unproductive service sector, trading "fictitious" (financial products such as derivatives and insurance) rather than real commodities, and promoting precarious and part-time work across all economic sectors.

At the same time, and in order to solve the economy's "demand problem" (low purchasing power of the consumer, inadequate health and pension provision, housing shortage) the neo-liberal ruling elites in Washington and London financialised everyday life - that is, they encouraged heavy borrowing of people from banks and various lending institutions.

The great collapse

When financialisation collapsed in 2007-08, the very same elites embarked on harsh austerity programmes, increasing class inequalities across society. "Between 1980 and the most recent period", Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times, "the top 1% in pre-tax income jumped from 10% to 18%." He continued:

The rise in compensation of chief executives, relative to that of workers, has been huge. The US has the highest inequality of any high-income country and has seen the fastest rise in inequality among the seven leading high-income countries.

Trump promised nothing more and nothing less than jobs for the unemployed and the deprived - an easy task since the Democrats took care to sideline Bernie Sanders in the primaries. But there is also another issue strictly linked to this.

It has to do with China's rise in the international economy of globalisation that the US has pioneered. De-industrialisation and outsourcing gave a massive advantage to China and other emerging economies, which are now competing on an equal footing with the US.

Shutterstock

China is now the world's largest economy on a purchasing power parity basis. She is also the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves and her investments in Africa and Latin America have outstripped those of the US. China is also America's second-largest trading partner and holds more than $1.3 trillion in US debt, enabling the US to finance its deficits.

In April 2016, Australia blocked a vast land sale to a Chinese-led consortium and in October 2016 Germany withdrew approval for the $1 billion takeover of chip equipment maker Aixtron by a group of Chinese investors. China is increasingly seen as an economic threat by some countries.

The rise of China

The value of Chinese overseas acquisitions announced in the first nine months of 2016 totalled $191 billion, almost double the inflows of foreign investment into China over the same period. Participation in the World Trade Organisation benefited China more than the US.

The paramount aim of the notorious TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) with the EU, which is not forthcoming, and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is not just to pulverise nation state power but also to consolidate a Western trade bloc to fight Chinese competition. Pointedly, China is excluded from the faltering US-led TPP.

Trump's campaign grasped this shift in the global political economy. He promised "America first" - that is protection from the Chinese competition which destroys American jobs. The Clinton camp cultivated the old mantras of globalisation and "identity politics", backed by aggressive financial interests that have brought the country to its knees.

Class inequality became even more pronounced in this light, trumping in significance and visibility any other form of inequality based on gender or race. Thus, while Clinton's campaign was producing a narrative on "identity politics" creating, as Francis Fukuyama put it: "a coalition of women, African-Americans, Hispanics, environmentalists and the LGBT community", Trump focused on the real issue of job creation and won the vote of the working class. Class politics and the power-shift to China won Trump the White House.

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How class and the rise of China won Trump the White House

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Most explanations concerning the reasons that led Trump to victory in the US presidential election are unconvincing for two simple reasons: they brush off the issue of class and the rise of China in the global political economy. In fact, these two factors were key to his success.

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I have just returned from my last conference of the season - half a dozen in total, across the UK and Europe. One theme kept cropping up in conversations with fellow attendees: job insecurity, and the impact it is having on our families and lives.

I spoke to a man, on his second post-doctoral fellowship, who was living across the country from his fiancée for a year to take advantage of a "good opportunity". The affianced pair were only seeing each other at weekends.

There was the not-so-early-career researcher whose partner takes their daughter to play groups every single weekend, so she can write fellowship applications outside of work hours.

There was the announcement that a top-notch researcher was leaving academia for the private sector, citing lack of job security and pay as the reasons.

The crème de la crème was a lifetime achievement award for a professor who had never had a permanent job contract in her entire academic career.

I am once again approaching the end of another fixed-term research contract. I won't say how many I have had, but I can say that this last post was longer than most. I had some time to breathe. Time to finish papers from previous posts, time to devote to writing papers for this project before having to devote evenings and weekends to trying to find the next post. I have had more time to spend with my family and friends. I have had time to exercise and take care of myself physically and emotionally. I have had time to think and reflect.

Fractured relationships

But the other posts, the ones that last a year or less, bring far more stress - for me and my family. I have to spend evenings and weekends on fellowship and job applications, trying to get papers accepted and preparing for job interviews.

My loved ones have always been understanding, but I wonder how long they will feel this way. And, given the common cross-stress of trying to advance in academia at the same time as raising small children, I wonder how many other relationships are being fractured by this set-up.

It is hard when I spend all day Saturday working and come home to find the house is a mess, a load of laundry to be done, and nothing for dinner. But I can't really complain, because my partner has spent all day with the child(ren) so I can work.

It is hard to forgo spending time with my partner or catching up on sleep after our baby was awake half the night, but I have to work on that grant proposal. If I don't, I might not have a job after my current contract ends.

This uncertainty means we can only plan our future a few years at a time: we can't commit to a mortgage, we can't plan which school our child will attend, we can't even plan a family holiday next summer because we don't know if I will have a job then.

It brings a persistent low-grade anxiety that lingers around my heart, sometimes travelling up to constrict my throat as the time remaining on my contract dwindles. Rinse, and repeat. For years. I don't know what impact this lifestyle is having on my health, but it can't be good.

Great expectations

When I finished my PhD, I expected to complete one post-doctoral fellowship then move into a permanent post. I had every expectation of this career path, because that is the route that most of the researchers around me had taken. Quite a few had moved into a permanent post straight from their PhD studies.

When I try to talk about job insecurity with senior researchers, they brush it off. They tell me I will be fine in a few years. They had permanent posts before they were my age. They had free education, great pension plans, and affordable housing costs.

They don't understand that this is not just about me. It is endemic. Almost everyone else I know at my level, and below, is in the same situation. This is an industry-wide systemic problem that is being brushed under the rug in the name of "challenging funding environments".

Don't get me wrong, academia isn't all negative. I love my job. I love what I do. But I don't know what the solution is.

What I do know is that universities need to move away from thinking that a hyper-competitive, highly-mobile scientific workforce is good for science. Good scientists are not born, but trained and supported by the people and institutions that surround them.

Here is a new idea: let's make science better by supporting the people who conduct it. Let's make rewards and funding to universities dependent on how they treat their staff. Let's make world rankings weighted on how many staff are on permanent contracts. Let's make Athena Swan awards dependent on low levels of fixed-term contracts. Let's reduce the Research Excellence Framework funding for universities for every staff member who is on a temporary contract.

Because, if anything, the less time and energy a scientist has to spend on searching for the next job, the more time and energy they will have to actually do science. Let's see how much more productive scientists are in making scientific discoveries when they can actually make long-term plans. Let's reward people for the years of education and hard work they have contributed to the university and science with a stable professional and home life.

We want to conduct science for the public good - this surely includes the scientists.
Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered. And if you have an idea for a story, please read our guidelines and email your pitch to us at highereducationnetwork@theguardian.com Topics

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Academia is now incompatible with family life, thanks to casual contracts

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I have just returned from my last conference of the season - half a dozen in total, across the UK and Europe. One theme kept cropping up in conversations with fellow attendees: job insecurity, and the impact it is having on our families and lives.

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Female professors earn less on average than their male counterparts because they focus on underappreciated "academic citizen" roles that do not lead to promotion or pay rises, a new study suggests.

Male professors devote less time to mentoring duties, serving on university committees and other "academic citizen" roles, and instead concentrate on their own research - an activity more likely to win them external recognition and a pay rise, according to a paper by Bruce Macfarlane, professor of higher education at University of Southampton, and Damon Burg, a research fellow at Southampton Education School.

Based on interviews with 25 female and five male professors at nine UK universities, the two researchers found that female professors tended to talk about the broader demands of their departmental chair, whereas male interviewees focused far more on the need to win research grants.

"Women professors were much more likely to identify academic citizenship as a key part of being a professor," explained Professor Macfarlane, who presented his results at the Society for Research into Higher Education's annual research conference, which took place in Newport, Wales, from 9 to 11 December.

Mentoring PhD students and junior staff, serving on committees and undertaking commitments outside the university were also mentioned as important professorial tasks, he explained.

"It meant they were doing things that will not result in a publication or lead to a research grant," he added.

While previous research has shown that early and mid-career female academics take on more administration and "caring, supportive and collegiate" roles than men, acting as a brake on their promotion chances, the latest interviews show this trend continues when women reach more senior positions, said Professor Macfarlane.

"Women academics of all ranks tend to do a disproportionate amount of service that will not lead to promotion," he said.

"Even at professorial level [they] tend to be making up more of these service roles," he added.

That may partially explain why female academics earn less than male peers, he said. According to the 2016 Times Higher Education Pay Survey, the pay of female professors at UK universities was £4,570 (5.7 per cent) less on average in 2014-15 than the £79,252 earned by male professors.

"Given that reward is based on publications and grant success, this may have some impact on professorial pay levels," said Professor Macfarlane.

"For instance, a professor may start on £60,000 a year, but you can get up to £120,000 as a professor at my university, so we need to find ways to get women up the professorial pay scales," he added.

Promotion and reward panels should take a more holistic view of the contribution made by professors, rather than simply looking at how much research funding they have gained, Professor Macfarlane suggested.

"It could be that women are being penalised because they have a broader view of what it means to be a professor," he said.

"Universities should not only recognise the impact of academic citizenship, but build it into their reward and recognition structures," he added.
jack.grove@tesglobal.com

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Female professors 'pay price for academic citizenship'

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Female professors earn less on average than their male counterparts because they focus on underappreciated "academic citizen" roles that do not lead to promotion or pay rises, a new study suggests.

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Tanya Shatseva

The words of my doctor from earlier that morning were still ringing in my ears when I found myself slamming the brakes of my car to avoid a nasty collision. An incompetent driver was cutting across two lanes at a roundabout just in front of me. Still perspiring somewhat I carried on to drop off my screaming child with the nanny. It was a hectic morning.

Now let's stop to take a breath and ponder on this story. Was the doctor you imagined male? Was the bad driver female? And what of the nanny and the narrator? Females too? If so, you have just experienced unconscious gender bias. You are not alone. Even the almighty Google image search "thinks" 75% of doctors are male but in reality women make up just over half of GPs in the UK. In fact Google has been accused of unconscious bias in its own operations as over 79% of its managers and engineers are male. Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo are not far behind.

What exactly is unconscious gender bias and why do we have it? Unconscious, or implicit, bias happens outside of our control and awareness. It's automatic and reflects the associations we acquire as we socialise into the culture we grow up in. You can test your own implicit biases more scientifically by taking this Implicit Association Test. The test was designed to capture the brain's learnt automatic associations. Since it is based on time reactions it can bypass our social desirability concerns and tap into unconscious biases. As such it is reportedly superior to self-report measures of prejudice in predicting behaviours.

Implicit bias is a result of our mind developing mental shortcuts to navigate the complexities of reality efficiently. It is often evolutionarily adaptive. For example, we automatically favour flowers over insects, which protects us from being stung by something that might harm us - a spider for example. This is both a normal preference for most people but has also been seen in implicit association tests. However, implicit association studies also show that we favour the young over the old, the white over the black and heterosexuals over homosexuals. But what about unconscious gender biases?

Wonderful people

Women are wonderful, or are they? You may be surprised to learn that research reports that we consistently prefer women over men and mothers over fathers implicitly. This is akin to the WAW ("women-are-wonderful") effect - women being perceived positively on the whole as they are stereotyped as supportive, nice and gentile.

This effect, however, disappears, and even reverses, the moment women step in to the "male domain" or otherwise challenge stereotypical expectations. For example, people implicitly ( and explicitly) prefer male to female authority figures, male to female leaders and non-feminist women to feminists. My own research shows that female students implicitly prefer housewives over businesswomen. The implicit pro-female preference also reverses in men when they expect to interact with a superior woman as opposed to an equal or subordinate one.

We only need to look to the recent American presidential election to see some real life examples of this effect. Donald Trump himself claimed that "nobody respects women more than I do" just three months before a record of his boastful groping account was revealed.

OPOLJA

So what about implicit bias towards men? Are they wonderful too? Again, it depends. Women implicitly prefer an egalitarian to a sexist or "typical" man, while men prefer that same egalitarian male less. Male public and private sector workers in my samples show slight implicit preference for a househusband over a businessman male type - perhaps due to the homely men's greater likeability. Still, when compared to women, traditional males - such as those in authority or leadership roles - are preferred.

What can we do about it?

Why does this matter and what can we do about it? Unconscious bias is particularly problematic in the world of work and education. Even in a supposedly objective academic setting male applicants for lab manager position in one experiment were hired more often and offered more money when their name was John as opposed to Jennifer - despite identical CVs. When professional women become mothers they suddenly are perceived as less competent - a trade-off which does not affect men when they become fathers.

Unconscious bias limits, among others, people's occupational prospects. The first step to deal with this is an awareness of the problem. The nature of our cognition and thinking processes means that all of us are vulnerable to various unconscious biases and all of us may be subjected to them. For example, one study showed that men under-performed on social sensitivity tests (for example decoding nonverbal cues) when they were told that the test assessed social sensitivity and produced better scores for women than men. Men who were told that the test assessed information processing did not under-perform.

Being aware of our own unconscious bias can help. However, prevention requires motivation. Therefore, anonymised recruitment processes, mentorship, carefully managed collaborative work environment and training can also help.

However, since unconscious bias has its roots in the social world we live - where we learn associations from the gender roles we see around us - the surest way to diminish it is to provide alternative associations.

This could be achieved by encouraging equal participation of men and women across traditionally gendered social roles. Once all doctors, drivers, nannies and world leaders are split fairly between male and female - and we see this represented across the media and elsewhere - over time we can move towards equal implicit associations. In the meantime we need to at least make the unconscious conscious so that it is less likely to play a trick on us.

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Think you're all for gender equality? Your unconscious may have other ideas

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The words of my doctor from earlier that morning were still ringing in my ears when I found myself slamming the brakes of my car to avoid a nasty collision. An incompetent driver was cutting across two lanes at a roundabout just in front of me.

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Income inequality is cyclical : Nature News & Comment

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Income inequality is cyclical : Nature News & Comment

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Lewis Wickes Hine/LOC/Corbis/Getty

For the past 30 years or so, income inequality has been on the rise across the globe. It has increased in the United States, China, Russia - even in Sweden and Finland, long thought to be paragons of equality.

What's driving this increase? And does the unprecedented dominance of capitalism mean that there are no longer countervailing forces to stop inequality's rise? Or might a self-regulating mechanism eventually reduce it, even in a capitalist world?

To answer these questions, we need both to look at our immediate past and take a longer historical view. Thanks to archival data on wages and incomes from as far back as the 1200s, we can start to do just that.

First, some terminology. Inequality is frequently confused with poverty, and income elided with wealth or earnings. Throughout this article, I deal with inequality in income. Standard definitions of income do not include capital gains, resulting, for instance, from an increase in property or share value. And income is different from wealth (the sum of all marketable goods currently owned) and from earnings (which include only wages and work-related benefits).

Moreover, inequality is not the same as poverty, a concept that depends on defining a poverty line, below which people with less than a certain amount of income are deemed 'poor'. Poverty is, in principle, reduced by economic growth. No such simple relationship exists between economic growth and inequality.

Looking back

Since the early 1980s, income inequality has increased substantially in all advanced economies, with the biggest rises (about 20%, when measured by the Gini coefficient; see 'Terms of engagement'), in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. It has also increased in former Communist countries, particularly in Russia (by about 50%), as well as in 'emerging' economies such as India and China (where it has almost doubled since the Maoist period of the mid-twentieth century).

This development has been a surprise to economists. Theories established in the 1950s and 1960s held that high political demand for redistribution would keep inequality low once economies became 'advanced' (meaning that people have relatively high levels of income, wealth and education, and birth and death rates are relatively low). Likewise, economists predicted that the greater involvement of historically poor nations in international trade would reduce inequality in these countries because their growing exports would increase the demand for low-skilled labour.

The past several hundred years of human history can shed some light on what's going on now.

In recent years, economic historians have been able to estimate historical income inequality using archival sources for a dozen countries, and for the periods for which we previously lacked information (see 'Dodgy data'). For some of these countries (Spain, Italy and the 'Low Countries', including what is now the Netherlands), estimates stretch back to the early Middle Ages; for others, including various Latin American countries and the United States, they go back to the end of the eighteenth century or to the beginning of the nineteenth.

Inequality has regularly waxed and waned over recent centuries, as indicated by modern economists' studies of archival tax records, surveys of population incomes motivated by military-mobilization needs, or even of people's private collections of historical family budgets. Moreover, although the forces driving inequality up or down vary, there are only a few of them.

The drivers of income inequality in pre-modern societies (that is, before industrialization) seem to have been mostly non-economic. Epidemics limited inequality; by killing part of the population, they made the remaining workers scarcer, which resulted in their wages rising. Wars either increased inequality as a result of conquerors enslaving and pillaging or, more commonly, reduced it by causing destruction that brought most of the population to levels of starvation. In fact, epidemics and wars alone can explain most of the swings in inequality in Spain between the early 1300s and the mid-1800s (see 'Waxing and waning').

Source: Ref. [1]; C. Alvarez-Nogal & L. Prados de la Escosura Eur. Rev. Econ. Hist. 11, 319-366 (2007)

In modern times, economic factors seem to have been the most important drivers of change. In the United Kingdom and the United States, an upswing of inequality, which lasted most of the nineteenth century, followed the introduction of inventions such as the steam engine and the cotton gin. With demand high and competition low, people who invested in the new products and services could enjoy large 'rents' (payments over and above what is needed to cover production costs). Inequality was also probably pushed up by the movement of people from the countryside into cities - to better paid, more diverse (and hence more unequally paid) jobs.

In the United Kingdom, the data suggest that inequality peaked around 1870. Around this time, demand rose for labour (driven in part by people leaving the country) and legislation limited child labour, hours of work and so on. Thus workers' conditions began to improve. In the United States, inequality seems to have peaked in the 1920s to 1930s, its decline probably held back longer than in the United Kingdom by immigration from Europe.

Next came the great decline in inequality that many have associated with progressive modernization. For the many countries involved, the First World War destroyed assets (particularly in Germany, France and Russia), and brought large taxes on the rich to finance the conflict. These changes, along with the emergence of socialist movements and trade unions, the massive scale up of public education (fuelled in part by an increased need for skilled and educated labourers) and the greater participation of women in the workforce, ushered a period of more than half a century of growing equality in all developed countries. For the West, the period from the end of the First World War to the early 1980s saw a 'great levelling'.

Ultimately, this levelling occurred worldwide. Policies such as the distribution of land to landless people, the introduction of widespread education and the creation of state-owned enterprises - such as those running the railways, or producing coal or sugar - boosted equality in developing nations (particularly in Turkey, Iran, South Korea and Egypt). The nationalization of factories, narrowing of wage distribution, and the elimination of almost all capital income (which tends to be more unequally distributed than are wages) accomplished the same in Communist economies such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures/Getty

Looking forward

So what does this tell us about what's happening now?

One key message is that the forces that drive inequality up or down are economic, demographic and political. They can also be divided into 'malign' or 'benign'.

Malign forces include epidemics, civil conflict, state breakdown and war - practically the only ones that mattered in pre-modern times. Benign forces include technological change, globalization, education and demographics - drivers that although not harmless for everybody, don't involve the physical destruction of assets or people.

Both types of forces are present in modern times. The two world wars of the twentieth century were probably the most malign, yet equalizing, forces in human history. And many of the benign forces unleashed by the revolution in information technology are similar to those resulting from the industrial revolution more than two centuries ago (see 'The price of invention').

Source: B. Milanovic Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Harvard Univ. Press, 2016)

Today, those inventing new products or investing in them are reaping huge rewards; labour is transitioning from relatively homogeneous large-scale factory work ('Fordism', after the carmaker) to the heterogeneous service sector that covers everybody from hedge-fund managers and software engineers to personal trainers and food-delivery couriers.

Inequality has been further widened by three things. Technological change favours high-skilled over low-skilled labour. Economic policies have lowered tax contributions from the highest earners. And unionization has slumped (it is harder to organize when service providers are diverse, geographically dispersed and each individual unit involves few people).

A second implication of the historical data is that at some point, forces - malign, benign or both - will halt and reverse the current increase in inequality. This runs counter to the idea - sparked in part by economist Thomas Piketty's 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-first Century (Harvard Univ. Press) - that the concentration of capital in the hands of the top 1% and a steady rate of return on that capital will lead to ever rising income inequality.

In my view, even in a capitalist world, four benign forces could decrease inequality. The first is a reduction in how much corporations charge for their products over and above what's needed to cover their costs. This happens as competitors catch up - as for personal computers, for instance. The second is technological change that undermines the coveted positions enjoyed by the highly skilled, guild-like workers in rich countries, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers. For example, with advances in communication now often allowing medical diagnoses to be made more cheaply in India, say, than in rich countries, patients are travelling for treatment and reducing the demand for physicians' services in rich countries.

The third benign force is more equal access to good education, as well as the equalization of the quality of state and private education. The last is political change that results in some of the highest incomes being limited, minimum wages and tax on capital being increased, and tax incentives being provided to make current plutocratic capitalism more a 'people's capitalism'. (This proposal was floated by economists and politicians in the early 1980s when the current neo-liberal wave began, but was then quietly forgotten.)

"The period from the end of the First World War to the early 1980s saw a 'great levelling'."

Of these four benign forces, governments can take steps to implement the last two: education and tax reforms (including minimum-wage legislation). Governments could also crack down on tax havens and use the proceeds to fund socially useful programmes. It is estimated that up to 1% of global gross domestic product is hidden in off-shore accounts. Better collaboration between national authorities or the establishment of a truly international income- and wealth-information gathering system could help to curb such off-shoring. At the very least, members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development should work together on this.

In fact, as the cost of dodged taxes rises, governments' incentive to curb such practices should be getting stronger. A step in this direction was the 2010 US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which obliges foreign banks to report to US tax authorities anyone with a US address who has more than US$10,000 in their overseas account.

Of course, there is a distinct possibility, however, that it will be malign forces that reverse current trends. In the rich West and in Russia, Turkey and China, politicians are turning to nationalist populist policies to placate the disaffected - an easier option than putting a break on globalization or changing the political system. Such policies, which scapegoat foreigners (whether migrants or people in other countries), distract the attention of the electorate from true domestic issues, and could ultimately lead to international conflicts.

If there is one lesson to take from the First World War, it is that domestic discontent can be deflected into the international arena. And such deflection can lead to catastrophe.

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Lewis Wickes Hine/LOC/Corbis/Getty For the past 30 years or so, income inequality has been on the rise across the globe. It has increased in the United States, China, Russia - even in Sweden and Finland, long thought to be paragons of equality. What's driving this increase?

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Politics and current affairs
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Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. By Charles Clover. Yale University Press; 360 pages; $35 and £25
A veteran Financial Times correspondent analyses what really motivates the regime in Moscow by tracing the rise of Eurasianism: the belief (crudely put) that Russia's national identity is determined by ethnicity, geography and destiny.

The Egyptians: A Radical Story. By Jack Shenker. Allen Lane; 528 pages; £15.99
A refreshing account, by a young reporter on the Guardian, of the movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in 2011. What distinguishes his writing from others' is his presence in the slums, factories and homes where Egyptians first began questioning their relations with their rulers. Mr Shenker evokes despair at the economy of this badly run country, but also surprising hope for its future, thanks to a young generation that says it is "no longer prepared to put up with the old crap".

Biography and memoir

History

The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China. By Philip Ball. Bodley Head; 316 pages; £25. To be published in America by University of Chicago Press in March 2017
How two great rivers-the Yellow river and the Yangzi-shaped China's history. By a British science writer who for 20 years was an editor at Nature.

Economics and business

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan.* By Sebastian Mallaby. Penguin Press; 781 pages; $40. Bloomsbury; £25
Once a hero, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve is now being called a villain. Sebastian Mallaby, who used to write for The Economist and is married to our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, examines whether Alan Greenspan was to blame for the financial crisis. Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award 2016.

Culture, society and travel

Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. By Gary Younge. Nation Books; 267 pages; $25.99. Guardian Faber; £16.99
The stories of ten young people who were shot and killed on the arbitrarily selected date of Saturday November 23rd 2013. A "long, doleful, piercing cry", by a journalist on the Guardian, in a country so overwhelmed by gun violence that it has almost given up trying to stop it.

The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India's Young. By Somini Sengupta. Norton; 244 pages; $26.95 and £18.99
How India's youth are trading fatalism and karma for free will and higher expectations, by a former New York Times New Delhi bureau chief who interweaves data, first-hand accounts and archival research to great effect.

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*Our policy is to identify the reviewer of any book by or about someone closely connected with The Economist. Sebastian Mallaby is married to Zanny Minton Beddoes, our editor-in-chief. The review of his book in these pages ("Man in the Dock", Oct 1st) was written by Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times. It was edited for length only.
Correction (December 9th): A previous version of this piece misspelled the name of Singapore's founder. This has been updated.

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Politics and current affairs China's Future. By David Shambaugh. Polity; 195 pages; $19.95 and £14.99 No country has modernised its economy without also becoming a democracy. A respected American political scientist asks whether China can break the mould. Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia's New Nationalism. By Charles Clover.

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Yesterday marked the conclusion of the two-day Summit on Technology and Opportunity, an anti-poverty conference cohosted by the White House, Stanford University, and Mark Zuckerberg's charity. Something is wrong here.

In a rich country, which America is, poverty is a distribution problem. Which is to say: it is a political problem. It is conventional wisdom that other problems are essentially political in nature-for example, you don't need to be employed by the UN to know that global hunger is not due to a lack of global food, but instead to corruption and war and broken governments and other things that prevent food from being distributed to everyone who needs it. Likewise, it is not a shortage of money causing poverty in America. The U.S. per capita income is more than $56,000, more than enough to offer everyone a middle class lifestyle. The problem is the distribution of that money. And that is a political problem. You may believe our current level of economic inequality is justified, or you may not. But maintaining that inequality-with its accompanying riches and poverty-or changing it is a political decision.

The structure of taxes that allows money to accumulate at the top or redistributes it downwards; the regulations or lack thereof that allow industries of varying degrees of unfairness to wither or flourish; the strength or weakness of the social safety net; the rules that determine the power relations of labor and capital. All political choices. Choices that determine who has power, and which are themselves ultimately determined by who has power. Poverty is an economic situation, but whether poverty grows or declines is, to a great extent, the result of political choices that we make. If we speak about poverty outside of the context of politics, we are fooling ourselves.

Which brings us to the Summit on Technology and Opportunity, the invite-only event that just concluded on Stanford's rarefied campus. I don't wish to criticize the individual participants in the event-in isolation, they represent a wide array of worthy charitable endeavors and academic research. But I do wish to criticize the mindstate and political posturing that leads to the White House lending its imprimatur to such an event. With all of the do-gooder conferences in the world, why does the White House come to put its name on one that explicitly holds up technology and private philanthropy and public-private partnership as the solution to poverty? This summit did not spend its time discussing new taxes and government regulations to rein in inequality, or how to purge Congress of members hostile to poverty-fighting legislation; instead, its sessions touted "Philanthropy as a Catalyst" and "Technology to Facilitate Financial Access" and "Tech Talent for Public Impact and the Way Ahead."

This purge of politics from the language of poverty-fighting was not a mistake. It was the point. And that is why it is hollow.

Poverty and wealth are inextricably linked. The economy is not a zero-sum game, but the fruits of the economic growth that creates and fuels wealthy nations like ours are hoarded to a shocking extent by a tiny group at the top, which warps our political system, starves our economy of demand, and fuels poverty both directly and indirectly. Philanthropy is fine and dandy. Show me a good charity, though, and I'll show you an idea that could be practiced on much larger scale by a government. (One of the world's most effective anti-poverty charities does nothing but send money directly to poor people. Hello, redistribution of wealth.) Fighting poverty-and making our nation more economically fair-is not a mystifying riddle waiting for a technological breakthrough. It is a question of political will. If we want to push more wealth down the economic chain, we will.

Of course, the illusion that poverty can be solved by the ingenuity of civic-minded tech zillionaires is an alluring fantasy for the White House. Silicon Valley is the new cradle of extreme wealth in America. Philanthropy is popular with the rich tech set, and that situation is certainly preferable to them hoarding all their money. More preferable still, however, is what we should be doing: taxing extreme wealth (or making it hard to accumulate outlandish fortunes in the first place by passing laws that ensure wealth is spread more fairly) and then using our democratic process to determine how that public revenue is spent. Philanthropy is the privatization of the social safety net. That is not a desirable state of affairs. Social Security and Medicare and the CDC are robust government programs with millions of stakeholders; Mark Zuckerberg's charity is ultimately at the whim of two people. We do not need a nation that turns to its tech-enriched kings and begs them to solve poverty. We need a nation that acts collectively to build an economy in which our wealth is shared.

But acting to tax the rich and regulate corporate power and strengthen labor against the predations of capital is controversial and difficult. Doing so requires politicians to take on the interests of the rich, which has traditionally been a risky move for any elected official's political longevity. It is safer to hold a conference in which officials and billionaires stand hand in hand and discuss Ways to Solve These Serious Problems. It may even be possible, in the right setting, for all of these people to convince themselves that they are on the most optimal path to utopia.

It's an illusion. The rich and the poor were around long before Silicon Valley. It's not another class at Stanford that we need. It's class war.

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Poverty Doesn't Need Technology. It Needs Politics.

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Yesterday marked the conclusion of the two-day Summit on Technology and Opportunity, an anti-poverty conference cohosted by the White House, Stanford University, and Mark Zuckerberg's charity. Something is wrong here. In a rich country, which America is, poverty is a distribution problem. Which is to say: it is a political problem.

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Challenging conversations and how to manage them - Acas Mobile

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This training will show you how to prepare for difficult or crucial conversations, how to manage and control the workplace discussion process and how to ensure you are talking to employees in as productive a way as possible. Acas will improve your confidence and enhance your knowledge and skills for reducing stress, taking action and tackling difficult conversations head on.

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1: Irene, Horatio, Laura, Michelle: childcare PRO
2 Ruby, Georgia, Tara, Yemi, Juhu: UNI CON
3 Kadija, Ade, Sylvester, Monserat, Therese: UNI PRO
4: Andrew, Jess, Francis, oluwayemisi ogunwuyi, Lassene: CHI CON

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1: Irene, Horatio, Laura, Michelle: childcare PRO
2 Ruby, Georgia, Tara, Yemi, Juhu: UNI CON
3 Kadija, Ade, Sylvester, Monserat, Therese: UNI PRO
4: Andrew, Jess, Francis, oluwayemisi ogunwuyi, Lassene: CHI CON

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How Was Life? - Global Well-being since 1820 - en - OECD

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How Was Life? - Global Well-being since 1820 - en - OECD

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Global Well-being since 1820

How was life in 1820, and how has it improved since then? What are the long-term trends in global well-being? Views on social progress since the Industrial Revolution are largely based on historical national accounting in the tradition of Kuznets and Maddison. But trends in real GDP per capita may not fully reflect changes in other dimensions of well-being such as life expectancy, education, personal security or gender inequality. Looking at these indicators usually reveals a more equal world than the picture given by incomes alone, but has this always been the case? The new report How Was Life? aims to fill this gap. It presents the first systematic evidence on long-term trends in global well-being since 1820 for 25 major countries and 8 regions in the world covering more than 80% of the world's population. It not only shows the data but also discusses the underlying sources and their limitations, pays attention to country averages and inequality, and pinpoints avenues for further research.

The How Was Life? report is the product of collaboration between the OECD, the OECD Development Centre and the CLIO-INFRA project. It represents the culmination of work by a group of economic historians to systematically chart long-term changes in the dimensions of global well-being and inequality, making use of the most recent research carried out within the discipline. The historical evidence reviewed in the report is organised around 10 different dimensions of well-being that mirror those used by the OECD in its well-being report How's Life? ( www.oecd.org/howslife), and draw on the best sources and expertise currently available for historical perspectives in this field. These dimensions are:per capita GDP, real wages, educational attainment, life expectancy, height, personal security, political institutions, environmental quality, income inequality and gender inequality.

SUMMARIESavailable in 7 languages

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How was life in 1820, and how has it improved since then? What are the long-term trends in global well-being? Views on social progress since the Industrial Revolution are largely based on historical national accounting in the tradition of Kuznets and Maddison.

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Ten Myths and a Truth from the TEF: Reading the White Paper

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Although the Higher Education and Research Bill is still going through parliamentary scrutiny, the Teaching Excellence Framework is about to be implemented and yet we do not know for certain what its effects will be, or even which institutions will enter into it. On the 2nd of December 2016, the same day as students at...

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The true scale of homelessness across the region has been exposed as campaigners reveal that 3,292 people are surviving without a home in Greater Manchester.

Manchester has the highest figures of homelessness in the North West, with an estimated 2,000 people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.

This is closely followed by Salford, where an estimated 325 people are homeless.

The figures, compiled by housing charity Shelter, have been released during its 50th anniversary.

Shelter's original 'Green Book', published in 1966, exposed the grim reality of life for homeless families at the time.

The latest report shows the housing crisis currently affecting families across the nation.

It identifies Manchester as the North West's top 'homelessness hotspots' where people are most likely to lose the battle to stay in their homes, followed by Salford, Trafford and Rochdale.

The report has come just days after two homeless men died in an horrific blaze at an empty building in Chinatown in the city centre where they were living,

Shelter's Manchester Hub manager, John Ryan, said the figures make for tragic reading.

He said: "Shelter's founding shone a light on hidden homelessness in the sixties slums. But while those troubled times have faded into memory, fifty years on a modern day housing crisis is tightening its grip on our country.

"Thousands of people in the North West will face the trauma of waking up homeless this Christmas. Decades in the making, this is the tragic result of a nation struggling under the weight of sky-high rents, a lack of affordable homes, and cuts to welfare support.

"We all face the consequences when so many grow up without a place to call home. It breaks up communities and wreaks havoc on family life.

"For the sake of future generations we must pull together to end this crisis, and refuse to rest until every child has a place to call home."

Shelter's co-founder Des Wilson added: "It would be pleasing if Shelter were able to take time to celebrate its 50th year, but, as this report shows, it is too aware of what still has to be done.

"I hope the country will respond to its urgent rallying call with the same combination of anger and compassion with which it supported our work all those years ago."

Visit www.shelter.org.uk to support Shelter or text SHELTER to 70555 to donate £3.
The MEN has pledged to support and publicise the Manchester Homelessness Charter at appropriate opportunities.If you are affected by issues surrounding homelessness in any way, or if you want to do something to help, you can go to: streetsupport.net

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True scale of Greater Manchester's homelessness crisis revealed

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The true scale of homelessness across the region has been exposed as campaigners reveal that 3,292 people are surviving without a home in Greater Manchester. Manchester has the highest figures of homelessness in the North West, with an estimated 2,000 people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation.

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Middle-income as well as low-income families are being held back by a "deep social mobility problem" in Britain, a report warns.

The Social Mobility Commission warns of many "treadmill families running harder and harder but standing still".

It points to an unfair education system, a two-tier labour market, a regionally imbalanced economy and unaffordable housing.

Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to tackle social inequalities.

The commission's State of the Nation 2016 report, laid before Parliament on Wednesday, says young families now can no longer expect to do as well as their parents' generation.

It highlights that home ownership is in sharp decline, particularly among young people.

New homes

The commission urges the government to commit to building three million homes over the next decade and to expand the sale of public sector land for new homes.

It should also allow targeted housebuilding on green-belt land and modify the starter home initiative to focus on households with average incomes.

Analysis

By Hannah Richardson

BBC News education and social affairs reporter

Alan Milburn paints a depressingly familiar picture of a "them and us" Britain divided along the fault-lines of wealth and opportunity.

But the conclusion of his report - most families are now doing worse than their parents' generation - is staggering.

It means social mobility is going backwards not forwards, despite successive attempts to tackle it.

Phrases such as: "Huge swathes of Britain feel left behind," and: "The chickens have now come home to roost," pepper the report.

"So many families are struggling to get by, let alone get up," Mr Milburn said.

He highlights that of the 65 parts of the country identified by his commission as "social mobility coldspots", only three voted to remain in the EU.

Mr Milburn, himself immersed in issues surrounding the social mobility conundrum for six years, clearly feels the country's mood is now becoming dangerous.

And with a nod to 1930s Europe, he told reporters: "We know from the history of our own continent, when people feel they are losing out unfairly, the mood can turn ugly."

The commission notes that a child living in one of England's most disadvantaged areas is 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than a child in the most advantaged areas.

And young people from low-income homes are one-third more likely to drop out of education than better-off classmates with similar GCSEs.

The report says the government should have "as its core objective" the narrowing within the next decade of the GCSE attainment gap between poorer children and their better-off classmates by two-thirds.

It also urges the government to rethink its plans for more grammar schools and more academies.

The report says grammars are "at best, a distraction, and, at worst, a risk to efforts aimed at narrowing the significant social and geographical divides that bedevil England's school system".

The report notes a growing gap between the generations, warning that those born in the 1980s are the first post-war cohort not to start their working lives on higher salaries than their immediate predecessors.

It says the government must work with large employers, local councils and Local Enterprise Partnerships to bring high-quality job opportunities - backed by financial incentives - to Britain's social mobility "coldspots".

The report also calls for an end to unpaid internships, arguing that work placements lasting more than four weeks should be paid at the minimum wage.

The commission says the problem is not just social, but also geographical, with a widening divide between the big cities - particularly London - and the many towns and counties being "left behind economically and hollowed-out socially".

It says that in London, the number of top-end occupational jobs has increased by 700,000 in the past 10 years compared with just under 56,000 in the north-east of England.

'Deeply corrosive'

The report warns: "The growing sense that we have become an us and them society - where a few unfairly hoard wealth and power - is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a society.

"The EU referendum in June this year exposed deep divides that go well beyond the box that people crossed.

"Public concern - even anger - about issues of identity, immigration and inequality found a voice on 23 June and a target to aim at.

"Of the 65 parts of the country we identified as being social mobility coldspots - those with the poorest education and employment prospects - only three areas voted to remain in the EU."

Other concerns raised by the report include:

Millions of workers - particularly women - are trapped in low pay

Only one in eight children from low-income backgrounds is likely to become a high-income earner as an adult

From the early years through to universities and the workplace, there is an entrenched and unbroken correlation between social class and success

Despite some efforts to change the social make-up of the professions, only 4% of doctors, 6% of barristers and 11% of journalists are from working-class backgrounds.

The chair of the Social Mobility Commission, Alan Milburn, said the rungs on the social mobility ladder were growing further apart.

"It is becoming harder for this generation of struggling families to move up," he said.

"Whole sections of society and whole tracts of Britain feel left behind.

"As the EU referendum result showed, the public mood is sour and decision-makers have been far too slow to respond."

Theresa May took over as prime minister in July with a promise to lead a "one-nation" government that worked for all, not just the "privileged few".

Mr Milburn said the commission applauded her determination to further social progress but warned this was a "big ambition" and should be the "holy grail" of public policy.

A government spokeswoman said ministers would consider the recommendations in the report.

"We want to make this a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few - whether it's education, jobs, or housing, this means giving families more control over their lives and doing more to help those who are just managing.

"As the prime minister said on the steps of Downing Street, this government is committed to fighting injustice wherever it arises and ensuring that everyone in our country has the opportunity to go as far as their talents will take them."

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said the report should make "sobering reading" for the Conservatives.

"Since they came to power in 2010, we have seen our country go backwards on the progress the Labour government made on social mobility," she said.

"The educational attainment gap between lower-income children and their wealthier classmates is getting bigger, and these children still have little chance of going into high-level professions.

"And under Theresa May we can expect more of the same: grammar schools for a select few, overcrowded classrooms for the many."

The report was published as a survey of 1,655 British adults for the commission found nearly half believed where people ended up in life was mainly down to their background and parentage.

Fewer than a third (29%) of people questioned thought Britain was a country where everyone could get as far as their talent and hard work would take them.

One-third of those surveyed said they could not save any money each month.
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Middle-income as well as low-income families are being held back by a "deep social mobility problem" in Britain, a report warns. The Social Mobility Commission warns of many "treadmill families running harder and harder but standing still". It points to an unfair education system, a two-tier labour market, a regionally imbalanced economy and unaffordable housing.

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AFTER the sans culottes rose up against Louis XVI in 1789 they drew up a declaration of the universal rights of man and of the citizen. Napoleon's Grande Armée marched not just for the glory of France but for liberty, equality and fraternity. By contrast, the nationalism born with the unification of Germany decades later harked back to Blut und Boden-blood and soil-a romantic and exclusive belief in race and tradition as the wellspring of national belonging. The German legions were fighting for their Volk and against the world.

All societies draw on nationalism of one sort or another to define relations between the state, the citizen and the outside world. Craig Calhoun, an American sociologist, argues that cosmopolitan elites, who sometimes yearn for a post-nationalist order, underestimate "how central nationalist categories are to political and social theory-and to practical reasoning about democracy, political legitimacy and the nature of society itself."
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It is troubling, then, how many countries are shifting from the universal, civic nationalism towards the blood-and-soil, ethnic sort. As positive patriotism warps into negative nationalism, solidarity is mutating into distrust of minorities, who are present in growing numbers (see chart 1). A benign love of one's country-the spirit that impels Americans to salute the Stars and Stripes, Nigerians to cheer the Super Eagles and Britons to buy Duchess of Cambridge teacups-is being replaced by an urge to look on the world with mistrust.

Some perspective is in order. Comparisons with the 1930s are fatuous. Totalitarian nationalism is extinct except in North Korea, where the ruling family preaches a weird mixture of Marxism and racial purity, enforced with slave-labour camps for dissidents. And perhaps you could add Eritrea, a hideous but tiny dictatorship. Nonetheless, it is clear that an exclusive, often ethnically based, form of nationalism is on the march. In rich democracies, it is a potent vote-winner. In autocracies, rulers espouse it to distract people from their lack of freedom and, sometimes, food. The question is: where is it surging, and why?

The most recent example is Donald Trump, who persuaded 61m Americans to vote for him by promising to build a wall on the Mexican border, deport illegal immigrants and "make America great again". Noxious appeals to ethnic or racial solidarity are hardly new in American politics, or restricted to one party. Joe Biden, the vice-president, once told a black audience that Mitt Romney, a decent if dull Republican, was "gonna put y'all back in chains". But no modern American president has matched Mr Trump's displays of chauvinism. That no one knows how much of it he believes is barely reassuring.

His victory will embolden like-minded leaders around the world. Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the politician most responsible for Brexit, has already visited Mr Trump, greeting him with a grin wide enough to see off the Cheshire cat. Viktor Orban, Hungary's immigrant-bashing prime minister, rejoiced: "We can return to real democracy... what a wonderful world."

The consequences for the European Union could be disastrous. In France pollsters no longer dismiss the possibility that Marine Le Pen, the charismatic leader of the National Front (FN), could be elected president next year. Compared with other Europeans, French voters are strikingly opposed to globalisation and international trade, and few think immigrants have had a positive effect on their country (see chart 2). Ms Le Pen promises that she would pull France out of the euro and hold a "Frexit" referendum on membership of the EU. The single currency might not survive a French withdrawal. And if French voters were to back Frexit, the EU would surely fall apart.

The rush for the exit

European elites once assumed that national identities would eventually blend into a continental bouillabaisse. But the momentum is now with parties like the FN, including Hungary's Fidesz, Poland's Law and Justice party and Austria's Freedom Party (one of whose leaders, Norbert Hofer, could win Austria's largely ceremonial presidency next month). Ms Le Pen's language is typical. She caters to nostalgia, anxiety and antipathy to the liberal international order. ("No to Brussels, yes to France", goes one slogan.) She laments the decline of a proud people and vows to make France great again.

Unlike Mr Trump, Ms Le Pen has never called for a ban on Muslims entering the country; rather, she talks about curbing the "gigantic wave" of immigration. A lawyer by training, she defends her arguments with reference to France's rules on keeping religion out of public life. Yet her voters are left in little doubt as to which sorts of immigrants she disapproves of, and whom she counts as French. An FN campaign poster for regional elections in 2015 showed two female faces: one with flowing hair and the French tricolour flag painted on her cheeks, the other wearing a burqa. "Choose your neighbourhood: vote for the Front", ran the text.

Ms Le Pen's popularity has dragged other politicians onto similar territory. Nicolas Sarkozy, a centre-right former president, wants the job again. As soon as you become French, he declared at a recent campaign rally, "your ancestors are Gauls." At another, Mr Sarkozy said that children who did not want to eat pork at school should "take a second helping of chips"-in other words, that it was up to non-Christians whose religions impose dietary restrictions to make do with the food on offer, not up to schools to accommodate them. France is witnessing a "defensive nationalism", says Dominique Moïsi of the Institut Montaigne, a think-tank, "based on a lack of confidence and a negative jingoism: the idea that I have to defend myself against the threat of others."

Something similar is on the rise elsewhere in Europe, too. In 2010 the Sweden Democrats (SD), a nationalist party, put out a television ad that captured the popular fear that Sweden's generous welfare system might not survive a big influx of poor, fertile Muslim asylum-seekers. An elderly white woman with a Zimmer frame hobbles down a dark corridor towards her pension pot, but is overtaken by a crowd of burqa-clad women with prams, who beat her to the money. At least one channel refused to air it, but it spread online. Polls suggest the SD is now one of Sweden's most popular parties.

In the Netherlands Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Party for Freedom, is on trial for "hate speech" for goading his audience to chant that it wanted "fewer Moroccans" in the country. Polls put his party in first or second place in the run-up to the national election in March; its popularity has risen since the start of the trial.

Britain's vote in June to leave the EU was also the result of a nationalist turn. Campaign posters for "Brexit" depicted hordes of Middle Eastern migrants clamouring to come in. Activists railed against bankers, migrants and rootless experts; one of their slogans was "We want our country back". After the vote David Cameron, a cosmopolitan prime minister, resigned and was replaced by Theresa May, who says: "If you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what the very word 'citizenship' means."

Even before Britain has left the EU, the mere prospect has made the country poorer: the currency is down 16% against the dollar. Still, few Brexiteers have regrets. In Margate, a seaside town full of pensioners, it is hard to find anyone who voted to remain. Tom Morrison, who runs a bookshop, says: "[We] should be allowed to make our own laws...At least our mistakes will be our own mistakes."

Clive, a taxi driver, is more trenchant. "All the Europeans do is leech off us. They can't even win their own wars," he says. He is glad that Mrs May has promised to reduce immigration: "We just physically haven't enough room for them...The schools are overfilled with foreigners." He adds that some of them are hard workers, but "in Cliftonville [next to Margate], you might as well be in Romania. A lot of them are gypsies." Asked if being British is important to him, he declares a narrower identity: "It's being English. English."

Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, is not sure what to make of Mr Trump. Though he doubtless welcomes Mr Trump's promise to reset relations with Russia, if America ceases to be the enemy, he will need another one. Mr Putin's core belief is in a strong state led by himself, but since he first took power in 2000 he has harnessed ethnic nationalism to that end. In 2011 he faced huge protests from an urban middle class angry about both corruption and uncontrolled immigration by non-Slavic people. He responded by whipping up imperial fervour. When Ukraine sought to move closer to the West, he then annexed Crimea and invaded Eastern Ukraine. State media portrayed him as saving ethnic Russians from (historical) "Ukrainian fascists".

With oil prices low, and after a long spell in the economic doldrums, nationalism is Mr Putin's way of remaining popular. His version involves rejecting the universal, liberal values that the West has long promoted. That is why he so eagerly supports illiberal nationalist parties in Western Europe, such as Ms Le Pen's FN. "We see how many Euro-Atlantic countries are in effect turning away from their roots, including their Christian values," he said in 2013. He contrasted this with an ethnically defined version of Russia as "a state civilisation held together by the Russian people, the Russian language, Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox Church".

In China a similarly ethnic, non-universalist nationalism is being pressed into service by the Communist Party (see Briefing). The party seeks to blur the distinction between itself and the nation, and to prop up its legitimacy now that economic growth, long the main basis of its claim to power, has slowed. Soon after becoming president in 2012, Xi Jinping launched the "Chinese Dream" as a slogan to promote the country's "great revival". A "patriotic education" campaign extends from primary school all the way up to doctoral students.

The government often blames "hostile foreign forces" for things it does not like, including protests in Hong Kong or Xinjiang, a far-western province where Uighurs chafe against Han rule. State television tries to make other countries look stupid, dangerous or irrelevant. Anti-Western rhetoric has been stepped up. In 2015 China's education minister called for a ban on "textbooks promoting Western values" in higher education.

China's glorious victory over Japan has become central to history lessons (though in fact it was the communists' rivals, the Kuomintang, who did most of the fighting). In 2014 three new national holidays were introduced: a memorial day for the Nanjing massacre, commemorating the 300,000 or so people killed by the Japanese there in 1937; a "Victory Day" to mark Japan's surrender at the end of the second world war; and "Martyrs' Day" dedicated to those who died fighting Japan.

My enemy's enemy

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the jingoism, many Chinese now see international affairs as a zero-sum game, believing that for China to rise, others must fall. A recent poll by Pew found that more than half of those asked reckoned that America is trying to prevent China from becoming an equal power; some 45% see American power and influence as the greatest international threat facing the country. Chinese antipathy towards the Japanese has also increased considerably.

The propaganda has been so effective that the government is no longer sure that it can control the passions it has stoked. In 2012 protests erupted across China against Japan's claims to islands in the East China Sea: shops were looted, Japanese cars destroyed and riot police deployed to protect the Japanese embassy in Beijing. The government now censors the angriest online posts about nationalist topics.

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt's authoritarian president, uses all the resources of the state to promote the idea that he is the father of his country. His regime blames Islamists for everything: when heavy rains caused flooding in Alexandria last year, the interior ministry blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist group, for blocking the drains. Last summer, after splurging $8bn on expanding the Suez Canal, he declared a public holiday and sailed up the waterway in full military regalia, as warplanes flew overhead. State television broadcast shots of the new canal to the bombastic theme tune of "Game of Thrones", a television show.

A similar story is playing out in Turkey, a country that only a few years ago appeared firmly on course to join the EU. Now its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vows to build a "New Turkey", bravely standing up to coup-plotters and their imaginary Western enablers. He recently attended a mass rally celebrating the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. He accuses Turkey's duplicitous Western allies of trying to "pick up the slack of crusaders". Such rhetoric is intended to justify the arrests of 36,000 people since a coup attempt in July.

In India ethnic nationalism, never far beneath the surface, is worryingly resurgent. Since 2014 the country has been ruled by Narendra Modi of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party seeks to distance itself from radical Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) groups, which criticise it as "soft" on Pakistan, Muslims and those who harm cows (which are sacred to Hindus). And Mr Modi is urbane, pro-business and friendly towards the West. But he is also a lifelong member of the RSS (National Volunteer Organisation), a 5m-strong Hindu group founded in 1925 and modelled loosely on the Boy Scouts.

Members of the RSS parade in khaki uniforms, do physical jerks in the morning, help old ladies cross the street, pick up litter-and are occasional recruits for extremist groups that beat up left-wing students. And last year Mr Modi's minister of culture, Mahesh Sharma, said that a former president was a patriot "despite being a Muslim". The minister remains in his job.

Hindutva purports to represent all Hindus, who are four-fifths of India's population. It promises a national rebirth, a return to an idealised past and the retrieval of an "authentic" native identity. Its adherents see themselves as honest folk fighting corrupt cosmopolitans. They have changed India's political language, deriding "political correctness", and calling critical journalists "presstitutes" and political opponents "anti-national". The RSS also exerts huge sway over education and the media. Some states and schools have adopted textbooks written by RSS scholars that play up the role of Hindutva leaders and marginalise more secular ones.

The BJP has made a big push to control the judiciary by changing rules for appointments, but has met strong resistance. It does not control most states in the east and south. Many of the educated elite despise it. And banging on too much about Hinduism and not enough about the economy is thought to have cost it a state election in Bihar last year.

So India will not slide easily into Turkish-style autocracy-but plenty of secular, liberal Indians are nervous. The police, especially, are thought to favour the ruling party. A reporter nabbed by cops for the "crime" of filming angry crowds outside a bank in Delhi this week says they threatened him with a beating and said: "Who gave you permission to film? Our government has changed; you can't just take pictures anywhere you like any more."

Nations once again

Inquiring after the roots of nationalism is like asking what makes people love their families or fear strangers. Scholars have suggested that nations are built around language, history, culture, territory and politics without being able to settle on any single cause. A better question is: what turns civic nationalism into the exclusive sort? There are several theories.

In rich countries, pessimism plays a role. As chart 3 shows, slower growth lowers support for globalisation. Inequality hurts, too. Educated people may be doing just fine, but blue-collar workers are often struggling. Mr Trump did remarkably well among blue-collar white voters. One of the best predictors of support for Brexit or Ms Le Pen is a belief that things were better in the past.

In developing countries, growth is often faster and support for globalisation higher. But people still have woes, from rapacious officials to filthy air. For the new-nationalist strongmen such as Mr Sisi and Mr Putin, nationalism is a cheap and easy way to generate enthusiasm for the state, and to deflect blame for what is wrong.

The new nationalism owes a lot to cultural factors, too. Many Westerners, particularly older ones, liked their countries as they were and never asked for the immigration that turned Europe more Muslim and America less white and Protestant. They object to their discomfort being dismissed as racism.

Elite liberals stress two sources of identity: being a good global citizen (who cares about climate change and sweatshops in Bangladesh) and belonging to an identity group that has nothing to do with the nation (Hispanic, gay, Buddhist, etc). Membership of certain identity groups can carry material as well as psychological benefits. Affirmative action of the sort practised in America gives even the richer members of the racial groups it favours advantages that are unavailable to the poorer members of unfavoured groups.

Nationalists dislike the balkanisation of their countries into identity groups, particularly when those groups are defined as virtuous only to the extent that they disagree with the nation's previously dominant history. White Americans are starting to act as if they were themselves a minority pressure group.

Lastly, communication tools have accelerated the spread of the new nationalism. Facebook and Twitter allow people to bypass the mainstream media's cosmopolitan filter to talk to each other, swap news, meet and organise rallies. Mr Trump's tweets reached millions. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, made his name running a white-nationalist website.

For Mrs May's "citizens of nowhere", all this is deeply worrying. But they should not despair. Liberals can use social media, too. Demagogues fall from favour when their policies fail to bring prosperity. And demographic trends favour pluralism.

In many countries the university-educated population-typically cosmopolitan in instinct-is rising. In the post-war period about 5% of British adults had gone to university; today more than 40% of school-leavers are university-bound. In Germany 2m citizens were in tertiary education in 2005; a decade later that number had risen to 2.8m. The share of 18- to 24-year-old Americans in that category rose from 26% in 1970 to 40% in 2014.

And immigration, which has done much to fuel ethnic nationalism, could, as generations are born into diverse societies, start to counter that nationalism. The foreign-born population of America rose by almost 10m, to 40m in the decade to 2010. In Britain it rose by 2.9m, to 7.5m, in the decade to 2011. Western voters aged 60 and over-the most nationalist cohort-have lived through a faster cultural and economic overhaul than any previous generation, and seem to have had enough. Few supporters of UKIP and the FN are young; the same is true for Alternative for Germany, another anti-immigrant party (see chart 4).

But youngsters seem to find these changes less frightening. Although just 37% of French people believe that "globalisation is a force for good", 77% of 18- to 24-year-olds do. The new nationalists are riding high on promises to close borders and restore societies to a past homogeneity. But if the next generation holds out, the future may once more be cosmopolitan.

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AFTER the sans culottes rose up against Louis XVI in 1789 they drew up a declaration of the universal rights of man and of the citizen. Napoleon's Grande Armée marched not just for the glory of France but for liberty, equality and fraternity.

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MBA curriculums: The defence for the case

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The Economist offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them.

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by Oyindamola Johnson

I had the opportunity of attending the recently held World Bank Group Youth Summit on "Rethinking Education for the New Millennium" in Washington, D.C. The 2-day summit brought together experts from different sectors around the world, as well as young emerging global leaders from over 90 countries, to deliberate on issues focusing on the future of education.

The 4 main sub themes of the summit centered on the following:

Innovation and Technology in Education

Skills for the New Economy

Gender Equality in Education

Education in Crisis Zones

While listening to the array of world class speakers giving insights on the latest thoughts, and developments in the field of education, innovation, and human capacity development, my thoughts went back to how we have fared so far in Africa.

A.U Agenda 2063 is a road map for the Africa that we want to see in the next 50 years. It is a vision, and an action plan which effectively covers key focus areas, in which education and youth development is a critical part.
Aspiration 6 - An Africa where Development is People-Driven, Unleashing the Potential of its Women and Youth.

1. Youth unemployment will be eliminated, and Africa's youth guaranteed full access to education, training, skills and technology, to health services, jobs and economic opportunities, recreational and cultural activities as well as to financial means to allow them to realize their full potential.

2. Young African men and women will be the path breakers of the African knowledge society and will contribute significantly to innovation and entrepreneurship. The creativity, energy and innovation of African youth will be the driving force behind the continent's political, social, cultural and economic transformation.

Paying close attention to the above, the underlying theme is on education, and human capacity development for young people in Africa, because the truth simply is that the very ones to drive the actualization of Agenda 2063 is the younger generation.

The question that however comes to mind is, are we truly on the journey to ensure that we pay adequate attention to developing the capacity, thought process, and expertise of young Africans through empowering them with access to relevant information, as well as quality, and affordable education, to fully make them drivers, and not just spectators in the development of our dear continent?

In a report released by the African Development Bank, written by Stephen Williams, titled "Africa's Youth: The African Development Bank and the Demographic Dividend" it states that "Africa has the fastest growing, and most youthful population in the world. Over 40% are under the age of 15, and 20% are between the ages of 15 and 24. These statistics present a serious challenge. Can Africa seize the opportunities being presented, or do Africa's youth constitute a ticking, demographic time-bomb?"

To drive this point home further, where do we see the future of Africa considering the increasing numbers of young people who have limited or no access to quality education, opportunities, development, and productivity? Is this truly an opportunity, and our strength, or just a keg of gunpowder sitting idly, ready to go off at the slightest disturbance?

I resisted the urge to end my last statement with "employment" but rather used productivity instead, as I strongly believe that the main purpose of education is not just in making an individual "employable" but to be knowledgeable, and ultimately productive. This productivity, and expertise is then transferred either to the workplace, entrepreneurship, or in other settings one may find his or herself.

Going back the conference, there was a session on "Skills for the New Economy", where experts shared thoughts and insights on the future of the workplace, as well as effective skills to be acquired if an individual is to fully function effectively in the direction where the world is going, and yet again my thoughts went back to Africa.

Are we concentrating only on making sure that our young people cope with today's challenges, without adequate focus on informing, educating, and preparing them ahead for future? Focusing only for today challenges, and not tomorrow simply means that by the time we arrive at "today", the world has already left us behind, and moved far ahead. It thus ends up being a never-ending race of trying to play catch up each time.

In rethinking the future of education for Africa, I came up with 6 distinct questions we need to ask ourselves, and it simply follows the model of communication often used in information gathering, and problem solving.

What exactly is the purpose of our education model, and curriculum in Africa. What does it entail, and what skills does it transfer? Are we focusing only on raising people just to become workers, and seekers of employment, or are we raising, and empowering people to have an entrepreneurial and problem solving mindset, and thereby ultimately be at the forefront of innovation both locally, and globally?

Who are the key players, and stakeholders in the education system in our countries, as well as continent? Who shapes the direction of where education goes in Africa, and is this a fully inclusive process which involves everyone starting from the scholar, parents, society, educational institutions, and much more?

The concept of education which takes place only within the four walls of a classroom, simply does not fit the world we live in today, and is out of date. Where exactly does learning take place, and have we created more channels, and avenues through which this takes place?

We have different education systems across the continent, however, we need to ask ourselves if this model is appropriate, sustainable, and fits the modern realities of the world which we live in today. When does learning commence, and does continuous personal development, and education truly ever stop? And if we do agree that learning doesn't stop, do we have systems in place to ensure that no one is truly left behind?

There must be a clear focus, need, reason, and agenda behind our education systems. Not knowing, understanding, or fully having a grasp of the "why" would only keep us at one spot of constantly reinventing the wheel, and ever shifting focus, intent, and priorities, without achieving measurable growth, and progress.

This is a very critical question to ask, as this will enable us look at what is on ground, and come up with fresh thinking, new ideas, and innovative ways of deploying educative content. Asking this question would also enable us critically look at how we leverage the use of technology for this purpose.

In concluding this article, the biggest issue remains equity in education. In moving forward, we need to ensure that there is fair, just, and equitable distribution of learning opportunities both within, and outside the four walls of the classroom to every young person across the continent. Only then can we truly say we are indeed on the journey of actualizing the Africa that we want.
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija Oyindamola has over six years' experience in youth development, communication for development, and nonprofit management. He earned a Bachelor's of Arts in Mass Communication from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria. In June 2015, he was selected as one of the Top 100 Brightest Young Minds in Africa by Brightest Young Minds South Africa and Barclays Africa. Due to the role, he plays in promoting the rights of young people in Africa, he was named "African Youth Hero" by the African Union Commission, in November, 2015. He is currently an Atlas Corps Fellow, and serves as Chief of Staff at Practice Makes Perfect, which is an education enterprise in New York.

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Opinion: Rethinking the future of education in Africa: Agenda 2063 in focus " YNaija

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by Oyindamola Johnson I had the opportunity of attending the recently held World Bank Group Youth Summit on "Rethinking Education for the New Millennium" in Washington, D.C. The 2-day summit brought together experts from different sectors around the world, as well as young emerging global leaders from over 90

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Why UK should follow Nordics’ lead on universal childcare

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Why UK should follow Nordics’ lead on universal childcare

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Playtime, Swedish style. Jana Javornik, Author provided

Childcare is likely to be a key battleground for the UK's 2015 general election. The Labour party has committed to a universal quality childcare service. It sees it as a strategic political, social and economic imperative. The Liberal Democrats are also trying to convince the electorate that they are serious about transforming childcare, with a promise to provide 15 hours of free childcare a week. The Conservatives plan to up the tax-free childcare scheme from £1,200 to £2,000 a year per child.

Promises to entice female votes? Perhaps, but these policy commitments affect us all, including fathers, grandparents, and taxpayers in general. To put the UK's childcare cost crisis in perspective, it's worth looking to how other countries, many of them Nordic, have forged ahead with making universal, quality childcare a priority.

Childcare costs soaring

Over the first 21 years of their children's lives, parents in the UK spend an average of 28% of their household income on children, with a total of £66,113 on childcare. Childcare costs alone have gone up by 67% since 2003, hitting hardest single parents and parents of disabled children, whose childcare costs are on average even higher.

Since 2009, prices have further increased by 27%, making childcare ever more unaffordable. According to the Family and Childcare Trust 2014 Annual Childcare Costs Survey, even part-time childcare costs outstrip the average mortgage - for a family with two children, the cost for one child in part-time nursery care and one in an after school club is £7,549 a year, compared to the average UK mortgage of £7,207. Regional variation in the UK are also wide, with London and the South East offering the most expensive under-fives childcare.

Boost to women's employment

Childcare costs operate in the same way as the reduction in female wages: the higher they are, the lower the probability of women's employment. Insurance company LV= reports that mums believed they needed to earn an average of more than £26,000 a year to make it worth returning to work.

Research on these relationships confirms that childcare availability and affordability significantly affect female labour supply, especially of lower skilled mothers - a 10% increase in childcare boosts their employment by 14 percentage points, relative to a 7-percentage point increase in the employment of women with high education.

Demand-led childcare subsidy

Successive UK governments have made several serious commitments and investments in childcare, and the Coalition promised an additional £1 billion to support childcare. Currently, the government provides cash benefits, vouchers and tax reductions for childcare amounting to £6bn every year.

Even in the OECD, the UK appears a generous spender - in 2009, government expenditure on childcare represented 0.5% of GDP, or 1.1% of GDP including pre-school, which was above the OECD average of 0.3%. But it was well behind Iceland and Sweden, as the graph below shows.

But the level of total government expenditure is not a guarantee that money is spent efficiently.

Unsustainable and complex

The UK's current childcare system is inefficient and unsustainable. Only 49% of local authorities supplied enough childcare for working parents and 75% failed the disabled children. Much of childcare is delivered by the private and not-for-profit sectors.

Market failure makes parental share of childcare costs in the UK one of the highest in the OECD. After accounting for government support, it represents 34% of average family incomes, compared to an OECD average of 13%, in a family with two-earner family earning 150% of the average wage.

A complex funding mechanism adds to high costs. Parents can receive financial help directly, through Working Tax Credit, childcare vouchers and schemes operated by Job Centre+. Other subsidies go directly to the childcare providers through the free offers - these, however, hardly pay the costs. These funding streams come with high administrative costs; simplifying could help affordability.

Nordic alternative

The UK's approach is similar to those in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Korea, and the USA, and significantly differs from the supply-side childcare subsidies common in the Nordic countries and Slovenia.

Nordic countries' approach to universal childcare remains a source of policy inspiration. Combination of full availability and high quality childcare service underpins these societies, which have more people in paid work, higher tax revenues, low gender inequality and child poverty.

In these countries, universal childcare has been a strategic imperative since the 1970s, when the feminist movements and social democrats pioneered investments in public childcare.

Sweden especially (and its then socialist counterpart Slovenia) saw a big investment in childcare infrastructure and workforce, ensuring that parents had entitlements to full-time daycare in high-quality, safe and secure public childcare centres at the heart of the community. Ever since, practically every neighbourhood in Sweden and Slovenia has had a day care centre at which a child (including yours truly) would be dropped off each morning.

Led by the state, provided by the public sector and (co-) financed by municipality, childcare has resulted in these countries recording the highest maternal employment rates in the OECD. Costs are capped, fees means-tested (using sliding-fee scales in some countries), and selected target groups either charged reduced rate or their fees waived all together. Such an ambitious childcare system has drawn mothers into the labour force on an equal basis with every other group, and secured high levels of gender equality.

A political decision

Childcare policy ostensibly reflects social sharing of care responsibilities and obligations between the family, markets, the state, and the community. Who can access quality childcare is, thereby, an outcome of government decisions.

In the UK, universal childcare is seen as a public scarcity. Of course, having a reliable quality service with a qualified workforce means we need to fund it, and deliver it in a sustainable way, just as any other public service we commit to. This costs many billions, and it takes many years for the benefits to pay off. But basically, the restructuring of childcare could pay for itself by means of reduced administration costs, jobs created, and improved tax revenues.

Peter Macdiarmid/PA Archive

The run up to a general election is an opportunity to set out the vision for the future, and decide whether care for children - the bedrock of our society - is a shared social responsibility. I, for one, would like to see political parties committing to a sustainable childcare strategy, one that will deliver for mothers and fathers, and, crucially, for children.

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Why UK should follow Nordics' lead on universal childcare

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Childcare is likely to be a key battleground for the UK's 2015 general election. The Labour party has committed to a universal quality childcare service. It sees it as a strategic political, social and economic imperative.

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Focusing free childcare on 'working parents' is short-sighted

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Focusing free childcare on 'working parents' is short-sighted

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Not the right building blocks for a childcare policy. Childcare via lsantilli/www.shutterstock.com

As part of its plan to get more people into work, the government is forging ahead with a pre-election pledge to double the current 15 hours per week of free childcare to 30 hours for working parents.

The 2015-16 Childcare Bill, currently making its way through parliament, does not extend the eligibility criteria to all parents. In its current form, the bill introduces a "duty to secure 30 hours free childcare available for working parents". The definition of "working parents" is, as yet, unclear.

Unlike the relatively standardised and supply-led childcare arrangements in most EU countries, in the UK, parents are reimbursed through the tax and benefit system for childcare purchased in the open market, where fees are set by providers to maximise profitability. Parents can receive financial help directly and other subsidies go directly to childcare providers through the "early years entitlement". This provides three- and four-year-olds and disadvantaged two-year-olds with 15 hours of childcare (for 38 weeks of the year).

There is clearly high demand for quality childcare services, but there are worries over the capacity for the sector to expand and the quality of scaled-up provision.

Critically, aside from the current baseline of 15 hours of free childcare, the remainder of state-funded help for childcare is tied to being in work. This suggests that the government sees childcare largely as a support strategy for employed parents. But for parents in education, training, seeking a job or starting a business, having quality childcare in place is essential before they can undertake these activities.

If the government is assuming equal economic participation of parents and non-parents, of both men and women, then limiting access to childcare intensifies a segregation between employed and unemployed parents, and parents with uneven working patterns, such as those with shift work or zero-hours contracts. Framing the policy in this way ignores children's needs, disrupts children's daily lives (as parents move in and out of work) and puts high pressure on parents.

Childcare costs keep on rising

Most families with children aged under three wishing to use childcare will still be reliant on either self-payment, employer-provided vouchers or the new tax-free childcare scheme. However, this scheme is now scheduled to be introduced in autumn 2017, rather than 2015 and will actually leave some parents worse off.

This is problematic, as childcare in the UK is among the most expensive in the world. The Family and Childcare Trust's 2015 Childcare Cost Survey showed that over the last parliament the cost of a part-time nursery place for a child aged under two had increased by 33% and for the first time childcare costs broke the £6,000-a-year barrier, averaging £115.45 a week across Britain. This represents a rise of 5.1% in a single year.

CC BY

The proposed change also leaves untouched the problem of the availability of before- and after-school care for older children. The Family and Childcare Trust Annual Holiday Costs Survey 2014 found that holiday childcare is 1.7% more expensive than in 2013, with the average holiday club now costing £114.51 per week. Additionally, 35% of parents found it difficult to find affordable holiday childcare and only 27% of English and 6% of Welsh local authorities had enough holiday childcare for working parents. The situation is even more acute for parents with disabled children or with school-aged children in rural areas.

Other countries, including some of the Nordics, have a simple system of a sliding fee scale for both daycare and after-school care that is based on parents' income. The Commission for Childcare Reform in Scotland is demonstrating that there are alternatives to the English and Welsh models. It is proposing up to 50 hours of free or subsidised childcare a week, a sliding fee scale and a child account for each child, to provide a transparent route through which childcare funds will be channelled to providers. The Scottish government will publish its response to the commissions's recommendations in the coming months.

Supporting parents to raise the next generation is a social investment. We could look at the doubling of the free childcare entitlement as a step towards universal childcare, through the policy's emphasis on improving access. However, the policy's aims seem paradoxical.

By introducing their shared parental leave scheme, the coalition government said it aimed to challenge the status quo of mothers sharing the bulk of parenting responsibilities. In this new policy, however, a strategic approach to active fatherhood is conspicuously absent: the economic implications of both shared parental leave and childcare policy both compound gender inequality.

Appropriate for every age

If the government's focus is on child development and well-being, then not extending access to more free childcare to all children, but only those whose parents are "working", suggests that quality childcare is not seen as an essential public service.

Reframing childcare as early "education" rather than "early years education and care" and time for play, Ofsted's chief inspector has argued that this should be delivered solely in schools. But repositioning childcare as an educational programme "for the poorest" could be a barrier to a progressive childcare system.

By taking playtime out of the picture it does not contribute to a broader vision for early learning and care, associated with nurturing, safety, play and creativity: all necessary preconditions for wider support for public childcare. It is also contrary to the direction of other countries that have based childcare on particular pedagogical principles, such as Denmark. Along with availability, affordability, accessibility and quality, ensuring that childcare uses practices that are developmentally appropriate to each age group should be a critical principle guiding debate about the early years.

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Focusing free childcare on 'working parents' is short-sighted

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As part of its plan to get more people into work, the government is forging ahead with a pre-election pledge to double the current 15 hours per week of free childcare to 30 hours for working parents. The 2015-16 Childcare Bill, currently making its way through parliament, does not extend the eligibility criteria to all parents.

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Most 'just about managing' families will find life as tough as ever after the Autumn Statement

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Most 'just about managing' families will find life as tough as ever after the Autumn Statement

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Empty again. Andrey_Popov/www.shutterstock.com

Both the tone and content of Philip Hammond's first budgetary statement belied the mood music of the past few weeks: that Theresa May's government will do much more to help "just about managing families" - dubbed the "JAMs". Mr Hammond continued in a modest way some policies of his predecessor, George Osborne, such as freezing fuel duty and promising more social housing and help-to-buy schemes.

There was also infrastructure support for the regions and support for innovation to improve long-term productivity. But families struggling to make ends meet right now will find it hard to see how such policies will make their lives significantly better in 2017 than in 2016.

The few announcements with a direct effect on personal incomes will come nowhere near undoing recent cuts in state support for families on low incomes, including those who benefit from the welcome pay increase represented by the National Living Wage. Immediately after the summer 2015 budget, I explained in an article for The Conversation why this measure would not leave most families better off when combined with cuts in tax credits and Universal Credit.

Such critiques led to a climbdown by Hammond's predecessor at the Treasury, George Osborne, on the cuts to tax credits but not to Universal Credit. Now as Universal Credit is phased in, its declining real value will hit the families finding it hard to manage.

Hammond announced just one measure to help compensate for these losses: a reduction in the very sharp rate at which Universal Credit is reduced as people earn more. For every additional pound you earn, you currently lose 65p in Universal Credit, and this "taper" will fall to 63p in April 2017. For selected families, this change, in combination with the pay rise and higher tax allowances, will turn a small net loss into a net gain. For most, it will come nowhere near doing so.

Swings and roundabouts

The two graphs below illustrate who the winners and losers will be. On the left of each graph are families who do not work: they have only seen cuts, and will typically be £750 a year worse off once the announced reductions in entitlements feed through. These are families who are quite clearly not managing, and are finding it ever harder to do so.

My team's research at Loughborough University shows that some families on out-of-work benefits have barely half what they require for an acceptable minimum living standard, based on what members of the public say is essential, compared to nearly two thirds just before the financial crash.

Moving to the right along the diagrams, families who work a few hours a week have become worse off as a result of the cuts because Universal Credit starts being withdrawn sooner as their pay rises. Their "work allowances" under Universal Credit have been cut, and the effect is especially sharp for lone parents. On the other hand, the higher minimum wage and Hammond's cut in the "taper" rate at which Universal Credit falls each time a recipient's earnings rise, from 65p to 63p in the pound, produce offsetting gains, which are larger the more hours you work.

For couples where both parents work full-time on the National Living Wage, there is a small net gain. For everyone else, and especially lone parents, the changes have made things worse overall.

These changes help those low-paid families who manage to find plenty of regular work - but that is not the experience of most people on low incomes. The overwhelming majority getting help from the state do not have two full-time wages coming into the household.

The new work and pensions secretary, Damian Green, has stated that there will be " no new search for cuts in individual welfare benefits". This is qualified good news to families depending on state help: among the cuts in the pipeline that were not reversed in the Autumn Statement, the four-year freeze in the cash value of benefits announced by Osborne is particularly significant.

Benefit freeze, as costs go up

Over the next few years, living standards for the worst off are threatened further not just by renewed inflation, but by the wrong kind of inflation. As the graph below shows, recent years have seen a reversal of the situation in the 1990s, when falling world commodity prices made essentials like food and fuel cheaper even when domestic demand put other prices up. These days, the world price of energy and other commodities have become the driver, and as my research has shown, this means that those on the lowest incomes are hardest hit by inflation.

This recent decoupling of benefit increases from price rises is unprecedented in the postwar period. Steady prices in the past two years have delayed the impact of the current benefits freeze, but the latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest the Consumer Prices Index will rise 10% by the end of this parliament - and the cost of essentials could increase more quickly than this. For many families who just about manage, and for most of those who do not, this augurs a further fall in living standards.

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Most 'just about managing' families will find life as tough as ever after the Autumn Statement

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Both the tone and content of Philip Hammond's first budgetary statement belied the mood music of the past few weeks: that Theresa May's government will do much more to help "just about managing families" - dubbed the "JAMs".

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Ever since the EU referendum, an increasingly poisonous debate has raged about "the will of the people" and how it should be delivered. Both Remainers and Brexiteers are scratching their heads at what is clearly a clash of two different ideals of democracy. The clash is partly linguistic. On both sides of the Brexit debate, you hear phrases like "will of the people" and "democratic representation". But each side seems to be describing a different kind of democracy. The gap between word and meaning is causing a rift in the democratic process itself.

One of the key philosophical and scientific discoveries of the modern era was that the language we use to talk about abstract concepts shapes how we understand those concepts. The word "democracy" is no exception. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville compared it to the growth of a person when he likened the American democractic process to the growth from infancy to adulthood.

The metaphor of democracy as a powerful body extends back to ancient Greece. Demos means the people or the multitudes. And in Greek mythology, Kratos, one of Zeus' enforcers, is the personification of power and authority. So, when the Demos have Kratia, you have an authoritative or powerful multitude.

Since June 23, it has become clear that the definition of the language of democracy that is thrown around in the British media reveals significant ideological clashes.

Day after day, pro-Brexit commentators and publications have stood behind phrases like "will of the people" when talking about democracy.

Gina Miller, the businesswoman who took a case to the high court to argue that the government couldn't go ahead with Brexit without first consulting parliament, was labelled a "traitor to democracy" for her actions. Yet she stated that she led the action against the government precisely because of her concern that democracy was under threat.

PA

After one anti-Brexit march, meanwhile, protesting remainers were accused of attempting to "thwart the people's will" and "crush public opinion".

In this view, democracy means a path towards a particular goal that the people collectively want. Will is obviously our ability to choose one thing out of many things such as the choice to vote leave instead of remain. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau applied this to politics during the French Revolution when he stated that the law was meant to "express the general will".

Representation

But the other side of the debate sees itself as equally concerned about the need to honour democracy. The Brexit-sceptical Guardian urged despairing Remainers not to resort to "undemocratic moves" - such as urging parliament to ignore the vote - to achieve their goal of staying in the EU.

However, it has also outlined the legal ways in which "the will of the people" could be legitimately and democratically overturned such as by a vote by MP's against triggering article 50 or holding a second referendum if evidence suggests that a large number of those who voted leave have changed their mind.

This is the other view of democracy that seems to clash with the "will of the people". It is one that describes democratic representation rather than general will as outlined by Rousseau.

Many people - particularly Remainers - think it undemocratic for the government to plough on with Brexit without a debate about it in parliament. This is of course the line that Miller picked up on when defending herself against people who called her actions undemocratic. Miller said:

All the people who have been saying "we need to take back control", "we need sovereignty", well you can't have it with one hand and then with the other say, "I'm going to bypass it now and not seek consultation from the representatives in parliament".

Miller is making a quite literal appeal to democratic representation in parliament. But she is also referring to the ideal of the democratic process itself. Walter Bagehot, who wrote the famous 1867 work English Constitution, said that representative democracy is "government by discussion". And in the UK, the vehicle for that discussion is parliament. So, while the word "representation" does not refer to the particular goal of the people's collective will, it does refer to the goal of democracy itself.

This is an ideal of democracy framed by the representation of the public by elected officials. In the context of the Brexit debate, that means the people have given their view on the general direction of travel the country should take but their elected representatives should fill in the detail.

As we decide how Brexit is to be delivered, we need to decide what the word "democracy" means in modern Britain. After the referendum, is the will of the people being thwarted by parliamentary discussion or is it best represented by it?

This linguistic crisis of the meaning of democracy is far from a quibble about semantics. These two words - will and representation - frame two different ideals of one of the West's most cherished ideas. Now the discord about which word best represents British democracy is threatening to tear the practical process of that very idea apart.

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Ever since the EU referendum, an increasingly poisonous debate has raged about "the will of the people" and how it should be delivered. Both Remainers and Brexiteers are scratching their heads at what is clearly a clash of two different ideals of democracy. The clash is partly linguistic.

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How to keep an EU citizenship after Brexit

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How to keep an EU citizenship after Brexit

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Do you want to keep your EU citizenship, even after Brexit? Clive Bull found out exactly how you could do that.

Charles Goerens, an MEP from Luxembourg, has tabled a motion to create Associate EU Citizenship, allowing people from countries who have left the EU to continue to enjoy the benefits.

He spoke to Clive Bull to explain how it would work.

Mr Goerens told LBC: "The idea is simply to guarantee for those who want it some of the same rights they had as full EU citizens.

"Including the right of residence in the EU, to be able to vote in European elections and be represented by an MEP. That's the idea behind it."

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This Is How You Could Keep Your EU Citizenship After Brexit | LBC

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Do you want to keep your EU citizenship, even after Brexit? Clive Bull found out exactly how you could do that. Charles Goerens, an MEP from Luxembourg, has tabled a motion to create Associate EU Citizenship, allowing people from countries who have left the EU to continue to enjoy the benefits.

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ND/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

When did the information age begin? One might point to the winter of 1943, when British engineers started using a room-sized machine dubbed "Colossus," the world's first electronic digital programmable computer, to break Nazi codes during the World War II. Or perhaps it was February 1946, when the U.S. Army unveiled the faster, more flexible Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (aka ENIAC) at the University of Pennsylvania. History buffs may push it back further, perhaps bringing up key 19 th-century figures like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace who pioneered programmable calculating machines in Victorian England.

But we should look back even earlier, to the work of a towering but often overlooked intellect-to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher and polymath who died 300 years ago on Nov. 14, 1716. Though you may not have heard of him, he was a man who envisioned the systems and machines that would define the digital revolution.

Something of a prodigy, Leibniz was just 8 when he started reading the books in his father's library. (His father was a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig University.) He quickly learned the classics, once boasting that he could recite Virgil's Aeneid by heart. At school, he excelled in logic; by 17 he had defended his master's thesis, and three years later he had qualified for his doctorate. Leibniz would go on to work as a historian, librarian, legal adviser, and diplomat. He wrote on biology, medicine, geology, theology, psychology, linguistics, and of course philosophy. The king of Prussia, Frederick the Great, described Leibniz as "a whole academy in himself."

Famously, Leibniz clashed with Isaac Newton over the invention of calculus. Historians now believe that the two men discovered calculus independently, though it's Leibniz's elegant and compact notation system, not Newton's clunkier version, that we use today.

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Of course, there was no such thing as "computer science" in Leibniz's day. But by developing the binary number system, a way of representing numerical information using zeroes and 1s, he became the father of all computer coding. (Computers don't have to run by manipulating zeroes and 1s-but it's a lot easier if they do.) Leibniz believed that machines, not people, should be crunching numbers and worked on a prototype for a device that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. He tweaked and improved the design over many years; one of these contraptions looked like a primitive pinball game, with numbers represented by tiny spheres, rolling along grooves and going through gates that open and close. In London, his fellow scientists were so impressed with the device that they elected him to the Royal Society. He designed another machine that could do certain kinds of algebra, and yet another for cracking codes and ciphers.

Leibniz envisioned these machines would be used in accounting, administration, surveying, astronomy, the production of mathematical tables, and more. Tedious work that had kept human beings awake far into the night, working by candlelight, could now be mechanized. Unfortunately, the technology of the day didn't allow for the precisely machined parts, such as uniform screws, that Leibniz's devices required. (For instance, as historians later discovered, something as simple as "carrying the one" turns out to be maddeningly difficult to implement in hardware.) Despite 45 years of work and many prototypes, his calculating machine was never fully functional.

But for Leibniz, computation was just the beginning: He believed that all kinds of problems could be reduced to the manipulation of symbols and tackled just as though they were mathematical problems. He imagined a kind of alphabet of human thought, whose symbols could be manipulated according to precise, mechanical rules, the work carried out by devices. He called them "reasoning machines" and envisioned the pursuit we know today as artificial intelligence.

Once the system was perfected, he believed, humanity would have "a new kind of tool, a tool that will increase the power of the mind much more than optical lenses helped our eyes, a tool that will be as far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is to vision." We would weigh arguments, he said, "just as if we had a special kind of balance." Linguistic barriers between nations would fall, and the new universal language would usher in an era of understanding, peace, and prosperity. (Leibniz was, needless to say, an optimist-he also had ambitions to reunify the Catholic and Protestant churches.)

Leibniz, however, was right in foreseeing the extent to which we would come to see our world in terms of numbers. (Even just a century ago, who would have imagined that creating and manipulating visual images, or recording a symphony, would boil down to processing certain arrangements of zeroes and 1s?) He even worried about "data overload," as individuals and governments struggled to process, store, and retrieve the vast amounts of data that would soon be generated.

Leibniz never became a household name, and many of his ideas, like the notion of a universal symbolic language, never bore fruit. Much of it had to be re-discovered by later thinkers, such as the 19 th-century English mathematician and philosopher George Boole, who more fully developed the idea of a logical system based on binary arithmetic. (You may have run across his name before: Boolean algebra, Boolean searches, Boolean system.) But, in imagining a world in which machines could be used to supplement or supplant human computation, Leibniz's way of thinking paved the way for the information age that blossomed 250 years after his death.
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and . Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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The 18th-Century Philosopher Who Helped Create the Information Age

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When did the information age begin? One might point to the winter of 1943, when British engineers started using a room-sized machine dubbed "Colossus," the world's first electronic digital programmable computer, to break Nazi codes during the World War II. Or perhaps it was February 1946, when the U.S.

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Families worse off after the new budget cuts

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The combined impact of welfare cuts will leave struggling working families - the "just about managing" households Theresa May has vowed to help - worse off by more than £2,500 a year by 2020, according to research published days before her government's first autumn statement.

A study of 187,000 households across the UK found that policies including cuts to universal credit and the four-year benefit rate freeze, coupled with rising rents and higher inflation, would see low-income working families typically lose £48.90 a week by the end of the decade.

The findings have alarmed councils and charities worried that the growing financial burden on low-income families will raise poverty and homelessness levels.

The research will increase the pressure on the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to offer some relief to the "just about managing" families - or "Jams" - in Wednesday's autumn statement. He warned on Sunday that the government is facing a "sharp challenge" in the face of the Brexit vote, but indicated that there would be some limited relief for those who are struggling.

The prime minister will also announce tax breaks and an annual £2bn investment fund for research and development to big businesses on Monday - an offer likely to be criticised for failing to address welfare cuts. She will further woo big business by slashing corporation tax to the lowest level out of the world's top 20 economies, according to reports.

On becoming prime minister in July, she promised to help " ordinary working class families " in a bold attempt to distance her from her predecessor's austerity approach. She has confirmed there will be no fresh cuts to social security budgets in this parliament.

But the study, by the consultancy Policy in Practice, suggests that even after promising no more cuts the cumulative impact of the £12bn of welfare changes either already in place or due to come into force will be far harsher than that experienced by low-income households under the first wave of austerity-driven welfare cuts during David Cameron's leadership.

The study is based on the financial circumstances of 187,475 households in 17 district, council and metropolitan borough councils in England, Scotland and Wales under a mix of political control.

The analysis, which uses housing benefit and council tax data supplied by the local authorities, gauges the cumulative impact of various welfare reforms, including the benefit cap, housing benefit freezes, bedroom tax and universal credit changes.

Official estimates of inflation and projected increases in private rent levels are factored in, as well as gains through the government's "national living wage" and personal tax allowances.

When the impact of welfare cuts on out-of-work households is included, the average weekly loss drops to £41.45, or £2,155 a year - though that masks the extreme effect of reforms on some families, such as those hit by the lower benefit cap, who will lose hundreds of pounds a week. By contrast, the equivalent weekly household loss for both in-work and out-of-work families between 2013 and 2016 was £13.72.

Asked if he would reverse the universal credit cuts, Hammond told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show that forecasts were "pointing to a slowing of economic growth next year and a sharp challenge for the public finances".

"There are a range of reasons for that and we've got to make sure that what we do is responsible, that everything we do is compatible with building resilience in our economy as we go into a period where there will be some uncertainty around the negotiation over our exit from the EU and focus on making sure that our economy is match-fit," he said.

The former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith resigned from the cabinet in March over the cuts to universal credit, complaining of then chancellor George Osborne's "salami slicing" of the welfare budget.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "Our welfare reforms are incentivising work and restoring fairness to the system, because we know that work is the best route out of poverty.

"Our employment rate is at a record high, wages are rising and unemployment is at an 11-year low. We continue to spend around £90bn a year supporting families, people with disabilities, people on low incomes and jobseekers. And by the end of this parliament we will have given local authorities £1bn in discretionary housing payments for their residents who may need extra help."

Hammond has already disclosed that he will announce £1.3bn of improvements to Britain's roads, which will include £1.1bn to reduce congestion and upgrade local roads and transport networks and £220m to tackle "pinch points" on England's motorways and major A-roads.

Treasury sources have confirmed that he could also crack down on staff perks such as gym memberships and mobile phone contracts, which are offered to workers willing to forgo part of their salaries in return.

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Theresa May promised to help ordinary working families in her first speech as prime minister. Photograph: Jack Taylor/PA

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said Hammond should reverse the welfare cuts alongside reductions in disability benefits that will leave some claimants £30 a week worse off.

He also revealed Labour would support an increase in the 40p tax threshold from £43,000 next year to £50,000, a move promised in 2014 by Cameron to take millions of middle-income earners off the higher tax rate.

"It looks as though the threshold will be increased on Wednesday by the government and we would support that," he said. "It's to people who need a tax giveaway at the moment, because the mismanagement of the economy by the Conservatives is hitting them hard.

"What we need is a long-term strategy. This autumn statement, we're going back to giveaways and gimmicks again," he added.

Campaigners and MPs - including some Tory backbenchers - have been lobbying ministers to mitigate the impact of the welfare cuts by restoring the work allowance in universal credit, and to reconsider the planned £30-a-week cuts in employment and support allowance benefits due in 2017.

Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: "The huge cuts hitting, or about to hit, families under previously announced policies will be devastating to these families, communities and local authorities, as child poverty rises and huge amounts of money gets sucked out of local shops and businesses. Until the government acts, councils are resigned to being in the 'damage limitation' business.

"The big choice facing the government now is does it live up to the prime minister's words - for example, by reversing the cuts targeting working families under universal credit - or does it give austerity a rebrand by making soothing noises but largely pressing ahead with policies that will tip the just about managing into hardship and more children into poverty."

The term "Jams" is used to refer to a loose group of about 6 million low-income working families, defined by the Resolution Foundation thinktank as having a net income of between £12,000 and £34,000 a year, although in practice many in this group switch regularly between employment and unemployment in an insecure job market. Their incomes have remained largely flat for a decade.

In her first speech to the CBI's annual conference, the prime minister will announce increases in government investment in research and development worth £2bn a year by 2020 and an "industrial strategy challenge fund" to back priority technologies.

She will also announce a review of current research and development tax incentives to ensure the global competitiveness of the UK as a home for scientists, innovators and tech investors.
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'Just about managing' families to be £2,500 a year worse off by 2020 - study

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The combined impact of welfare cuts will leave struggling working families - the "just about managing" households Theresa May has vowed to help - worse off by more than £2,500 a year by 2020, according to research published days before her government's first autumn statement.

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"Reach for the book; it is a weapon." Bertolt Brecht

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Why Trumps and Brexiters win the winning votes

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The shock lessons for liberals from Brexit and the Trumpquake | Andrew Rawnsley

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The new demagogues on either side of the Atlantic are ripping up the traditional rules of electoral politics

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unaccompanied minors forced to work for free

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Child refugees sent from the demolished Calais "jungle" to supposedly safe welcome centres across France claim they have been pressed into forced labour.

Legal interviews with unaccompanied minors dispersed from the refugee camp to France's official reception centres have uncovered allegations that children have been forced into unpaid work and ordered on to farms to pick apples for French supermarkets. Youngsters said they were too scared to refuse the work because they feared it would harm their chances of claiming asylum to the UK.

Of 33 teenage boys interviewed by the charity Safe Passage UK, a quarter also said they had not been given clean clothes since they arrived at the centres after the demolition of the notorious Calais camp nearly four weeks ago.

Offering a glimpse of the conditions inside some of the 60 or so refugee accommodation blocks set up by French authorities, 39% of the minors interviewed said they felt better off in the Calais camp, a site routinely described as a slum unfit for human habitation.

One of the teenage boys, based in a camp in northern France, said: "It is horrible. We worked all day picking apples and were left to eat the rotten ones. The rest went to be sold in France. We just want to be with our family in the UK."

Another said they were each forced to pick 4kg of fruit every weekday afternoon, while staying at a French reception centre, and worked under the fear that refusing to do so would impair the chances of making it to the UK. He said: "We are scared not to do it in case it affects our asylum claims. What if they don't let me live here and kick me out?"

In July, Theresa May vowed to make it a priority to rid the world of the "barbaric evil" of modern slavery, and said the forced labour of minors was one of its ugliest manifestations. On WednesdayHome Office minister Robert Goodwill told MPs that children in the welcome centres were "in a place of safety and being well looked after" and he had "not received any concerns about the facilities".

Rabbi Janet Darley, a spokeswoman for grassroots community group Citizens UK, which includes Safe Passage UK, said: "We are hugely concerned about the safeguarding of children in France. Our team have had reports of forced labour, and unaccompanied children being required to live with adults."

Safe Passage UK interviewed each child for 45 minutes in their own language last week: five children revealed they did not feel safe; of the 33, only five said Home Office officials had spoken to them, with three saying they had not yet been interviewed by any official, from either France or the UK; and three said adults were living with them in their accommodation, raising child protection issues. One said: "It looks like a prison. We don't have any things to play, and all the time we are staying in our room and it is not safe for us. We live in the middle of adults, their ages are over 20 years."

Another added: "I am not happy staying in this accommodation, please, please take us out of here to the UK. We have no proper food, clothes and I am bored here. If the situation continues like this, I may go somewhere else."

The UK charity said two boys it had been in contact with had absconded and another two were considering running away, if their situation did not improve. "If others run away I am not going to stay," said one child.

Bishop Paul Butler, another spokesman for Citizens UK, said: "Children in France are getting increasingly desperate as they hear little from officials, and fill the void with rumours and speculation."

So far, about 350 children have been transferred to the UK, with the Home Office expecting several hundred more to be transferred from France under both the Dubs amendment and the Dublin regulations. However, charities say around 2,000 unaccompanied minors were registered in Calais before the demolition and they are campaigning for 1,000 to be brought over before Christmas, after home secretary Amber Rudd said the UK would take "half" last month.

The Home Office said it "remains absolutely committed to bringing all eligible children to the UK as soon as possible" and that children in the welcome centres are being assessed to see if they are eligible under the Dubs amendment. The Home Office's new guidelines last week stipulate that only unaccompanied teenagers from Syria and Sudan are eligible to enter Britain from France, a decision condemned by charities.
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Child refugees forced to work for nothing after leaving Calais

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Child refugees sent from the demolished Calais "jungle" to supposedly safe welcome centres across France claim they have been pressed into forced labour. Legal interviews with unaccompanied minors dispersed from the refugee camp to France's official reception centres have uncovered allegations that children have been forced into unpaid work and ordered on to farms to pick apples for French supermarkets.

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Benefit sanctions, whereby social security claimants have their payments stopped for at least a month as a punishment for supposedly breaching strict jobcentre rules, are a key driver of hunger and food bank use, according to a study carried out by Oxford University academics.

The study, which mapped official sanctions data against food bank referral figures, concluded that a "robust link" existed between increases in the number of benefit sanctions handed out and rising numbers of adults receiving food parcels.

Ministers have persistently refused to accept that welfare reforms are connected to the explosion in food bank use in recent years, despite a number of studies that link sanctions and benefit processing delays to financial crises which leave individuals and families reliant on food parcels.

But the Oxford study found that every three-month increase of 10 sanctions per 100,000 of the population over a four-year period was associated with around five more instances of adults being referred for charity food parcels, suggesting a "strong, dynamic relationship" between the two.

"These findings show clear evidence of sanctions being linked to economic hardship and hunger, as we see a close relationship between sanctioning rates and rates of food bank usage across local authorities in the UK," said the study's lead author, Rachel Loopstra.

The study said its findings validated calls for an official review of sanctions and called on the government to "consider whether stopping basic income payments for vulnerable, out-of-work groups is a fair penalty, or whether the long shadow of the harms associated with this practice (eg food insecurity) outweigh any positive outcome of sanctioning".

Although ministers claim that sanctions are effective in "incentivising" claimants to actively search for jobs, the evidence for this is mixed, and some studies have found that providing structured support for jobseekers is more effective as a way of preparing them to find work than stopping their benefits, which can trigger hunger, stress, anxiety, hardship and debt.

The Trussell Trust, the UK's largest food bank network, called for changes to the sanctions regime whereby claimants who breach jobcentre rules for the first time are given a formal warning, rather than seeing their benefits stopped.

Adrian Curtis, Trussell's food bank network director, said: "The findings from this groundbreaking study by the University of Oxford tell us once and for all: the more people sanctioned, the more people need food banks."

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: "The reasons for food bank use are complex, and it is misleading to link them to any one issue. We're clear that work is the best route out of poverty, and the number of people in employment is at a record high, up by 2.7 million since 2010.

"We continue to spend £90bn on working-age benefits to ensure a strong safety net, providing hardship payments, benefit advances and budgeting loans for those who need them most."

The Oxford study also highlights the possibility that some areas of the UK, where high levels of sanctions corresponded to relatively low levels of food bank use, are affected by "hidden hunger". These areas typically had fewer Trussell Trust charity food distribution centres, suggesting that sanctioned individuals could struggle to buy food but be unable to access emergency food assistance.

The researchers, who examined data in 259 local authority areas between 2012 and 2016, found that food bank usage continued at relatively high levels in an area even when sanction rates decreased. They suggest that this is because sanctioning often triggers a crisis that leaves claimants unable to stabilise household finances for several months after the initial penalty has finished.

Sanctions have became one of the most controversial elements of welfare reform, with claimants given notoriously dogmatic and capricious punishments for often trivial reasons. Claimants have reportedly been penalised after failing to keep a jobcentre appointment because they were five minutes late, had been taken to hospital in an emergency, or were attending a funeral.

The impact of financial sanctions on individuals already struggling in poverty has hit the headlines again recently after being vividly dramatised in Ken Loach's award-winning film I, Daniel Blake, which opened in UK cinemas last weekend. Loach has said his characters' dismal experiences with the social security system are emblematic of a wider austerity-led policy of "conscious cruelty" towards the poor.

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Ken Loach's film I, Daniel Blake recently tackled the issue of food poverty. Photograph: Films/Everett/Rex/Shutterstock

Debbie Abrahams, the shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, said: "Oxford University's report proves beyond all doubt the link between the Tories' punitive sanctions regime and the shocking rise of food banks across the UK.

"While the Tories continue to look the other way, refusing to accept the evidence, I've announced that Labour would scrap their punitive sanctions regime."

Changes introduced under the Welfare Reform Act 2012 saw sanctioned claimants' benefits stopped for a minimum of four weeks with penalty periods for more serious offences extended to 13 weeks, 26 weeks or even 156 weeks.

Monthly sanction rates almost doubled under the coalition government, reaching a high point in 2013, when a tightening of the conditionality rules around claims for jobseeker's allowance led to a record 1 million penalties imposed on claimants during the year. Rates dropped to 360,000 in 2015, partly because of a significant fall in the number of individuals claiming out-of-work benefits.

The latest set of Trussell Trust annual figures showed that in 2015-16, its 424 food banks gave out enough emergency food to feed more than 1.1 million people, a year-on-year rise of 2% and up from 61,000 in 2010-11. It warned that reliance on charity food was in danger of becoming "the new normal" for low income families in financial crisis.

The Oxford University study, which was funded by the Trussell Trust, with support from the Wellcome Foundation, admits that there are limitations in both official sanctions data and Trussell Trust food bank figures. It says it is vital the UK government begins to collect robust data on UK food insecurity.
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Benefit sanctions forcing people to use food banks, study confirms

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Benefit sanctions, whereby social security claimants have their payments stopped for at least a month as a punishment for supposedly breaching strict jobcentre rules, are a key driver of hunger and food bank use, according to a study carried out by Oxford University academics.