Summary
The Government says that since the introduction of the 5p fee for single use plastic bags their use has plummeted. We take a look at the numbers.
Olympic Medals at Rio 2016 The Olympic Games are with us again. So how can we use statistics to predict how many medals each nation will win? We speak to Dr Julia Bredtmann, an economist at the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research.
Income inequality Politicians and commentators often claim that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. But what do the numbers actually tell us about income inequality in the UK? Tim Harford interviews Jonathan Cribb of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the co- author of a comprehensive analysis of Living Standards, Income Inequality and Poverty in the UK.
Desk of Good News – Maternal mortality rates The number of women dying in childbirth is falling around the world. In 1990, maternal mortality rates were 385 deaths per 100,000 live births Today there are 216 deaths per 100,000 live births. This means the death rate is down by nearly half.
The Coastline Paradox Why is it so difficult to measure coastlines? The further you zoom into the detail of a coastline, the longer it becomes. This is referred to as ‘The Coastline Paradox’. We speak to Mairi Walker, a mathematician at the University of Edinburgh, and Danny Hyam, from The Ordnance Survey - the UK government agency responsible for mapping our coastlines.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello Tim Harford here. Thank you for downloading the longer Radio 4 edition of More or Less. |
| 0:07.0 | This program was first broadcast on the 5th of August 2016. Enjoy it. |
| 0:13.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less, your optimistic guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm Tim Harford and on this week's program we'll be using statistics to try to |
| 0:24.0 | forecast the medal halls at the Olympics. We'll look at the surprising numbers that |
| 0:28.6 | describe income inequality and our two regular features continue. We will use numbers to help transform us into better people. |
| 0:36.0 | This week, the numbers behind running for fitness. |
| 0:39.0 | And we will of course be presenting the more or less desk of good news. Now a number of |
| 0:45.0 | listeners have contacted us this week about this story. There has been a |
| 0:49.7 | dramatic drop in the number of plastic bags being used since the introduction of the 5-P charge in England. |
| 0:55.4 | Here to explain all is Charlotte. |
| 0:58.2 | Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind? In October last year all stores in England with more than 250 full-time |
| 1:11.1 | employees began charging customers 5P for single-use plastic bags. |
| 1:16.8 | This week the government has said the use of carrier bags has plummeted in the six months since |
| 1:21.8 | this measure was introduced. |
| 1:23.7 | Now they're basing this on numbers from seven of the biggest supermarket chains including |
| 1:28.3 | Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Azda. |
| 1:31.3 | Now these shops reported giving customers 7.6 billion single-use |
| 1:36.5 | plastic bags in 2014 whereas in the last six months they've only used around |
| 1:42.4 | 0.6 billion bags. So these |
| 1:46.2 | supermarkets were handing out about 600 million bags a month before |
| 1:50.5 | compared to 100 million bags a month since the 5P levy came in. |
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