The Stats of the Nation: Older people, education, prisons and the weather
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What kind of state does the UK find itself in as we start 2026? That’s the question Tim Harford and the More or Less team is trying to answer in a series of five special programmes.
In the fourth episode, we’re searching for answers to these questions:
Are one in four pensioners millionaires?
Is England’s education system performing better than Finland’s? And how does it compare to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
Are our prisons going to run out of space?
Is the weather getting weirder?
Get in touch if you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors: Heidi Karjalainen, Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies Harry Fletcher-Wood, Director of Training at StepLab John Jerrim, Professor of Education and Social Statistics at University College London Cassia Rowland, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government Friederike Otto, Professor of Climate Science at Imperial College London
Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford Producers: Lizzy McNeill, Nathan Gower, Katie Solleveld and Charlotte McDonald Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Sarah Hockley and Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffle and Rommashranganathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, |
| 0:27.9 | it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and |
| 0:32.6 | podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. Hello, in 2003, Michael Blast, a BBC radio producer and Andrew Dillnott, an economist, |
| 0:41.3 | began working on a radio programme that would redefine the relationship between numbers and the news. |
| 0:45.8 | In 2007, the reins were taken up by another economist, Tim Harford, who brought... |
| 0:50.5 | Wait, what am I doing? That's me! |
| 0:58.3 | We're making a special series of more or less this week. Onward. |
| 1:08.9 | Today, in honour of dear Melvin Bragg, we're looking at education, at justice and at a deep analysis of the weird patterns in our weather. |
| 1:12.7 | But in a completely unrelated item, let's get started with millionaire pensioners. One of the lovely things about having all these special |
| 1:22.5 | programmes to fill is that we can tick off some of the questions that we keep getting asked |
| 1:26.3 | about, despite the fact that we've definitely answered them before at some point. |
| 1:30.7 | So, this one's for you, Elizabeth, and you, John. |
| 1:33.9 | And Linda, Toby, Donald, Mary, I could go on. |
| 1:37.5 | The inbox bulging query in question revolves around a stat |
| 1:41.3 | that has been banded around willy-nilly in newspaper columns and radio |
| 1:45.5 | interviews for years now, that some large proportion of pensioners are millionaires. |
| 1:52.3 | I'm keeping it vague because there are various numbers kicking around, but the most common |
| 1:55.9 | appears to be 25%. |
... |
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