There is a real head of steam building up behind alternative ways of measuring progress/development. I was at a meeting this week at OECD (where I used to work), for the launch of a new phase of their work on measuring the social outcomes of learning. I was very struck that this phase is set in the broader context of work which follows on from the seminal Stiglitz/Sen/Fitoussi report of a couple of years ago. This report, not very snappily entitled Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, was prepared for President Sarkozy – the cynics say to enable him to divert attention from France’s poor performance on traditional GNP measures, but that doesn’t matter. It was a hugely authoritative group (4 Nobels, and many other illustrious social scientists), and gave a real imprimatur to the idea of measuring national performance using broader more realistic criteria.
OECD, not known as the most most radical of organisations, has taken up this baton. Enrico Giovannini, who has Director of Statistics at OECD when I was there, always surprised me by his range of interests. This included active support for including the notion of social capital in policy debates and measurement activities within the OECD. Enrico intiated work on social progress, and this is now guided by Martine Durand, formerly director of the Employment Directorate.
Our meeting, run by the Centre for Educational Research and Development, focussed on how to measure education’s contribution to social progress (ESP). I was asked to contribute something very brief on the potential contribution of longitudinal data sources. The ESP’s advisory group, mainly composed of representatives from 8-10 countries, showed considerable interest in this, and I’m hopeful that we will be able to give a strong longitudinal dimension to this project as it evolves.
The project faces a number of challenges. some of them of general application. The question of causality raised its head of course – how far attributions of different types of social progress can be made to education, or particular forms of education. LS can make stronger claims than many research modes for getting beyond associations and establishing some form of casual realtionships. but I’m struck but how often we function with a dichotomous approach to casuality, whereas I feel it would be more helpful to understand casuality as a term which has varying forms of strength – and maybe not all able to be ranked on a single scale either.
I went this week to a session of the Myths & Realities series, hosted by the British Library in association with the Academy of Social Sciences. The topic was: A property-owning democracy: myth or reality? The M&R is an excellent series of debates on topical issues, and housing remains a much-neglected policy issue.
Christine Whitehead of the LSE led off with an excellent overview of how far we have become property-owners, over time and in comparison with other countries. There seems to be a plateau of some kind of around 70% of home ownership, which hardly any country goes beyond (many do not get close to that – notably Germany with around 40% being homeowners).
The debate linked back to the very original work done by John Bynner on assets. John showed – using, of course, cohort study data – how an extraordinarily small level of savings often makes a big difference when it comes to people’s life chances, for instance in relation to employment and health. An amount as low as £300-400 is almost a threshold, low though that seems. This work led directly to the setting up of the Child Trust Funds under the last government – a wonderful example of evidence-based analysis leading to a policy decision (though John and I disagree on the merits of the CTF – but that’s another story).
Anyway, in the context of the housing debate, the question is: does home ownership operate as an asset in the same way as savings do, affecting people’s attitudes to risk/security? The answer is surely yes. Most of the discussion of home ownership, not surprisingly, has been around the wealth it generates for owners and more recently the financial implications. But the way in which it gives people more control of their lives, and enables them (psychologically and materially) to engage in activities and initiatives which they otherwise could not, is an important area for research. In particular it would, I’m sure, further illuminate the depth of the social divide between property-owners and the rest. A similar study to John’s, using longitudinal data, could be very important.
I’ve long had a fascination with time, as a concept and as a fundamental structurer of our lives. I worked with the late Michael Young at the time he was writing his typically original but sadly neglected book The Metronomic Society, and together we founded the Association for the Social Studies of Time. Now there is an International Association for Time Use Research (IATUR) which gathers together research of many different kinds.
Changes over time in the way people spend their time is an obvious theme for longitudinal researchers. I was reminded of this when talking recently with Anna Coote of the New Economics Foundation. Anna published last year a proposal for a general shift to a 21-hour working week, as part of NEF’s programme on a move towards a more sustainable economy. Less income for some, but a wider distribution of work, and more time for other activities.
I agree very much with the general thrust of Anna’s argument (though I think 21 hours is too distant a target to be realistic, and would rely more on incentives and less on legal measures than she does). Anyway, she pointed out that we need better information on how people’s activity patterns change in the light of changing economic circumstances. How does the trade-off between traditional consumption and other activities change? How could we move to lower-carbon living? If, for example, people’s activities become less focussed around shopping, what do they replace this with? As an adult educator I’ve always held that getting together to learn can be an excellent way of spending time in what should be a sustainable way, but that’s just my preoccupation (of course I recognise that education too involves consumption of various kinds). The interesting challenge is to map specific time use change over particular periods – and then work out what caused the changes. Nudging might come in there somewhere too.
This is my first blog for Longview. Longview exists to promote longitudinal and lifecourse studies, and a blog is one way of gently raising some of the issues which confront us in carrying out that mission. In my day-to-day work I come across issues which I hope are worth sharing: some positive, some difficult. My personal field of research is adult learning, so expect a bias in that direction!
Yesterday I was at a meeting at DBIS on older learners, focussing on what data we have and where the gaps are. James Banks, the co-director of ELSA, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, gave an excellent account of what this study can tell us about older people’s participation in learning, and the effect of such participation on other aspects of their lives. James is one of the originators of ELSA and its co-director; it was interesting that he confessed himself surprised by the information on learning which he found in preparing for the talk, with unexpectedly high levels of participation by older people in formal courses, including those leading to qualifications.
When we discussed opportunities and priorites for further research, there was strong support for experimentation – initiatives which would rigorously test out what works (in the case in older people’s learning). The scope here is enormous for studies which maybe deal only with small numbers, but which are nested within large-scale studies such as ELSA. It would be very good to build up an inventory of examples of such studies – is anyone aware of such a thing?