This graph recreates history. In Britain by 1935, Fertility Rates had fallen below 2.1 – the number of children women have on average – 1.8 and stayed there. The national replacement rate is 2.1. Given the steep slope down from 5.0 to 1.8 over less than 50 years, there is little reason to think in the ordinary course of events that Fertility Rates were likely for any obvious reason to pick up.
The continuous half-century long downward trend seems more likely to strengthen the case some make that declining fertility is linked to pollution rather than greater freedom for women to choose not to have children. These dramatic falls in Fertility Rates came before women got the vote, before they got to university and before it became accepted they might remain in the workforce after getting married.
To date the argument about what is happening fertility rates has polarized between those who pitch the changes as largely a matter of women choosing and those who note a coincidence with the industrial revolution and a pollution dense enough around 1900 to lead to rickets in children.
There is another factor that cuts across both of these arguments. Around 1900, our collective abilities to keep children alive after birth, despite all the pollution, dramatically improved. Where before half of a couple’s children might die in the early years of life, after 1900 there were substantially better odds on all a couple’s children surviving.
Children surviving were not just a delight in their own right, before the welfare state they were our social security. Many male academics, artists and others in the nineteenth century writing about their lives and work included painful accounts of deaths among their young children. Better survival rates permitted a couple to secure their future and save in the present by having fewer pregnancies. The fertility rates were bound to fall to some extent in these circumstances.
Events after 1935, however, weren’t ordinary. War engulfed the West and beyond. The graph at the start of the post recreates what things would likely have looked like had World War II not happened. The graph below shows something else.
After 1940, all of a sudden we started having children. Did women abruptly start choosing to have children? They were more engaged in the workforce and had more opportunities – the choice argument suggests they would have had less. Disaster sex is a well-known if mysterious (unknown) thing. Did the government put in an order for children?
If women didn’t choose to have children in the 1940s does it make sense to say they reversed their choices to have children two decades later? Part of the increases in Fertility Rate leading up to 1968, the famous Baby Boom, led to more women reaching child-bearing years together and having children together.
Focussing on this bit of the graph seems to give rise to the conventional story that the arrival of oral contraceptives in the 1960s allowed women to have more sex without having to pay the cost and combined with more social opportunities they chose not to have children.
Coming from Ireland, the first country to legalize abortion by referendum, and in the week that France voted to include the right to abortion in its constitution, and last weeks US State of the Union speech made it clear abortion rights are an electoral battleground there, the next point is tricky. With an Act introduced in 1967 and passed in 1968, England legalized abortion up to week 28 of pregnancy. Concerns grew that young women, unable to access contraception, had begun using abortion as a form of contraception. Acceptance grew that the fetus was viable at 28 weeks. In a 1990 Act that set up IVF services, access was limited to 24 weeks or under.
Safer access to abortion after 1968 likely contributed to the drop in Fertility, as initially there were real concerns about the risks of early contraceptives. There was no risk-free choosing in this area around 1968.
Fertility Rates certainly fell but a significant element of this can be explained without invoking choice. The data point to a regression to the mean – hence the graph at the start of this post. Rates just went back to where they would have been had there not been a World War.
This is important as most efforts to increase fertility rates assume the choices of women are the determining factor. We think we are trying to get women to change their minds about something recent when in fact we are looking at Fertility Rates not much different from those 90 years ago – although possibly with an additional fall and factors now that might it make it more difficult to reverse course.
Emmanuel Macron in France believes there is a pressing need to reverse this trend. The traditional French reason to have babies has been to ensure they have enough troops to fight the enemy and Macron, perhaps coincidentally, has also this week been talking about putting troops on the ground in Ukraine.
What’s Happened the Children
The other factor is that European welfare states were created on the back of the Baby Boom. In the 1960s, there were 5 tax-payers for every one drawing a pension. By 2000 this had dropped to 3 per pensioner.
It has now fallen to 1.5 partly because we now have to pay not just for pensioners but also those collecting disability, as this graph of British disability payments to those of working age illustrates.
In addition to paying more for an aging population. some of those who previously were supporting the elderly are prematurely aged as it were and collecting pensions (disability) from ever younger ages. Added to which, they aren’t having children. It is now more common for women to have children over the age of 30 than under 30 – a statistic that humanity up till this would likely have found inconceivable.
Matthew Parris commented on this in the Times a few days ago with a predictable response from psychiatrists. Remotely questioning what is happening is apparently an horrific and cruel act. He has been insistently drawing out attention to these issues for several years.
Parris has a conservative background like Abigail Shrier – Bad Therapy – but is more nuanced. He is not saying vote Trump – he seems to be taking tackling the conspiracy of silence outlined below. While AS doesn’t talk about the collapse of social security, the culture of trauma she writes about seems to be dealing with something not unrelated to all this.
Conservatives have a long tradition of giving out about welfare scroungers, except in the case of older folk and their pensions (who vote conservative). But Parris is not castigating welfare scroungers. Those getting disability payments these days include folk diagnosed with ADHD who are probably brighter and more enterprising than average. Most neuro-diverse people I have met are equally smart – all at odds with classic autism – and autistic spectrum is the area where disability payments are increasing most. In a recent job, both the ADHD and neuro-diverse folk I met were in university and working on ways to get exemptions or accommodations of one sort of the other from the system.
They, and lots of others, are being enterprising and have worked out how to get the 3 lemons on the slot machine to line up.
They are not much different in this sense to the Hedge Funds buying up residential homes for the elderly and other facilities that social services provide and siphoning off huge amounts of Welfare Funds by this means.
Part of the explanation of the graph must be that we have a dumb system and smart people. If so, the bottom line is current welfare systems created with good intentions on the back of a Baby Boom may be too dumb to survive the Boomers children.
Crisis
In Britain, following a budget last week, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, an independent think-tank, neither Left nor Right, accused both the Conservative and Labour parties of a conspiracy of silence. The IFS message is, the country, and likely most Western countries, are going down the tubes. Their debts cannot be repaid. The tax burden is at its highest ever, and the debts are so high countries cannot borrow enough to grow their way out of trouble.
The Disability Payments graph comes from a Resolution Foundation report – see Fertility and the Military. Their answer seems to be that we have a mental illness crisis and whatever their view about the best way to solve that the de facto solution will be more psychotropic drugs which can only make things worse – except for ADHD folk who will now be paid to be taking controlled drugs.
In America for much longer than this there has been talk about imminent social welfare collapse linked now to growing talk about another financial crisis – see Liberty Equality and Fertility.
The European Union is worried about all this. They are talking about NEETs – Not in Education Employment or Training. They are Churning out Verbiage on all this mixed in with recognizing a transition to a digital and sustainable future – that looks just like verbiage.
We are at crisis point. Emmanuel Macron to his credit at least appears to recognize this. It might look like there is one obvious but unthinkable or at least inadmissible solution – a Global War. For a number of strange reasons, however, even this may not now help us reverse things.
Sick Man of Europe
There have been lots of comments coming in – some too rich to leave in comments only – they deserve to feature more than once. A century ago, Turkey was part of Europe and viewed as being in a state of crisis was called the Sick Man of Europe.
The phrase caught on and linked to strikes, soaring unemployment, inflation and deep political divisions British media widely referred to the UK as the Sick Man of Europe during the 1970s.
There is a huge irony now in that Britain has stellar unemployment figures. These are however engineered by excluding those who are not seeking employment because they are Sick. If you add the not seeking employment to unemployed, Britain is now truly the Sick Man of Europe – more so than other European countries. The country it most resembles is the United States.
The BBC have covered this today – A Fifth of the UK not Looking for Work
With a very similar article a year ago almost to the day – showing data on Britain compared to other countries – Who Are the Britons not Working
The conundrum is the country’s low unemployment looks good but the workforce is relentlessly shrinking.
Sick Man of the Americas
Bob Whitaker was among the first to draw attention to a link between rising rates of disability payments and psychotropic drug use – especially antidepressants.
To be continued…
In the meantime. comments on how to find out more data linked to the graph about disability payments as it applies to any country from the US to Finland would be great to get. We need more data first to help work out what the bit of data we have is showing. Opinions can wait.
Do not think in terms of Left and Right. The example of ADHD above needs thinking about in a different way. The next post will bring a bunch of other factors and Abigail Shrier back into the mix.
See first comments. A contributor has sent this link to UK Social Welfare Payments.
Personal Independence Payments are not means-tested. Rates are pounds per week.
Daily living component Rates 2023/24 Rates 2024/25
Enhanced 101.75 108.55
Standard 68.10 72.65
Mobility component
Enhanced 71.00 75.75
Standard 26.90 28.70
Thanks for this. There is a UK government document hat lists all payments – will add this link to the post.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proposed-benefit-and-pension-rates-2024-to-2025/proposed-benefit-and-pension-rates-2024-to-2025#personal-independence-payment
The Parris article and an earlier one from him before the pandemic making similar points stresses the role of PIPs – personal independence payments – you note, which combined with universal credit etc – all seems to come close to a universal basic income. Some of our biggest corporations seem in favour of UBIs – becauae someone has to be able to buy their goods or the go out of business too. The system might work if the biggest corporations funded universal basic incomes. The aqueezed middle will get very squeezed if its all just left to them.
Attendance Allowance is another ‘freeby’ gifted –
https://www.gov.uk/attendance-allowance
Attendance Allowance helps with extra costs if you have a disability severe enough that you need someone to help look after you.
You do not have to have someone caring for you in order to claim.
An elderly man moved in to the caravan behind me. After a few weeks, I had a tap on my door.
He held in his hands a steaming pot. I have brought you my Moroccan chicken. What does a vegetarian do?
Later on, another tap at my door, I have brought you a Magnum. He had signs of Magnum on his front.
Later on, tap, tap, do you have a needle and cotton, to sew on my trouser button.
So I went round, was given a glass of wine, and I sewed his button on to his trouser.
Actually we had a nice chat and things turned to finance. I get Attendance Allowance, you should get it, he said.
Do I look like I need Attendance Allowance?
So here’s this guy, pretty fit at 86, and has just bought himself a cracking new caravan on the shore front.
He has a nice white Range Rover; we sometimes we bump in our local supermarket.
If it is that easy to pull the ‘Welfare’, and nobody is any the wiser, is it any wonder –
A contributor has sent this link to UK Social Welfare Payments
The Man with the Magnum…
“and about the lucrative careers now attaching themselves to an area of human knowledge that struggles to deserve the name of science.”
“It’s a pity we’ve ended up with a benefits system that can only stoke bad medical science.”
US Disabilities Project
With a disability – 16 years and over St. Louis
The Graph
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1764730429779906593
Edward Dowd
@DowdEdward
Answer: Something began to change in 2021…what was it? …I guess they are baffled, mystified and bewildered.
zerohedge
@zerohedge
*WHITE HOUSE TO ANNOUNCE HEALTH CARE COSTS TASK FORCE: POLITICO
The task force will cost $10 billion
How US welfare compares around the globe
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37159686
Twenty years ago, the US overhauled “welfare” – meaning direct cash assistance to poor families. But how does this aid compare to income support programmes in other high-income countries?
Now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), it became more flexible when President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 Republican-led bill overhauling the system.
In the US, “welfare” does not refer to the entire social welfare system, but to this particular programme, which is a cash assistance for single parents on low incomes.
So are you better off being a poor, lone parent in the US or in the UK, Canada or France?
Before 1996, states had discretion about how much money they would offer, but who was eligible and other general policies were set by the federal government.
“Most of the money went directly to cash benefit for families,” says Liz Schott, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Now states can spend in all kinds of ways,” including job programmes and childcare, but also transfers to other state programmes, like foster care payments and child protection services.
States now get the same amount of money they did in 1996.
In 2015, an average of 25% of the funds went to cash assistance, although this – like many other elements of a programme whose policies are set on a state-by-state basis – varies widely.
But there are now also stricter requirements about what percent of aid recipients needed to be involved in some sort of work activity. Failure to hit those targets means states are penalised, so some avoid them by limiting how many people are eligible for welfare in the first place.
The result is a “tremendous differentiation of the safety net” in the US, Schott says.
The amount an average TANF family – a single parent with two children – receives is also set by each state. In Mississippi, they would receive $153 a month (£115). In Alaska, the average benefit was $642 a month.
The US has other social benefit schemes, including food stamps, disability payments and Medicaid – healthcare for the poor.
But in the twenty years since TANF was made law, enrolments in food stamps has been expanded significantly as direct welfare payments have dropped.
So what does the current US welfare system look like in comparison to countries with similar economies?
Canada
America’s northern neighbour’s basic cash assistance programme looks the most like the US in comparison to other developed economies – but the details are very different.
Around the same time as TANF, was passed, Canada was dealing with a budget deficit. In response, the Canadian federal government reduced the amount given to provinces for basic aid, but gave most of the responsibility for administering the programme to each province.
Provinces also ask those receiving the benefit look for work if they are able to, and the benefit is available to people without children.
Unlike the US, almost all the federal requirements were dropped and there was no lifetime limit on receiving the benefit.
“It was a quid pro quo,” Dr Daniel Beland, a professor of public policy at the University of Saskatchewan. “Here is less money but in return we will give you more autonomy at the provincial level.”
The amount provinces provide do vary, but they are generally more generous than the US, while still remaining under Canada’s low-income cut-off level. A single person with one child in Ontario would receive a benefit of just less than $1,000 Canadian dollars a month says Beland.
If someone is disabled or unable to work, their payment is higher.
Both the US and Canada have seen enrolment numbers drop in these programmes, and in the US, experts point to the new restrictions as a key reason.
In both North American countries, Beland says “reducing welfare rolls became a goal in and of itself, rather than focusing on ending poverty”.
“But in the US it’s worse.”
France
The French welfare system is far broader than cash assistance to poor residents. The country is known for its wide-ranging social protection schemes.
The closest equivalent to TANF in is the Revenu de solidarité active (RFA). It is available for those who are at least 25 years old or at least 18 if they are single parents or can prove they worked a certain length of time previously.
Unlike the US, RFA does not require a person to be taking care of children to receive the assistance – but those with children receive a higher benefit.
A single parent with two children would be eligible for as much as €1,068.61 (£904) each month, but that benefit would be lessened by any actual income or other cash benefits the person was claiming.
A major difference between the US and Canada, France, the UK and Japan, is that the other countries offer additional benefits in support of children, some regardless of income.
The US has a child tax credit, but it primarily reduces tax liability at the end of the year.
“They all have systems of child benefit, whether they are universal or income-related” saysDr Jonathan Bradshaw, an emeritus professor of social policy and social work at the University of York.
The changes to the US welfare system make it “less of safety net really,” Bradshaw says.
“In the absence of child benefit, there’s much more insecurity there than in other countries.”
United Kingdom
The UK currently offers a programme called Income Support for people between the ages of 16 and when they are eligible for pension credit. This does not include the various other benefits low-income for which UK residents may be eligible.
The person must have no income or low income, work less than 16 hours a week, and have savings of under £16,000.
A single parent with two children could expect £292 a month.
Income support is one of six benefits in the UK, including jobseeker’s allowance and child tax credits, that have begun to be replaced by universal credit.
Japan
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Japan had very few residents applying for social assistance, but now just over 2% of Japanese use the aid.
Today, many of those receiving public assistance funds are older people with few job prospects.
While all age groups have seen an increase in those receiving aid, those older than 60 have seen the sharpest rise.
The benefit is highly personalised – it is calculated based on gap between minimum living costs (includes costs like housing, education, medical) and existing income.
But social assistance is also limited by how much immediate family can help – as the civil code of the country requires certain relatives to try and help support those who cannot provide for themselves.
Although this is some years old, it gives some idea, of how different countries, approached and managed their ‘Welfare’ …
For tens of millions of people in today’s gig economy, the job security their parents took for granted is not even a pipe dream. People who don’t know where their money for rent and food are going to be coming from three months from now are not going to prioritize saving for retirement. They’re just not gonna do it.
Tens of millions of people approaching retirement age or already past it, little in the way of retirement savings, and fewer or no children to take care of them in their old age – this is a toxic combination. I predict the rate of elder suicides will skyrocket in the near future.
Patrick
Will be interesting to see In Tail Wags God a few posts back I opened up the possibility that it would be Medical Assistance in Dying rather than suicide. Our propaganda techniques are now so good that it won’t seem to be anything but our choice to exit in this fashion – feeling virtuous for this final bit of assistance to our families, friends and communities.
David
‘Opinions can wait.’
As we seem to have crossed the ‘blood-brain’ barrier; might I offer a little insight in to how University Lecturers have to navigate their students.
A friend of mine, at the OU, has told me how her students, in the majority, have identified as having ‘mental-health problems’.
Her job is to educate in ‘Critical-Thinking’.
She marks papers, she gives lectures, she has amassed several degrees, she has an MA in Art History, she is on her way to another. A mother herself, she is thinking about a further MA in Philosophy.
She has only dropped in to conversation, that her students, tell the OU, to take in to account their ‘mental-health’.
I will not speak for her, but it must be difficult to adjust your course-work to accommodate such students. As a lecturer, if you don’t take account of the ‘mental-health’ of your students, you could end-up in sticky waters.
Students might complain, a lecturer might become a subject of discrimination.
How do the Educators amongst us, navigate ‘mental issues’ which seem to have reached a ‘fever-pitch’; even amongst those who want to be educated and those who are Educating?
The educational angle on this will hopefully get picked up more in the next post. The Covid angle has come up in comments but I’ve resisted adding these. The data strongly suggests that whatever about Covid, the vaccines have led to excess deaths and increased disability. But putting too much weight on this risks missing out on something that was happening before Covid and is continuing since.
There have been additions to the post since the original was posted
D
In the DM today
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13188139/Autistic-woman-signed-work-changes-body-unemployed.html
Comments below article
Another commented: ‘I was made redundant from my job in 2015 then went to university for five years, the stress of that was more intense, I wrecked my body more I think but at the same time for the first time met other autistic people.’
A third added: ‘I am exactly like this and feel stuck on what I should be doing to be honest.’
A fourth said: ‘I’m so glad taking time away from work has improved things for you! I still have all the stress issues despite being out of work for years.’
Further Research – ‘The Welfare State Conspiracy of Silence’.
Looking at the human scoop behind the fertility graphs and disability payment types. Pre-1950s, I’ve no idea – except totally buy your point re infant survival (my own grandmother conceived 10 to deliver 5 live ones).
As a woman, lucky enough to inherit the benefits of Germaine et al, just don’t accept that women’s greater self-determination has had significantly less effect on breeding decisions than pollution. A view supported by this rather gritty piece of UK research:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_3#Sec18
Bottom line:
‘..share of women childless at 30 rose from 18% of those born in 1946, to 42 % of those born in 1968, and to 46 % of those born in 1983.’
‘..proportion childless amongst respondents with tertiary education is roughly double that of those with no or less than secondary qualifications.Thus, among British women born in the 1960s, 22 % of university graduates, and 10 % of the least educated group remained childless. Health reasons were cited by a higher proportion of the least educated women. ‘
‘Childlessness increased first in cohorts born in the 1950s, the first to start postponing childbearing. Postponement and childlessness may be causally related, e.g. through reduced fecundity with age, but both are also manifestations of underlying changes in women’s lives, such as opportunities for women to develop a career, the availability of reliable contraception, and increased partnership postponement and instability (Murphy 1993; Hobcraft and Kiernan 1995; Thomson et al. 2012)’
I was one of these educated women (not ‘wimmin’) – having such a wildly amusing life in my 20s reproduction literally never even entered my mind. In fact, contraception itself ceased to be consciously associated with birth control – until I decided to breed.
Not sure the UK is the most revealing ‘market’ to explore re breeding – local interest ofc. Less babies due to postponement, likely less fecund indigenous population, compensated for by big breeding imports.
The extremes are more interesting imo. Korea again. Now this really is wimmin ‘not playing ball’ (your phrase lol).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/south-korea-fertility-rate-feminism.html
And how about Italy? That feels very odd, just as Israel being global breeding champion feels very obvious. Must investigate Italy.
Matthew Parris – old Toryboy but, very bright – ‘thinness of evidence of efficacy’, ‘pseudo-medicalisation’ etc. Look at this research – worth a read:
Inequalities-in-disability-The-IFS-Deaton-Review-1.pdf
The key chart on page 14 shows a direct correlation between the ‘incidence of poor mental health’ and decade of birth, with the most recent cohorts (1975-1984) having a markedly higher incidence of pooor ‘mental health’ and those born between 1945-1954 the lowest. Effectively what we are looking at is the growth of the marketing of pathologisation.
This is the big problem – costs. https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2022/c-Mar-22/Mental-health-problems-cost-UK-economy-at-least-118-billion-a-year-new-research
Not exercised about breeders like you are. The evil empire has brought this upon us all – because the people have now internalised the, ‘No health without mental health’ garbage. dh123993.pdf
Those who really need help can’t get it because the system is clogged with self-diagnosers, every parent of a young-for-year, bored-in-class, rather-be-playing-football-than-rote-learning-capital-cities lad is waiting for their ADHD assessment (2 + years). Crikey who wouldn’t be diagnosed with ADHD and/or narcolepsy in Junior Geog? I see this all the time doing my civic duty.
How do we make it stop? Even if we can reprogramme the automatons, the punters aren’t for turning – ‘give me something for it doc?
There’s loads more standard fare research on this, if you want it – viz. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9602/
The Restaurateur
‘While I am in no way minimising the suffering of those with genuine psychiatric issues, I cannot help but believe that much of the reported rise in mental health diagnoses comes down to the increasing medicalisation of often normal human emotions, such as being anxious or sad.’
Ministers created a world where young people boast on TikTok about life on benefits. Now they must fix it, writes HUGH OSMOND
While it is dangerous to read too much into what is trending on social media, I was taken aback just the other day to see a thread on TikTok in which young people joked to their thousands of followers about their life on benefits.
In one video, captioned ‘What life is like living off the dole’, a young man walks through a shopping centre boasting that he is going to spend the day ‘drinking and smoking cigarettes in a public park at 2pm in the afternoon, which I am quite excited to do’.
In another, a group listens to music alongside a caption reading: ‘When the dole is doubling the money’, while in another startling piece of footage, a young woman claims she receives benefits in excess of £1,100 a week — an amount that eliminates any need to work, as she forthrightly points out.
Admittedly, I find those last figures rather hard to believe. But these videos immediately came to mind when I was confronted by the latest employment figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this week. They make for sobering reading.
Around 9.25million people deemed to be of working age (that is, between 16 and 64) are currently not in employment or seeking work — a rise of about 700,000 on the equivalent figure before the onset of the pandemic.
Nearly a third of that number — three million — are under 25, a jump of 384,000 compared with last year, which takes the total to its highest since ONS records began 30 years ago.
In other words, while much of the surge in economic inactivity during Covid was driven by older workers opting for early retirement or leaving jobs because of long-term sickness, the trend has now gone into reverse.
The number of 50 to 64-year-olds out of work has fallen by nearly 200,000 as their younger counterparts increasingly opt out of the workforce.
This is not due to a shortage of jobs either. There are currently 908,000 unfilled vacancies out there, due to what Office for Budget Responsibility chairman Richard Hughes calls a ‘worrying trend’ of worklessness and rising levels of inactivity, with young people leading the charge.
I would go one step further and say it is down to something far more sinister: a malaise in our working population the likes of which I have not witnessed since the dark days of the 1970s.
Gone is a sense of collective responsibility and the largely unspoken notion that anyone who is capable should contribute productively to their community.
Both have been replaced by a pervading conviction that people are entitled to do whatever they want — or nothing at all — and expect the taxpayer to foot the bill.
I have seen this at first hand in my restaurant businesses. Most of our workforce is under 23 and we are constantly recruiting new people as we expand.
Luckily, we still manage to find plenty of enthusiastic, capable and hard-working youngsters, eager to get on in life and make a positive contribution to wherever they work.
But we also see many applicants who entirely lack this sense of commitment, and are clearly loath to take on any work that they consider beneath them.
Many make this clear at interview, telling us immediately what they want from the job, rather than asking what we expect of them. Some will even stipulate the hours they are prepared to work upfront, with requests to spend at least two days per week working from home still surprisingly common.
It is tragic to see so many universities imbuing their students with inflated expectations, which inevitably fail to be met in the workplace, thereby creating disappointment and unhappiness.
Which brings me, inevitably, to the issue of mental health, today’s equivalent of the ‘bad back’ when it comes to employee sick days and long-term absence from work, particularly among young people.
Alongside those statistics from the ONS, research from the Resolution Foundation think-tank shows that the number of 18 to 24-year-olds ‘economically inactive’ because of illness doubled in the decade to 2023 — with mental health cited as the biggest issue.
Undoubtedly, there are complex reasons underpinning this stark rise, but I am convinced that the Government’s bountiful largesse during the pandemic accelerated an already damaging trend for people to become more risk averse and quicker to self-diagnose ailments, both mental and physical.
While I am in no way minimising the suffering of those with genuine psychiatric issues, I cannot help but believe that much of the reported rise in mental health diagnoses comes down to the increasing medicalisation of often normal human emotions, such as being anxious or sad.
Among graduates in particular, the gap in expectations between the rose-tinted images of the future they were fed in their seminars, versus the reality of life at the coalface — which often starts with a slow, thankless slog up the ladder — seems to be the root of a great deal of unhappiness.
Whatever the reasons, it amounts to nothing less than an unfolding catastrophe. And you don’t have to take my word for it: the Resolution Foundation’s senior economist Louise Murphy also agrees.
She said this week that the spiralling number of young people out of work due to sickness poses bigger long-term risks for Britain’s economy than older people dropping out of the workforce.
Underpinning it, moreover, is a legacy of years of deeply misguided policies that have severely undermined the incentive to work for young and old alike.
Much of this came to a head during the catastrophic furlough system during the pandemic, in which a large swathe of the population was being paid substantial sums explicitly not to work — a system that, continued as it was for months on end, has had dire consequences.
While the incentive to work is not purely financial, it’s the predominant reason for most. Once eliminated, it is almost inevitable that employment loses its allure.
The same goes for our generous benefits system: there is no question in my mind that many aspects of it reduce the financial benefit of working for a living.
Indeed, as the young woman claiming to receive in excess of £1,100 a week succinctly put it: ‘Somebody please tell me why I would get a job when this is the universal credits I get? [sic]’.
When it works like this, the benefits system is not a ‘safety net’, it is an alternative to working.
All of this would be concerning enough if we had a robust economy but, needless to say, we do not — having only just left a technical recession.
Economists the world over know the link between a diminishing workforce and inflation — the latter rises as the former falls — and so if productivity doesn’t increase, there is less money for everything.
That’s why the ONS figures should be a wake-up call for all of us — and especially the Government. It is largely their misguided policies that have created this disaffection among the young. It is therefore the Government which must act now to ensure that our ‘working population’ lives up to its name.
Hugh Osmond is a director of the hospitality group, Various Eateries plc.
Health Warning
A lot of this material is being put out by Britain’s Conservative government facing electoral annihilation. It needs to be read in this light. There is a lot of talk about Snowflakes who may in reality just be smart as smart as the Hedge Funds who help fund the Conservative Party
D
I just checked. 22.8% of disabled adults in the UK are disabled due to “mental illness.” I wonder how many of them started out with no more than the problems of living, received a diagnosis of “mental illness,” and found themselves trapped on the psychopharmaceutical industry’s carousel of drugs, more drugs stronger drugs, and higher doses, until they finally ended up totally unable to function as productive members of society?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7cab32e5274a2f304ef5a3/dh_123993.pdf
Patrick
Thanks for this. Some of them like those with ADHD are just smart and gaming the system. They don’t even have to take meds to get payments. Some of the graduates of a culture of trauma that tells them they are not resilient and no-one should say boo to them. Others are just as you describe disabled by the meds,
But there may another group – a morally injured group – will try to explain this in a follow up post
D
Tim
This is so true of the damage done and then the knock on affects from that damage which causes more damage later on that people just don’t see this until its too late.
Thank you so much for this vitally important comment Patrick.
Our enchanting, ever-happy and beautiful daughter was ill-advisedly coerced into taking an SSRI for normal stress, relating to exams and a new temporary job. She was full of joy and never depressed.
No warnings of ADRs were given, and although I had studied and practised medicine for many years, I had been denied the opportunity to be aware of AKATHISIA.
This intense toxicity rapidly followed and was misdiagnosed by her GP, (‘Mental Health Condition’) and then misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist as ‘Psychotic Depression’. I had told him there were no symptoms of psychotic intensity – but this was ignored. He made no attempt to explore her parent’s experience of her akathisia.
The cascade of inappropriate detention, enforced poisoning with a cascade of psychotropic drugs, multiple systems ADRs and drug injuries lead to a cascade of misdiagnosis: – Labels for life that destroyed health, economic, relationship opportunities, and irreversible injuries which have made employment impossible for the last twelve years. We will never have grandchildren to share with her.
Please see – “A Kidnapped Daughter” – Parts 1 and 2. RxISK Blog. June 2016.
The abuse, contempt, ridicule and injuries caused whilst ‘detained’ left her justifiably terrified of ever seeing any doctor or health care worker. The fear of being kidnapped and poisoned again is a part of all of our lives.
We are so grateful that she is still with us thanks to RxISK and an extra-contactual referral to a gifted psychiatrist who was a doctor of conscience and courage..
We live with her iatrogenic suffering 24/7, although her great courage and resilience keep us going.
There are serial expert-reports in her GP notes, over many years, confirming that there NEVER WAS ANY mental illness. We had no reason to feel the are beleived.
Here lies the State Benefits Catch-22 for those to whom you refer: –
1) It appears that no GP will certify or support confirmation of disability which results from the innumerable injuries due to the crippling ADRs of forced, unnecessary psychiatric drugs?
2) Even after 12 years, her abuse by those in “Mental Health” is too painful for her to talk about.
3) How could any Job Centre Employee begin to understand and believe that her absence from the work force was caused by doctors?
This impossible situation has lead to a total absence of State Benefits and Pension Contributions throughout these years.
The opposite of ‘The bad back’!
Her parents are old now. It has been a joy to support her. What is to happen when we are gone?
It might help if all Trainee GPs read your wonderful: ‘Prescription for Sorrow’.
Tim So many people come across information too late after the harm has been done. There is still no proper consent process and the college of psychiatrists make things worse with their publications designed for necessarily naive individuals. Would you think a booklet specifically written for and with youngsters would be useful? To be circulated wherever they hang out . They would then be alerted before problems of dealing with health professionals at all arose and be aware of the potential risks of being prescribed for as you describe the normal problems and stresses of growing up. I imagine there would be kick back but a booklet in every youngsters’ bag could reach more than a reference to one on the net and possibly lead to useful discussion amongst them.
Young people can access advice on contraception from a GP and can be prescribed without parental inclusion A booklet to refer to might protect some from the harms you sadly describe. Of course it would need to avoid claims of undermining professional consultations . The both could go hand in hand if necessary.
Susanne
No booklet nor NHS Digital will ever mention significant harms in a way that will inform people in a manner that lets us use these products to live the life we want to live. Instead NHS Digital and the entire system seems geared to getting us to use the products – mentioning harms might deter us from using them. They want us to live the life Pfizer want us to live – this is the only rational evidence based thing NHS digital etc figure they can do
D
David I might not have explained that I was thinking of an independantly produced booklet without coll of psychs or digital health or any such like body involved. I’d caution anyone to stay clear of them There are enough genuine experts amongst activists who could compile one – being careful also staying clear of orgs such as MIND
Susanne
Makes sense but not easily done. It would be likely impossible to get everyone on the same page as RxISK. The establishment is like the Catholic Church and the opposition – the protestants – they splinter into hundreds of different factions. There are the anti-drug group who believe in CBT etc who can’t accept that CBT can be just as harmful – see post tomorrow. There are very few middle-grounders who figure the drugs are necessarily harmful and its tricky trying to bring good out of the use of a poison. Few people who take drugs want to hear that.
We need to revise the RxISK papers on drug groups but when first issued there was little take up and no take up among clinicians who might write something similar in their area of expertise.
Trying to get consensus on just one thing – how to withdraw from antidepressants is probably impossible especially now that some people are making money out of one method
David
Anne-Marie and Susanne,
Thank you both. My feeling is that prescribers and patients have been betrayed by PHARMA marketing masquerading as medicine.
It is only the onset of this type of tragedy that leads to a comprehensive understanding, and insight into, the prevalence and intensity of ADRs to psychotropic, and other prescription drugs.
Somehow it is necessary to change the trusting mindset of medical students and post-graduate medical trainees, who, like the rest of us all, are subject to endless, daily media and celebrity propaganda adding to this sophisticated, hugely successful global marketing tsunami. This augmented by ‘Key Opinion Leaders’.
Were it not for RxISK, it is most likely that our daughter would no longer be with us.
Tim’s comments here run straight into the post that will run here tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what you all think of a very similar point made there. My take on the issue was triggered by an earlier comment here by Annie Bevan who drew my attention to Dinesh Bhugra and Richard Horton who say we need to cherish medical trainees – don’t comment on that till you see where this is going in the post tomorrow.
D
I partly blame the UK Education System for the way young people are today. All through their education journey they are told “you can be whatever you want to be”, “aim high for success” etc. We can’t ALL “be whatever we want to be” – there are limits that stand in the way of most of us and we have to accept that. Due to pushing of school standards to always be better than the previous year, schools aim for the ” be whatever you want to be provided it gives us a good standard”, Very little thought is given to the practical issues such as ” being whatever you want to be WITHIN YOUR LEVEL OF COMPETENCE”.
When they find out that, in reality, there is very little choice for very many they feel abandoned and turn to whatever they can do within their area. They know that their ‘take home pay’ will be very little; they know that moving away from home will be impossible for many years with rents being so high; they soon realise that actually the promise made at school did not apply to them……..so they decide to take a way out of that game and, instead, decide that ” work”, of the sort that they can find, is not for them. Reality hits when they find out that “being on benefits” is NOT what some tend to brag about, that it simply gets you a full belly and very little else in many areas. Confronted with such a scenario, how would we fare?
It is a sorry state of affairs and will only change when ALL of whatever competence are regarded as worthy of a decent standard of living.
The freaky ‘Welfare’ business…
Dinesh has written a new book, surrounded by ‘friends’…
Man Up?
Simon Wessely reposted
dinesh bhugra
@dineshbhugra
Delighted to have the launch of the book at @rcpsych this afternoon. Thanks to
@OUPMedicine more so to @AMolodynskiand @MrsMahanty for all the heavy lifting.We MUST look after the next generation and future workforce more so than ever to improve recruitment and retention #NHS
Robert Howard
@ProfRobHoward
What have we done to medical students? Great commentary on Dinesh Bhugra’s new book and the crisis it has highlighted. What are we going to do about this?
https://twitter.com/dineshbhugra/status/1764923209038614906
What have we done to medical students?
Richard Horton
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2824%2900526-9/fulltext
“We are not cherished.”
In medicine, by contrast, these students felt invisible and taken for granted. Nobody seemed to care about their work or their experiences. They felt abandoned in a system that simply did not care. Our modern vision for 21st-century medical professionalism meant little if we were ignoring the circumstances and feelings of these newly qualified colleagues. What kind of profession had we created?
Dinesh Bhugra, Sarah Farrell, and Andrew Molodynski have exposed a scandal in plain sight at the heart of medicine. Who will act?
‘You don’t want to get better’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/12/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-treatments-social-services
Protected by powerful friends in the media, they could breathe life into their hypothesis long after it had been debunked. The new evidence-led thinking has yet to penetrate parts of the health system: some patients are still being mistreated.
This is not how science should work. Beliefs should be based on evidence. In medicine, there is a double duty: respect the evidence and listen to patients.
recovery&renewal reposted
James Moore
@jf_moore
George, thank you so much for documenting Simon Wessely’s role in this whole affair. Science should self-correct when beliefs are challenged by new evidence but his ilk don’t want to move beyond their view of sufferers as shirkers with no physical problem but one of ‘attitude’.
‘It should be read in this light’ …