Can businesses be based on bus timetables and weather reports? Maija Palmer visits the Open Data Institute to learn how entrepreneurs are exploiting valuable government data.
Britain’s official statistics agency, in its analysis of how median income households have fared over time, has found a small consolation for those on the eastern side of the Atlantic. While UK income inequality is rising, middle-earners’ incomes are more closely related to economic growth than in the US.
The Office for National Statistics used inflation-adjusted data from the US Census Bureau and International Monetary Fund that cover the years 1984 to 2008. It found that US median equivalised disposable income grew at less than half the rate of its GDP per person. For example, by 2008 – the latest year for which data are available – US GDP per person had grown by 55.3 per cent while median incomes had only grown by 26.1 per cent since 1984. Read more
Watch out on the roads
Spot quiz: name the leading global causes of death.
The big ones are easy to name – heart diseases, respiratory diseases, malaria, HIV/AIDS etc – but coming in at number eight, road traffic injuries is perhaps less intuitive.
Today’s World Health Organisation report on road safety is a call for more legislation – noting that only 7 percent of the world’s population is covered by legislation covering all five major traffic risks identified by the WHO. In practice this means laws against speeding and driving while intoxicated and requiring motorcycle helmets, seat belts, and child restraints.
It is a dense report worth digesting in more detail, but for now here are the highlight statistics from the report (all graphics courtesy WHO):
1. Although middle income countries – those with a gross national income per capital between $1,006 to $ 12,275 – have only half of the world’s cars, they have 80 per cent of the world’s traffic deaths – and deaths there have been increasing.
Do women in the workforce help boost economic growth?
Just over half of the world’s female population aged 15 to 64 is in employment, compared to more than 8 out of 10 men. But the proportion of economically active women has declined over the last 20 years. This offers us little reason to celebrate today, International Women’s Day.
Despite falling female participation levels, global GDP per capita has risen by more than 30 per cent in the past 20 years, suggesting that economic wealth is not necessarily linked to increasing levels of female economic activity. Read more
Australia’s two-speed economy
Australia’s economy is on the up, the latest data shows, with GDP rising by 0.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter. But the national figures hide a lot of variation at state level. In effect, Australia has a two-speed economy.
Most of the growth was driven by the Northern Territory, where the economy is booming thanks to its dominant mining industry. By contrast Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were in recession.
Housing supply/demand malfunctions: data reveal more than 1 million hidden households
The extraordinary extent of Britain’s hidden housing demand is highlighted by a new set of data released today. More than 1 million households have been priced out of the market and cannot afford to either rent or buy a home, it shows. Much of this unsatisfied demand is clustered among the younger age groups.
The figures come from the annual UK Housing Review, an often-overlooked but useful compendium of housing stats and commentary. This year, among other goals, it set out to quantify the extent to which people are unable to secure homes of their own. To do this, authors Steve Wilcox and John Perry looked at a handful of key measures: overcrowding, shared households, and multi-family households. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Kate Allen works in the editorial statistics team in London. She previously specialised in housing data reporting for a national trade magazine.
Chris Cook works in the FT's comment team. After joining the FT in 2008 as a Peter Martin Fellow, he worked for two years as a leader writer and then as education correspondent.
Emily Cadman joined the FT in 2010 and is head of the interactive desk.
Martin Stabe works on the FT's interactive team, specialising in databases for interactive graphics.
Keith Fray heads the editorial statistics team, providing data for articles and graphics. His background is in economics, studying at Birkbeck College, London.
Norma Cohen is the FT's Demography Correspondent.
Valentina Romei is a statistical researcher at the FT. She joined the FT in 2008 after working both as an academic and market researcher.
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