Empty shops and stopped clocks

Afternoon all,

Hopefully half-term will put a dampener on the “six-seven” thing, which I’m baffled to report has reached London schools. It is an interesting example of the internet-ification of playground slang – as this teacher-penned article noted: “pupils in Cornwall and Cumbria are just as likely to shout “Skibidi Toilet” as those in London”.

In less silly news, it’s been a big week for data, including healthier than expected borrowing figures, and lower than expected inflation still delivering a welcome benefits boost next spring.

Keep reading for the unreproducibility of pop-psychology experiments, the history of the clocks going back, and the narrowing of the gender pay gap.

Have a great weekend,

Ruth
Chief Executive
Resolution Foundation

Death of the high street. How many shops on your local high street are empty? And how might that shape your postcode’s voting behaviour? A new report has used original data on high-street vacancies in England and Wales to quantify the political ramifications of local decline over the 2010s. Using data on 83,000 premises across 197 towns, researchers found that each 1 percentage point increase in vacancy rates was associated with a roughly 0.20 percentage point rise in UKIP support. The effect was nearly three times stronger among unemployed people, highlighting how economically vulnerable groups are most responsive to visible local decline. NB this is *indirect* effects – driven by people witnessing visible decline, rather than by retail workers directly put out of work. Perhaps the Government hopes that their recent reforms to business rates, coming into effect in April, will work to address this…

Quite capital. We had a skills white paper this week – could it be just as important to the growth mission as build, build, build? This study tracked all human capital expenditure (health and education) from 1800 to 2025, revealing large and persistent inequality in investment between world regions. Total (age-adjusted) global expenditure on human capital rose from less than 1% of GDP before 1900 to about 14% GDP in 2025, with huge regional inequalities. The research identifies a connection between the level of human capital expenditure and productivity, estimating an implied annual rate of return of 10 per cent across the period. A scenario where global education and health expenditure converges to a whopping 38 per cent of GDP in all countries by 2100, predicts productivity would reach an incredible 100-120 dollars an hour everywhere. Notably, all countries would benefit relative to the status quo of stagnating expenditure, as the productivity gains outweigh the cost of boosting investment. The authors recognise this is a touch more ambitious than the skills white paper huge number but say it is less remarkable in the context of the growth over previous centuries.

Fake it till you make it. The 2010s saw a replication crisis in psychology. This fun listicle of well-known but unreproducible findings demonstrates the extent of that crisis’s body count. Power posing? Nope – a wide stance won’t boost your testosterone. The marshmallow test? Turns out family background matters more than childhood self-control (who’d have guessed). Even the charming “holding a pen between your teeth makes things funnier” study crashed and burned in a 54-lab replication attempt. The list goes on: thinking about money makes you selfish, being bilingual makes you smarter, getting stressed makes you more analytical – all these studies failed to replicate. Growth mindset interventions show mixed results (not this one of course). The good news? *Most* psychology research holds up – but these darlings will need to be killed off from your dinner party repertoire.

Going hungry. While next year’s expansion of Free School Meals (FSM) to all children whose families receive Universal Credit (UC) is very welcome, this report assesses the situation for similar families with younger children, most of whom aren’t eligible for support with meals. Eligibility for Free Early Years Meals is restricted to children who attend state-maintained nurseries before and after lunch. That covers around 2 per cent of children in formal childcare. The researchers estimate that expanding FSM criteria will increase the number of eligible children for the early years meals by 15,000. But that’s only a fraction of the further 290,000 children in FSM-eligible households who still don’t qualify, highlighting a significant gap in support between early years and school settings.

Something for the weekend | You can’t turn back time… unless?

The clocks will go back this Sunday, giving you an extra hour in bed and taking us back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) after our annual sojourn into British Summer Time (BST). But *why* do we do this? And should we continue?

Daylight Savings Time is 109 years old. It caught on as a means of reducing demand for coal-powered lighting during the First World War. We even briefly adopted Double Summer Time hours to save *even more* energy during the Second World War.

And yet, a key criticism levelled against the practice is that it’s a waste of money. The argument goes that we should stick with BST all year, enjoying lighter evenings while avoiding the disruption of the switch.

Here’s the twist – Britain already tried this! Between 1968 and 1971 we ran to GMT +1 all year round. But the government found it “impossible to quantify advantages and disadvantages” of the experiment, and the house of commons voted overwhelmingly to abandon the practice (366 to 81).

Maybe they made the right call – there is evidence that daylight savings reduces our sleep, increasing the risk of obesity and lowering wages. Other research has shown that seasonal switching leads to an almost four-fold increase in workplace injuries.

So maybe we should stick with GMT all year? Apparently it would reduce the prevalence of obesity and strokes.  Plus, if we managed to get this agreed before the spring, we’d never need to give back the hour we all gain on Sunday. Much to consider…

Chart of the week

We’ve decided to delve into the treasure trove of latest ONS annual hours and earnings data (would highly recommend Figure 8 for an interactive depiction of pay by local area – kudos to the ONS where it’s due). This data tells us loads, including about low pay in Britain and, as this week’s chart shows, the state of the gender pay gap. The gap – comparing median hourly pay rates for full-time employees – has been steadily falling over time from a shocking 36 per cent back in 1973 to just 6.9 per cent this year. The gap has almost gone for those in their late teens and 20s. But the gender pay gap emerges in the 30s (where things have got worse post-pandemic) and is twice as high again for people in their 40s as the ‘motherhood penalty’ reduces women’s earnings. For the one-in-three women who work part-time the penalty is even bigger as short-hours work is undervalued. Britain *is* reducing the gender pay gap. Closing it completely may be a pipe dream – but it could deliver a monumental living standards boost to at least half the workforce. That’s got to be worth striving for right?