The good and bad of statistics

I read the Independent yesterday. There was an article by Stephen King about a statistical report (A century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900) which had been published in 1999, but was overlooked at the time. Stephen King writes in the business pages. His main theme was that while we nostalgically imagine times were better in the past, the statistics prove otherwise. He refers to life expectancy and income figures. 


I was intrigued because the details bore out an earlier post of mine about the origins of excess weight in our society. ("Why do we get fat?" posted on 20 December). Here were the statistics about our improved wealth and more sedentary lives.

Stephen King only quoted extracts from the report. The important details for my point are that at the turn of the century there were still two million people employed on the land as well as two million in domestic service in the United Kingdom. Both these lines of work involved hard physical labour. Nowadays there are very few people in these professions - and those that are benefit from our modern labour-saving equipment. Far more people are engaged in service industries - not domestic service, but estate agents, insurance industry work etc. The kind of jobs which can be performed sitting down at a computer terminal or on the phone. 

Income figures are revealing, too. In 1900 per capita income (adjusted for inflation and so forth to modern equivalent values) was just £3,500 a year. By 1950 it had only reached about £5,000. It has been during the past fifty years that we have become so well off. There was a 191% increase in the next fifty years. 

All that wealth, combined with easier lives, less physical effort at work and at home, and easy access to processed foods have had many good effects on our general health and longevity. Unfortunately they have also had the side effect of increasing the rate of obesity or rather the number of people who weigh far more than they should. The danger is that an increasingly fat and inactive population might start to see life expectancy rates dropping again. 

I don't want to be a scaremonger, but is this the time to consider whether you need to take action to deal with a weight problem?