Podcast appearances and mentions of chris garrington

In episode 6 of Oral Health Matters, Richard Watt, Professor of Dental Public Health at University College London is in conversation withDr Benoit Varenne from the World Health Organisation and Dr Dympna Kavanagh, Chief Dental Officer in the Department of Health, Ireland. Together they discuss current and forthcoming developments in global and national oral health policy and how the research community can best support oral health as a public health priority around the world. Read a full transcript: https://researchpodcasts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OHM-Ep6-transcript.pdf Credits Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusic

In episode 5 of Oral Health Matters, Richard Watt, Professor of Dental Public Health at University College London is in conversation with Professor Sharon Friel from the Australian National University. and Professor Delan Devakumar, from University College London. Together they discuss developments in the broader global health research agenda and highlight the burning issues specifically linked to equity and commercial determinants. Read a full transcript: https://researchpodcasts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OHM-Ep5-.pdf Credits Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusic

In Episode 1, Richard is in conversation with Dr Carol Guarnizo-Herreno from the University of Colombia and Professor Marco Peres from the National Dental Centre in Singapore. They discuss why oral health needs to be a more prominent feature of the global public health agenda and what the key issues are. Carol is co-lead of the CORE programme and her main research interests lies in exploring the political determinants of oral health inequalities. Marco is an internationally renowned researcher, originally from Brazil but now leading a research team in Singapore. Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusic Full transcript available here: https://researchpodcasts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OHM-Ep1-transcript.pdf

In Episode 2 we're in conversation with Professor Regina Mutave from the Department of Dental Sciences at the University of Nairobi and Professor Manu Mathur from the Centre for Dental Public Health from Queen Mary University London. We're discussing the challenges and opportunities for oral health research in the global south, asking what's getting in the way of progress and what we can do about it. Read a full transcript here: https://researchpodcasts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OHM-Ep2-trainscript.pdf Further reading: Action plan for oral health in South-East Asia 2022–2030 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789290210061 Credits Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusi

In Episode 3 Richard is in conversation with Mirai Chatterjee from the Self-Employed Women's Association in India and Professor Blanaid Daly, Dean of the School of Dental Science at Trinity College Dublin. Together they discuss the meaning and value of community engagement in research and ways to promote meaningful partnership working with communities. Mirai has a wealth of experience working with marginalised and disadvantaged communities across India and Blanaid is an experienced clinical researcher who has focused on addressing the oral health needs of homeless people and those with special care needs. Read a full transcript here: https://researchpodcasts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OHM-Ep3-transcript.pdf Credits Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusic

In Episode 1 of Oral Health Matters, we're asking whether oral health is a luxury for the wealthy few or a fundamental human right for everyone. We're also discussing the need for greater partnership working between scholars, practitioners and policy makers and the importance of gaining the trust of communities in order to co-create interventions that work for the people who live in them. To discuss this, Richard Watt, Professor of Dental Public Health at University College London is in conversation with Dr Carol Guarnizo-Herreno from the University of Colombia and Professor Marco Peres from the National Dental Centre in Singapore. Credits Presenter: Professor Richard Watt, University College London Editor and producer: Chris Garrington, Research Podcasts Artwork and audiograms: Krissie Brighty-Glover and Lauren White, Research Podcasts Music: The Documentary, Mapamusic Date of episode recording: 2024-04-24T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:26:39 Language of episode: English Presenter: Professor Richard Watt Guests: Dr Carol Guarnizo-Herreno; Professor Marco Pere Producer: Christie Garrington

In Episode 6 of Series 2 of The Lifecourse Podcast we're talking about the impact on young people's lives of positive experiences and asking if it's time to shift the research and policy narrative away from the negative experiences facing those young people. Chris Garrington is joined by Rebecca Lacey, a researcher based at UCL, who's been investigating how positive experiences are linked with children and young people's physical and mental health and Ann Hagell from the Association for Young People's Health.  Further information Association for Young People's Health Taking a ‘positive' look at child health development ,Child of our Time blog The effect of adverse and positive experiences on inflammatory markers in Australian and UK children is research by Naomi Priest and colleagues and is published in Brain, Behaviour and Immunity – Health Factors mitigating the harmful effects of intimate partner violence on adolescents' depressive symptoms—A longitudinal birth cohort study is research by David Gondek and colleagues and is published in JCPP Advances

In this special BONUS episode of the podcast, Todd is joined by Rights Track producer Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts to discuss their recently published book The Rights Track: Sound Evidence on Human Rights and Modern Slavery.  The book, published by Anthem Press is launched today (September 6, 2022) at a special event hosted by the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, funders of Series 3-5 of the podcast.  Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. I'm Todd Landman. In this special episode of the podcast, I'm delighted to be joined by Rights Track producer, Chris Garrington to discuss our new book, The Rights Track: Sound Evidence on Human Rights and Modern Slavery, which was published in July. Chris and I launched The Rights Track podcast together in 2015, and have just finished production of a seventh series. Chris is the director and owner of Research Podcasts Limited, which specialises in consultancy, training and podcast production for researchers and students. So, welcome to this side of the mic, Chris. Christine Garrington  0:38  Thanks, Todd. I was gonna say it feels strange to be here. But of course, it doesn't feel strange at all, because I'm always here for recordings of Rights Track episodes, but it does feel strange, slightly strange. I'm not gonna lie to be speaking into the mic and be having a proper conversation with you in this way. But wonderful. Todd Landman  0:55  You're now the guest, you are not sitting behind the scenes trying to make the guests sound fantastic. So Chris, I wanted to start with, when did podcasts first enter into your head?  Christine Garrington  1:06  Oh, that's a really good question. So you know, Todd, but our listeners won't know that my background was in journalism. So I came straight out of university and trained to be a journalist back in the late 80s, early 90s. And spent most of that time working in radio - in BBC local radio in Essex. And then when radio five live launched here in the UK, in the mid 90s I worked there. So I developed if you like, my love of audio, my passion around the power of audio to tell stories, to report news, as well as obviously, all of the technical and editorial skills required to do that well, whilst working as a radio journalist. But jump forward a decade after leaving the BBC and doing a few different things and living abroad for a while, I came back to the UK and ended up working a little bit by chance, if I can be honest there, working in a research institute at the University of Essex. Todd Landman  2:03  Yeah. Christine Garrington  2:03  And it was actually there where I was given a free rein to try to help that institute promote its research better to communicate and engage around its research better with non-academic audiences to wider audiences, that I came up with this idea of using my skills, my background in this new setting, in the university and research setting to launch a podcast and it was indeed there that I launched my very first podcast, and that would have been in around I think, 2010 - 2011. Todd Landman  2:34  Wow. So 12 years ago. Now, I wanted to just hone in on one thing you said there, you've talked about people telling their stories. And I want to link it to my next question, which is, at what point did you want to work with academics interested in presenting their own podcasts? But I guess, are they any good at telling their stories? And did you really have to coach them to tell their stories? Because sometimes people ask us questions, we give ridiculously complex answers. And people really want more straightforward answers to questions, maybe in a more binary fashion. So how do you get academics interested in presenting their own podcasts? And how do you get actually get academics to sit and talk in a way that is meaningful, interesting and productive for a non-academic audience? Christine Garrington  3:14  Yeah, I think I'd go back a little bit and say that when I produced my first podcast, that was me in the chair, that was me, Chris Garrington, journalist, interviewer, you know, trying to coax good answers out of researchers and working with them on that in a way where they could present their work accessibly by asking questions, if you like that we're not about necessarily the complexities behind the research in terms of the methods and the regressions of the variables and all the things that a lot of researchers want to talk about, particularly social scientists, and work with them to really think about how they could answer simple questions about the meaning of their research, or how it could benefit people in the real world, how it could be of help to policymakers and practitioners. So if you'd like I was already working with them in that way in that environment. But moving on to your sort of question. I had this thing in the back of my mind, which was that, wouldn't it be great, you know, I can ask, you know, sensible, intelligent questions, but I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none here. Wouldn't it be great if academics, you know, who would really want to - and it's not for everybody - but wouldn't it be great if there were academics who would like with the support and the background and the experience that I bring to the pot? Wouldn't it be great to get them presenting their own and they would, you know, necessarily, if you like, be using that medium to communicate and engage around their research, in a way I think that could benefit them, but also really demonstrate the potential impact of their work and yeah, hence next steps into really wanting to work with academics who would want to produce and present their own podcast. Todd Landman  4:57  That's brilliant, and I guess you know, in the back of your mind, or maybe in the front of your mind throughout that process, you always have the audience in mind who's the audience going to be? What will they be interested in? And how do we produce something that will meet that interest and capture their attention for the length of a podcast? Christine Garrington  5:15  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, you'll remember and will reflect back and we have reflected back in our book, Todd about the important conversations we had before we went anywhere near a microphone, right? I mean, we talked at length about who is it we want to engage with? Who is it we want to talk with? Who is this for? Who are we trying to reach? What are we trying to achieve? What's the mission, if you like, of our podcast, and those are things that these days, you know, I'm sharing with academics, whether that's in training situations, or whether that's in a situation where I might be producing them to present their own podcast, those are really important conversations to have before, you know, anyone goes near a microphone and starts interviewing or having conversations with people. And I think that conversations word is I don't know how many you times you and I have used the word conversations. And, you know, that's very, very important in the podcasting arena, because I as a journalist can conduct an interview about human rights, but I can't have a conversation. And that's where Todd Landman comes in because you can have a conversation around and about human rights in a way that I couldn't possibly. And so the team working is what works, the team working, the Todd model, as we like to talk about it at Research Podcast these days, really, really works. And that's why I'm so proud of it and feel so passionate about it. Todd Landman  6:35  Well, I guess I'd like to talk about the Todd and Chris model, because Todd and Chris model yielded The Rights Track. So why The Rights Track and why me? Christine Garrington  6:43  So it won't surprise you to know that really, when I was sort of thinking about podcasting, and thinking about who might like to work with me, I think our paths had crossed, not particularly sort of closely, but at the University of Essex. And that's, of course, where we, we first met, but we've had a couple of dealings around media work and stuff like that. And so when I was thinking, you know, I need to find somebody to work with on this idea, who can I talk with? You were, you know, right at the top of the list, of course, and I remember quite clearly sort of saying to you, can I come and have a coffee and chat to you about this idea of podcasts? And, you know, you were so open to the idea. And of course, we did a bit softly, softly it was, it was for that first sort of six episodes of a podcast, it was me interviewing you. But you know, I could tell quite quickly that you grabbed it, you grasped it. And so I suppose I might throw that back to you, in a way, Todd, you know, at what point did you think, oh, yeah, this is something for me, you know, I can work the Todd and Chris model, this could be something that could work really, really well. For me for human rights research for communication, for impact. Todd Landman  7:46  Briefly, I had been looking for a different medium to disseminate human rights information to a wider audience. And I liked talking about human rights. I taught human rights for many, many years and have had many conversations around the world, I travelled to probably 35 or 40 countries, by the point that you and I have started working together. And of course, I'd spent a lot of time in public fora, whether those were, you know, externally sponsored events in those countries. Some of the highlights for me, were going out to Mongolia at the time, when it embraced democracy, we were doing democracy assessment. And there the audience was fully International, as well as local media, academics, civil society organisations, I spent time in Latin America doing the same thing, particularly in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and sharing my views of course across the United States, across continental Europe, and parts of Africa. So for me, it was I was used to talking about human rights, I was used to teaching human rights. But many of this sort of format of that conversation, discussion remained didactic, whereas I didn't have a way of capturing the conversation. So for me, it was about the opportunity to capture a conversation. And I think that when you pitch to me over that cup of coffee, here's a new format. And I didn't know anything about podcasts was a bit like when Twitter came out, I thought, why would I want to use Twitter? You know, what's a tweet? Where's 140 characters gonna get me? Where does a 20 minute podcast get me, but you made very convincing arguments about why podcasting for human rights would be a good thing to do. And of course, we spend a lot of time thinking about the titles. And The Rights Track is a play on words, of course, because old recordings, we'd record on tracks, and we still record our podcasts on multiple devices, and then mix them down, you know, various tracks overlaying on top of one another. But for me, it was a really coming together and a very good moment in my own intellectual and sort of educational formation that this presented a great opportunity to bring this medium to the world of human rights. Christine Garrington  9:43  And so what is it that you would say that you enjoy most about presenting the podcast? Todd Landman  9:48  I think the surprises actually to be honest, I get anxious before every podcast, I don't have a script. I don't have pre-set questions. I know who my guest is going to be in the area of work that they do. I look for a challenging what I would call hook question to start off each podcast which sometimes frightens my guests, and I realise they're probably more anxious and nervous than I am. But what's interesting is after that initial hook question, the opening up of thought, and the opening up and sharing of both a track record of work, the incredible commitment to human dignity and human rights, the guests we've met, are committed to all those sorts of things that get revealed, are always surprising. And people will come out with all sorts of surprising things that you don't expect. And of course, you have to roll with it in a live recording setting, because we don't really like to over script and over edit our episodes. So for me, it was the natural flow of the conversation, I might take furious notes while listening to somebody and pick out key words, and then use those words to craft a new question to push the conversation forward. And I found that almost improvisational element of the podcast, very rewarding indeed. And then there was the final challenge of how do you end the podcast? You know, we would get deep into conversation with people from you know, gross human rights atrocities, being committed to, you know, technology and this latest series on the digital world, in areas that I hadn't talked to people about and quite complex topic areas, how do you then wrap that up? What were the main themes? How do you string those themes together? And how do you reach an end point for a finale of a podcast to leave the listener wanting more, but also feel satisfied that they've learned something by listening to that episode? Christine Garrington  11:31  Yeah, I think there's a real skill in that. And it's something that I often talk to people who want to present their own podcasts about whatever the subject matter is, is that you somehow have this art of wrapping up a conversation in a way that really pulls together the main things that have emerged and that's, you know, that's challenging, right? Because that means you've got to listen to every word, your guest says, and you've got to store all of that in your head across a 20-25 minute conversation. But I think, you know, there in, you know, is a really important thing to take away from, you know, what makes a good podcast, but I wanted to ask you as well about there's something there's an informality, right about the podcasting medium that just doesn't seem to exist in any other way that academics might get to communicate their research, you know, you're always presenting quite formally, right, whether that's at a conference or you're giving a media interview, or you're talking to policymakers giving evidence at some sort of inquiry. But this allows a sort of an informality that I just think is very, very special. Todd Landman  12:29  Well, I think breaking down the formality of human rights dissemination was a key motivator for me, having been to countless conferences and formal events and public fora, but also reading the literature on human rights. I've been, you know, steeped in research monographs, peer reviewed journal articles, policy reports, NGO reports, and they have a distinct formality about them, there's a trotting out of the human rights that are at stake, the legal parameters of those human rights, what is codified and not codified, where the areas of debate are. And it risks really in two ways. One, it's not easily accessible information. And we talk about that in the book, which I, you know, towards the end of the book about that the sort of established ways of disseminating human rights information, actually limit their accessibility for a wide range of people, particularly those people you're trying to reach. And so for me, the podcast and the informal nature is I can just say, oh, yeah, but you said this, but what did you mean by that? Or? I'm sorry? Could you give an example of how that principle works in practice? Or what in your personal experience could you tell us that either led you to that conclusion or motivated you to work in this area? And I remember some of our guests saying, look, it was my dad worked for a particular federal agency in the United States that was dedicated to environmental protection, that inspired me as a child to go to university and then at university, I got interested in human rights. And then I got interested in how people mobilise for human rights. So I started researching human rights NGOs, and to get the human element and motivation behind why people do the human rights work that they do. And equally, that you know, the impact they think they're having. Oftentimes, when we look at academic work, they think, Oh, well, you know, it's a publication, it's out there, it's, you know, it's in the peer reviewed journal world. It's in the research monograph world, it's an echo chamber, it's just academics reading their own stuff, reading each other, citing each other and making, you know, progressive change in the development of knowledge and expertise. But who's the wider audience that one could reach? And how do we make that information more accessible to people? And how do we get the human story behind the derivation and genesis of that information? And then why that information is important for us to ponder and to think about? And so I think the podcast was a perfect medium to be able to do that. Christine Garrington  14:43  Yeah. And so you mentioned the book there. So what on earth made you if you like, sort of, come full circle and come back to the written word, you know, with the idea of the book about the podcast, you know, where did that come from? Because I remember us talking about it, but, you know, it must have been sort of been mulling around in your head for a while before you broach the idea with me. Todd Landman  15:03  So for me, we originally set out to do The Rights Track for one year, we had one year of funding, then we accessed additional funding and more funding. And, you know, the middle part of the series were all about the modern slavery topic, we had really nice financial support from The Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham to do that. We had had Nuffield funding and ESRC funding. And as this body of podcast content developed, I thought, there's some recurring themes here that are of interest to me. And I think I originally pitched just writing a journal article about this. And I was conscious that we would be coming full circle from the written word and the spoken word back to the written word. And, you know, one thing led to another, we sort of parked the article for a while, we had tables and figures and things about the podcast for over a couple of series. But I guess it was late, you know, in deep into the fifth or sixth series, when I thought, actually, I think there's enough content here for a book. And so I approached you and said, let's put a book proposal together to a publisher and see what the response might be. And of course, Anthem Press very graciously said this looks like a winner went out for peer review, we got really good feedback about consolidating and condensing some of the content. And then lo and behold, for a year, I sat and wrote, and you wrote and read and edited and co-edited and fed back, you know, almost every Sunday for a year. And we ended up with 96,000 words of content based on the 58 podcast we did, and the 71 conversations we had, over 26 hours of recorded content, what a beautiful kind of, you know, body of content that was inaccessible, unless we did the podcast. And because we did the podcast, we had this accessible content could then be crafted into, you know, a kind of structure of a book not only tells the story of what we learned during this time, but also what people were saying, and what they were committing themselves to, and what they think they had achieved in the work that they did. So for me, it was all just wrapped up really nicely together. Christine Garrington  15:06  Yeah, and I guess I suppose that brings a question into my head is what you feel the book adds to what we've done, you know, what's come out of it as you reflect on it. And, you know, when that book arrived in your hands, as it did mine through the post a few weeks back, you know, what is it about the book that makes you think that was really worth doing? What, what struck you most? Todd Landman  17:16  Well, for me, you know, if I were to tell people and point them in the direction of our Rights Track website, they would encounter 58 podcasts for download. And they can listen to all 58 in their journeys, commuting journeys, whether they're at work or you know, listening on whatever device they have, that's one approach, but it might feel a bit scattered and sporadic for them. So I felt that our role as creators of this thing was to add value to the audio content we had, and to, in a sense, augment what we've learned from people with the extent knowledge of the state of human rights from an academic perspective. And the book tries to strike that balance between background and context. Why is freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom of religion, important? Here are the parameters, here are the ongoing debates, here's what our guests said about these issues. And now we're going to tell you why that matters. And sort of chapter by chapter, podcast by podcast, we put everything together, and actually, I think, ended up with a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts, because we were able to add the academic commentary on top of the conversations and back again, to craft chapters that hopefully are readable, informative, thought provoking, and raised a high relief, the many human rights challenges that are facing us today. Christine Garrington  18:35  Yeah, 100% I agree with that. And also, it was wonderful for me to have the opportunity to reflect, you know, especially writing this section about why podcasts, you know, why that particular moment in time, you know, how we develop the ideas, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to reflect back on all of that in the context of a growing interest in podcasting, as we know, you know, from the early 2000s, to where we are today, with podcasts very much an established part our, you know, audio habits, if you like for many, many people, millions of people around the world, you know, coming from a place actually in the 2000s. You know, when we were talking about it when it wasn't quite so established. I think, you know, that's been a wonderful thing, certainly for me. And I wonder, also, you know, now the books out who you think will benefit from it, be interested in it, what they'll get out of it? Todd Landman  19:22  Well, I think we pitch the proposal to the publisher that this would not be a full on academic book that only academics and students would read. It would be a book that should appeal to the general reader that we have enough for lack of a better word, academic credibility behind what we're saying. There's a lot of referencing to established peer reviewed academic research, combined with experts that we spoke to both who were academics but also practitioners and activists, and weaving that narrative together as something that's not been done before by taking that very rich content of our conversations and weaving it into broader academic arguments that are balanced evidence based and reach a reasonable resolution and conclusion about matters affecting us here today. So for me, it was, I think it will appeal to people who are worried about the state of the world, given developments. Since well as we say, in the beginning of the book since 2001, there was almost a massive pivot after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And there is a kind of rolling back, if you will, of commitment to human rights and certain emergence of political leaders who have an anti-rights discourse or a populist discourse that challenges the legitimacy of human rights. And equally, that raises to high relief, what I would call this idea of reductionism where, you know, you're either with us or against us, this binary dividing of the world into us and them. Black hats and white hats. You know, grouping very disparate groups of people together and calling them all the other and to be feared and to be deported. And to be, you know, deeply suspicious of them. And so for us to produce a book that says, well, actually, there are a lot of people out there that disagree with that view. And this is why, and actually did you know, here's the flow of refugees, and why here's what the German government did. Here's what the UK Government did. Here's why it matters. Here's some of the discourse around that. Here's the legal things that are in place that can help these people here, the legal gaps, where people are falling through the cracks, you know, so we identify and problematize all these issues in a way that wasn't really immediately obvious. If we had just gone for a straight book, it was listening to the voices of the experts, listening to people there on the ground, trying to make positive change for the world that really gave that human grounded element to the content of the book. And I hope that that's really enjoyable for the reader. And if you think about it, readers and listening to Audible books while they exercise, they might be listening to podcasts. But equally, they might like to pick up a hard copy of the book, and really thumb through the pages enjoy reading the content that we've put together over these many years. Christine Garrington  21:47  Yeah, indeed. And I wonder then also, again, coming sort of back to the podcast, if you like, but it's all been a journey. And whether our efforts to create what we've talked about as sound evidence about human rights with The Rights Track, I wonder if you believe or if you think in some small way, The Rights Track has made a difference that it's had an impact in its own right. Todd Landman  22:11  I think so. You know, we have a chapter about human rights evidence in the book and telling the story of human rights evidence is a very difficult and complex one. And the chapter moves really from individual cases of individual people, to aggregating metrics and indicators on large groups of people and looking for macro patterns. And my world of quantitative analysis of human rights is one that doesn't give what some people mistakenly believe as a precise answer to a question. In statistics, we always deal with probabilities and uncertainties. And I was really struck by you know, what Patrick Ball said about his work on documenting gross violations of human rights. And in the case of Guatemala, he showed that indigenous people during 1981 to 82, in the conflict in Guatemala, under the leadership of General Efrain Rios Montt, that indigenous people were eight times more likely to be killed by military agents than people from other groups in society. And I remember asking him, does that prove genocide? He said, oh, no, not at all. What it is, is a statistical statement that says, the patterns we observe in the data cannot be explained by chance alone, right. So it hints and implies that an intentionality to the observed differences in treatment against people, but it doesn't point its finger and say, this is absolutely sound evidence that tells you, these people were wholly responsible for and intentionally killed. That's a legal judgement that requires other kinds of evidence that requires forensic anthropology, documentary evidence, interviews with victims and survivors of the violence, and a triangulation of sources that then let you reach the legal judgement, that beyond a reasonable doubt, genocide was committed against these people. And I like the sort of small 'c' conservativism of that statement around evidence that you have to be very careful working in the field of human rights, not to overclaim or in my language, draw inferences that are not supported by the data. So we have a very strong section in the book around human rights evidence that I think needs to be read by lots of people, because you hear lots of statistics being bandied about, and certainly during the COVID pandemic, and certainly after looking at the differential impact of the pandemic on different groups, and people might say, well, therefore that demonstrates racism. Well hang on a minute, what does that mean, you know, and I was really struck by Dominique Day and her interview with us talking about medical bias in the medical profession and that, in the height of the pandemic in New York City, a directive came out in a hospital that said, we don't have the luxury for protocols and data analysis and committee meetings. Just use your best instinct in treating people. So that grounded decision does someone get a ventilator or not? Does someone get a mask or not? Does someone get treatment or not? At the heat of the moment, the peak of the pandemic, people fall back on internal heuristics and decision making, that may have an absolutely deleterious effect on certain groups of people in society. And I love that explanation because it went away from this kind of role intentionality of racism to a much more nuanced understanding of medical bias and the sorts of everyday decisions people make that when you aggregate those decisions up, you actually see disproportionate treatment of certain groups of people in society. And that argument that Dominique Day put together, actually is analogous to so many other situations I see in the world that individual decisions incrementally build up. And when you aggregate those decisions, you see those disproportionalities as a treatment. You see that maltreatment, maladjustment, maldistribution of resources, etc, within society that produces many of the societal conflicts and divisions that we're dealing with and grappling with today. Christine Garrington  25:50  Yeah, so many great conversations Todd, I wonder if there's for you, there's a highlight? No, I've got a couple around producing the podcast. But what about for you? Todd Landman  25:58  Well, I was struck by our conversations around the refugee crisis. I think, speaking to Mr. Vargas Llosa was really really impressive. His handle on statistics and the flow of people and the sheer number of people coming out of conflict ridden societies and why they were coming to Europe was a particularly telling conversation for me. Of course, I loved all the statistical conversations with everyone, I was really struck with the people fighting slavery on the ground from India, working with youth, etc, very much struck by a conversation with Mahi Ramakrishnan from Malaysia and her work with the Rohingya and thinking about just sort of the abject maltreatment of that group. And some of the complexities of that group as they fled one country where they were considered stateless, entered another country where they didn't have refugee status. And then were trying to eke out a living at the height of a pandemic. I mean, that's a lot of stuff coming together all in one place, and to have that reasonable, passionate discussion with Mahi on that topic, you know, still stays with me to this day. Christine Garrington  27:00  So many great conversations, I too, have learned so very much about human rights along the way, it's wonderful to have technology and all of the opportunities that brings but when the book popped through the letterbox and I could thumb through it and look back and reflect on, you know, all of that work. And all of that time, it was a wonderful moment. And particularly, I've got to say, to turn to the back page, because there's nothing as powerful as somebody else saying how good something is, right Todd? I mean, we can say, you know, we thought it was a brilliant project. But when I look and see Dame Sara Thornton, the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner talk about the book and saying how it's, you know, how much it's done to bring modern slavery to wider audiences, you know, modern slavery being her interest. And you know, how powerfully it demonstrates the value of technology and making knowledge accessible and how it provides a collation and analysis of the rich material from the series, providing thought, challenging mindsets, and ultimately, with the potential to transform lives, I've got to say, you know, for me, that feels like a, you know, without wanting to, to get too carried away, for me, a real career highlight, and a real personal highlight that will stay with me forever. Todd Landman  28:10  Well, I'm glad that The Rights Track, you know, presented that opportunity to you. But I have to say, Chris, I also learned a lot from you. And the most learning actually came from your challenges to me. So I might pitch an idea. And you say, Yeah, but who's the audience? Or could you just you know, could you rephrase that? Because that doesn't quite make sense. Or you haven't really captured the human element of what we actually learned from that guest? Could you rewrite that passage, you know, and I think you were always good at pushing me around, you know, staying true to the theme staying true to the model, and making sure that we absolutely kept our thinking on the right track, if I might even say, so. I learned a lot. I hope you learned a lot. And I think the end result of this book is a great archive, if you will. And the great thing about books is they exist in perpetuity now, so very, very pleased that we did this project together and I hope that our listeners as well as our readers, take away so much value, as much value as we have in producing them. Christine Garrington  29:04  Thank you, Todd. Thanks for listening to this special episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. The Rights Track; Sound Evidence on Human Rights and Modern Slavery is published by Anthem Press and is available from all major bookstores. You can access all seven series of The Rights Track podcast via your podcasting app, or on our website at www.RightsTrack.org    

In Episode 9 of Series 7, Todd is joined again by Ben Lucas, Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham, funders of this series. Together they reflect on some of the key themes and ideas to emerge from Series 7 of The Rights Track about human rights in a digital world.   Transcript Todd Landman  0:01   Welcome to The Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we've been discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman. And in the last episode of this fantastic series, I'm delighted to be joined for the second time by Ben Lucas, Managing Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham, a hub for world class data science research and funders for this series of our podcast. Ben helped kick off series seven at the end of last year talking about some of the challenges and opportunities created in a data driven society and the implications for our human rights. Today, he's here to help us reflect on some of the key themes that have emerged from this series. So welcome, Ben, it's great to have you on this final episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas  0:46   Great to be here. Thanks very much. Todd Landman  0:48   So last night, we were at a launch event for INFINITY, which is an inclusive financial technology hub being launched here at the University of Nottingham, we had a bucolic setting at the Trent bridge, cricket ground, which I say was quite historic. But some of the messages I heard coming out of that event last night, really gave me hope for the promise of digital with respect, particularly to helping people who are currently excluded from financial technologies or finance more generally. And the ever, you know, sort of problem of people getting credit ratings getting access to finance, I wondered if you could just reflect on what was shared last night around the the positive story that could be told around using technology to give people access to hard to find finance? Ben Lucas  1:29   Yeah, absolutely. So I think the central issue with financial inaccessibility is really the fact that people get trapped in this really bad cycle, and perhaps don't have savings, and then you lean more on credit options, for example. And then you become more and more dependent, if you like on credit options. Equally, there are also folks who are excluded from accessing credit completely or at an affordable rate. In the first instance, which obviously changes very much the quality of life, let's say that they're able to enjoy the things they're able to purchase, and so on. So really, the mission of projects like INFINITY, which is focusing very much on this idea of inclusive financial technology, is trying to boost accessibility to everything from tools that help people save to tools that help people spend to a breaking that some of these negative cycles that cause people to end up in not so great financial situations. And yeah, it's really leveraging and learning from, you know, all the wonderful developments in, you know, things like analytics and new financial services, products, especially those that are app based, that we use in the rest of the financial services world, but applying them for good, basically, so very much consistent with this data for good message that we've been speaking about in this series. Todd Landman  2:51   Right that's really interesting. So it's a data driven approach to understanding the gaps and inequalities in a modern society that does have the data infrastructure and technological infrastructure to give people access. But really the data driven approach lowers the barriers to entry for those folks. And I was quite struck by that there was a colleague there from Experian, which is a credit rating agency talking about the millions of people who either don't have online bank accounts don't have access to the right kinds of technologies, and don't have the kind of credit rating that gives them access to the lower priced financial products out there, which in sort of ordinary terms means they're paying a much higher interest rate to borrow money than people that do have a credit rating. So one solution was to use data analytics and a data driven approach to understand their position to boost their credit rating in a way that would give them access to cheaper finance. Did I get that right? Ben Lucas  3:40   Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, the central thing in financial services and lending is obviously managing their risk exposure with any individual consumer, but then also across, you know, their entire consumer portfolio. And I think, you know, one of the big opportunities in the inclusive FinTech space slash probably what we're going to see going forward is credit rating agencies and credit rating support products, looking for other variables or indicators that, you know, can really paint a clearer picture of individual consumers, and perhaps even say, well, actually, there's not so much risk with this consumer because there is other factors that the usual you know, bog standard algorithm doesn't pick up on, and maybe we don't have that risk exposure, maybe we can offer them, you know, financial products or lending products at a better rate, you know, that colleagues spoke also about Experian's boost product, for example, and I won't go into an advertisement for that, but yet a really interesting example of how by sort of extending the available data and what we do with that, you know, it's possible to sort of calibrate and tailor solutions that are a win win that reduce the risk for the credit provider, but give additional consumers more accessibility. And I think the other big piece just to detail briefly, within data driven and financial research, you know, some of the work that colleagues in the INFINITY team have been doing around, you know, helping to understand that an aggregate and in a privacy preserving way, where perhaps people are making not so great financial decisions. So being able to, you know, hopefully in the future help flag you know privacy protecting way to consumers when they're not making great decisions, which can be everything from wasteful over the top expenses to things like you know, too much gambling or unhealthy eating, for example. So certainly a very, very exciting space. Todd Landman  5:33   No, it's really fascinating, and it resonates well with many of the themes we've heard in this series of The Rights Track. So I'm going to just think about putting these things into groupings or clutches of perspectives if I may, so that you made reference this idea of data for good and of course, we had some guests on the podcast this series, including Sam Gilbert, who talked about the ability for digital transformation and data driven approaches to unearth previously unknown factors and public health benefits, and it could be social justice benefits and other benefits from leveraging data that don't normally talk to each other in a data analytic way. Wendy Betts told us about using really preserving the chain of evidence using visual imagery, but that date stamp timestamp location stamped and then preserving the metadata that sits behind an image for verification for the investigation of human rights abuse and human rights crimes. Amrit Dhir showed us in the United States how his organisation Recidiviz uses data from prisons to actually bring greater sense of justice to prisoners, as well as parolees. And finally, Diane Coyle, the world famous economist not only reflected on the many economic transformations that have happened with the digital disruption, but also made the case for universal access to online life and being on the grid almost as a basic human right, in the ways that access to information access to health care, access to services need to be provided. And certainly during COVID-19, we've learned that many people were excluded from those services precisely because they didn't have the right internet connection, or at least cannot afford to have the right kind of internet connection. So I just wondered what your general reflections are on that general theme of data for good. And what can you tell us about what you think listening to the guests that we've had during this series? Ben Lucas  7:21   Yeah, I mean, I really liked the way that Sam sort of sets the scene in his book, Good Data; An Optimist's Guide to our Digital Future. I think that nobody, of course likes to have their privacy compromised, at an individual level. But the reality is, when we look at, you know, the things we can do when we have data at scale across, you know, large populations, there's a lot that can be achieved, whether that's in something like inclusive FinTech, whether that's in protecting human rights by combating modern slavery, whether that's to do with health data in a system like the NHS. Yeah, I don't think anybody likes to have their privacy compromised, obviously, at that individual level. But if there's a sort of way to communicate that greater good message, I'm not trying to encourage people to willingly give away their data for free, quite the opposite. But I think that's the sort of big debate the both commercial and academic data scientists, you know, that's really the arena in which we work. Because there are a lot of benefits to be had. When we think about sort of data at scale. Equally, we need to protect, you know, individuals and communities. I think, you know, it's really great in this series to hear about, you know, things like eyeWitness up and Recidiviz and some of these platforms that I think are managing that really well and really getting that good out of the data. Yeah, I think that's been really nice. There's a lot we can say also, on the subject of, I think this is more of a frontier thing. But artificial intelligence in particular, which came up a few times, which I think is going to be the next well already is actually the next big frontier in terms of talking about, you know, transparency and fairness, especially because we're applying these tools to these large datasets. Todd Landman  9:04   Right. And I also came across a very interesting project and another group here at the University of Nottingham. It's within the Nottingham University Business School. And it's a neo-demographic lab or N/Lab, which works on you know, big data science projects around harnessing unknown information from pre existing datasets. And there was a partnership with OLIO, which is an app that allows people to trade food that they're not going to need so surplus food sits in people's houses, other people need food. So this app allows people to share food across the app, and to actually make best use almost the circular economy, if you will, in sharing food. Now, quite apart from the pragmatics and the practicalities of sharing food between households. Of course, the app collects data on who needs food and who has food, and that then allows the geo-mapping of food poverty within particular districts and jurisdictions within the United Kingdom. Can you say a bit more about that project and does this fit within the category of data for good?  Ben Lucas  10:03   Absolutely. I mean, that's an absolutely fantastic piece of work, you know. And obviously, the purpose of that platform and all that work is to look at both combating food inaccessibility and food poverty, on the one hand, and on the other, combating food waste. So really, yeah, absolutely a fantastic example, as far as data for good and also doing the right thing by people in society. I think it is also a great example of this idea that we can, you know, log data from sharing platforms, and really whatever platform in an ethical way, you know, in the work those that colleagues at N/Lab are doing, you know, so it's all privacy preserved data. It's possible to get a, you know, useful enough geotagged picture of how the sharing is taking place, such that it can be understood at a network level, but it's not giving away, you know, exact locations, it has no identifiers of who's linked to it. But even just with that sort of network exchange level data, you know, it really tells a very interesting story about how this system works. And, you know, as you said, I mean, this is very much in the peer to peer sharing economy space, which is a relatively new idea. So it's also from an academic point of view, very important and very useful to be doing research to understand these entirely, relatively new kinds of systems. Todd Landman  11:26   So essentially, because the heat map that that project produced was for a belief Haringey Council in Greater London, and I guess, you know, knowing what I know about data, this could be scaled up for all jurisdictions, the United Kingdom. And beyond that the heat map tells you areas of food poverty, but also could inform government as to where to put resource and where dare I say levelling up funding could be targeted to help those most in need. Ben Lucas  11:53   Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I understand it, that works, you know, been incredibly useful for the platform and how it's looking to grow and continue to be successful. But yeah, absolutely. That's really another key thing here is the value these platforms have for policymakers for government, indeed. Todd Landman  12:08   Great. So we've had the data for good story, I now turn our attention to the data for bad story, because we had some guests that were very suspicious, sceptical and were critical of this burst and proliferation and digital transformation and the production of data second by second day by day, week, by week, year by year and two of our guests had actually different perspective on this, so Susie Alegre has this fantastic new book out with Atlantic books, she called Freedom of Thought. And what she was really concerned about was not only the history of analogue ways in which people's freedom of thought had been compromised, but also the digital ways in which freedom of thought might be compromised by this digital revolution. And for her, her concern, really is that there are unwitting or witting ways in which people's thought patterns might be manipulated through AI and machine learning. And we use popular examples of consumerism, consumer platforms, such as Amazon and other shopping platforms where not only does one get bombarded by advertisements, but actually gets suggestions for new things to buy based on patterns of spend in the past. And there is cross referencing between platforms. And I think Sam Gilbert also addressed this thing about this micro targeting and cross referencing. So if I search for something on one platform, it shows up on another one, when I'm sort of, you know, at least expecting it to do so. A bought some shoe laces the other day, they came to the house within a day. So I had that lovely customer experience. And yet, when I went on to a CNN website to look at the news headlines, the first ad that popped up was for shoe laces. So can you say a bit more about the unease that people have around these sharing platforms and the worry that our thoughts are being manipulated by this new technology? Ben Lucas  13:45   Yeah, I think this idea of freedom of thought or, you know, illusion of decision freedom is a really important one, when we're talking about the internet, and especially, you know, one can imagine, you know, as was evidenced with the Cambridge Analytical scandal back a few years ago, you know, this becomes especially dangerous when we're talking about political messaging. I think it's important that we, as users of the internet, approach the internet with a healthy degree of scepticism being a bit, you know, cautiously analytical, and occasionally taking a step back and thinking about what the implications of our behaviour online, including simply consuming content consuming information really are. The reality is most of if not all of the online platforms that we use be that social media, ecommerce, or whatever. They are designed to achieve immersion. They're designed to keep you spending more time and if you're spending time in the wrong kind of echo chambers, or if you're getting exposed to messages from bad actors. You hear these stories of people going down all sorts of terrible rabbit holes and things and this is how conspiracy theories and so forth proliferate online. Yeah, but certainly even just for the regular internet user, we all definitely need to be thinking about where is information coming from? Is it from reliable sources? Is the intent good? And do we indeed have that decision making freedom? I think is the really important thing, or is someone trying to play with us? Todd Landman  15:13   Well, it's a really interesting answer. And it links very nicely to our episode with Tom Nichols, because he was saying that there's this tendency towards narcissism. And that's, you know, certainly during COVID, people had more time inside, they had more time to dedicate to being online. But at the same time, the rabbit holes that you're worrying about really raised too high relief. And so that retreat into narcissism, the idea that if you're going to post something, you're only going to post something negative, critical and maybe sowing division by posting those critical comments. But you also in your answer talked about the power of particular individuals. And I guess, I have to address the question of Twitter in two ways. So Tom made this observation of Twitter is this sort of, you know, you have now have 240 characters to, you know, vent your spleen online and criticise others, but also that's powerful platform to mobilise people. And I say this in two ways. The first is that the revelations from the January 6 committee investigating the events that led up to the insurrection against the US Capitol was putting a lot of weight this week on just the number of followers that former President Trump had, and a single tweet in December where he said, you know, come to the Capitol on January 6, it will be wild. And then there were an array of witnesses paraded in front of the committee, from far right groups from the Oathkeepers, and other groups of that nature, who were saying, but actually, we saw this as a call to arms. So there was a nascent organising taking place, but there's almost this call to arms issued by a single tweet to millions of followers that really was, you know, the spark that lit the fire and wonder if you might just reflect on that. Ben Lucas  16:50   Yeah, I think for anyone currently also trying to keep up with slash decipher the story in the news about Elon Musk, putting in an offer to buy Twitter, which has now fallen through, I would use that lens to sort of explore this because one of the goals that I think he was seeking to achieve in taking over Twitter was really opening up its potential for free speech further. But yeah, for anybody sort of observing. That's a really tricky one. Because sometimes when the speech is, well, I mean, that there should be free speech. But people should be saying, you know, hopefully nice things within that freedom, and not denying the rights of others and not weaponizing free speech to stir up trouble. I think it's really, you know, we touched on this in the first episode of the series as well, the really big question with social media is, who's the editor in chief? Is it everybody? Or is it nobody, and which is the better format?  Todd Landman  17:42   Yeah, and we talked about that unmediated expression and unmediated speech and that Martin Scheinin, as well, as Tom Nichols talked about how traditional media organisations have had that mediating function, and the editorial function, which is lost when you have an open platform in the way that Twitter has, even though they did in the end, deplatform the former President. But I want to get back to that. I mean, you know, the task of the January 6 committee is not only to say we think there's a causal link between this tweet and people doing things, but they will also need to demonstrate the intentionality of the tweet in and of itself. And I think that's a major concern, because there's certainly ambiguity in the language saying, you know, come to the Capitol, it's going to be wild doesn't necessarily convert into a mass uprising with weapons and an insurrection. So there's a tall order of, I would say, legal proof, above reasonable doubt that needs to be established, were one to go down that legal route. But if we look at Elon Musk, I mean, here's one person who's exceptionally wealthy in the world who can buy an entire platform. And the concern that many people have is can one individual have that much power to acquire something that powerful, and we don't know if the deals fallen through, because there are some legal wranglings going on at the moment about whether he could actually withdraw at this late stage in the purchase process. But be that as it may, I wonder if you might just reflect on this ability for a very wealthy single individuals take control of a platform as powerful as Twitter. Ben Lucas  19:10   So I think it's a really complicated one, it's really one of the most complicated questions within the social media space, you know, because these platforms are ultimately businesses. There's a founder, there's a CEO, there's a board, there's that leadership, and hopefully accountability and responsibility. It is really a tough one, you know, one wonders about a future where, you know, in the same way, you've got the Open AI Foundation, for example, or you've got, you know, other truly sort of open peer to peer kind of platforms. If we think about how the internet is or technology is trying to decentralise things like finance in the future, wonders if there's sort of an alternative model that could solve some of these problems. I think the narrative so to speak specifically about Elon Musk that he's been putting forward, was really just to open up Twitter even further taking that sort of laissez faire kind of approach and just you know, letting free speech just sort itself out. And again, free speech is and can be a good thing. But sadly, when people engineer these kind of messages to avoid legal accountability, but are implying, you know, some sort of stirring up of trouble, when people engage in narcissistic sort of messaging when people engage in putting forward, you know, campaigns, you know, engineering very, very strong emotions, like fear and anger, obviously, that can get out of control very, very quickly. The reality is, I'm not qualified to come up with the solution. And I, sadly, I don't know who is. Yeah. Todd Landman  20:36   Well, that's interesting, because we have some guests that were suggesting a solution. And if I listened to you speak about the Elon Musk agenda to open up in a laissez faire way, it's almost the invisible hand of the information market, you know, if we go back to economics, and one tenant of economics at least has been that the invisible hand sort of guides markets, and the pricing and equilibrium that comes from supply and demand produces a regulatory outcome that is beneficial for the most people most of the time, it's a somewhat naive view, because there's always winners and losers and economic transactions. So counter to this idea of the invisible hand of the information market, we had quite an interesting set of thoughts from Martin Scheinin, and from Susie Alegre on the need for regulation. And that really does take us back to the beginning of this series of The Rights Track where you made the observation that tech is advancing more quickly than the regulatory frameworks are being promulgated that there's this lag, if you will, between the regulatory environment and the technological environment. So I wonder just for your final reflections, that really what both Martin Scheinin and Susie Alegre are saying that if tech is neutral, we need to go back to ethics, morality law and a human rights framework to give us the acceptable and reasonable boundary conditions with which all this activity needs to be thought about.  Ben Lucas  21:56   Yeah, exactly. I mean, it really does come down to, you know, well constructed regulation, which is obviously complicated, especially when, you know, most major social media platforms have a global footprint. So it's then how to ensure consistency across the markets they operate in. I think a lot of the regulatory frameworks are kind of there for the offline world. And the main thing, yeah, that we were sort of getting at in the first episode of this series is really that because technology moves so fast, because these platforms grew so quickly, you know, there are laws to stop people, no one can just go into the town square and start, you know, hurling obscenities, you know, in public, but for some reason, you know, it happens millions and millions of times a day on social media platforms. So I think, yeah, regulation really is key here. But the other thing is, I would say the people that misuse, the definition and excuse of free speech, should actually really look up the definition of free speech again. Todd Landman  22:57   Well, it's this idea of doing no harm. You know, I think I mentioned this notion of a Hippocratic Oath, if you will, for the digital world that you can engage but do no harm. And what people conceive and perceive as harm, of course, is open to interpretation. But that's a general kind of impulse behind this. And you know, this distinction between the offline world and the online world is also really, really important. So Tom Nichols invites us to maybe get off the grid occasionally go back into our community, say hi to our neighbours, volunteer for things and experience humanity face to face in the offline world a bit more than were experiencing in the online world. And of course, the appeal to morality, ethics, law and the human rights framework is going back to you know, basic philosophy, basic conceptions of rights, basic conceptions of law, to make sure that, you know, our offline world thoughts can be applied to our online world behaviours. So, you know, these are super deep insights. And as the world progresses, as technology progresses, as the interconnections between human beings progress in ways that we've seen over the last several decades, through the medium of digital transformation, and this ever expanding digital world, it does make us pause at this moment to say that actually reflect on human dignity, human value, integrity, and accountability and responsibility for the kinds of things that we do both within the offline world and the online world. And you've given us much to think about here Ben certainly across the many episodes of this series, you kicked us off with this great, you know, offline - online regulation versus tech dichotomy that we all face. We've heard from so many people, evangelising the virtues of the digital world but also raising significant concerns about the harm that can come from that digital world if we allow it to run unchecked. So for now, it's just my job to thank you Ben for coming back on this final episode, giving us a good wrap up set of reflections on what you've heard across the series. And thank you ever so much for joining us today on this episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas  25:02   Thanks so much. Christine Garrington  25:04   Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights track podcast which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a full transcript of this episode on the website at www.rightstrack.org together with useful links to content mentioned in the discussion. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.  

In Episode 7 of Series 2 of our podcast we talk with Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and PI of DIAL's EQUAL LIVES project about how economic disadvantage accumulates for single mothers and the impacts on their income and risk of poverty of having a child and splitting up from a partner. The Accumulation of Economic Disadvantage: The Influence of Childbirth and Divorce on the Income and Poverty Risk of Single Mothers is research by Professor Susan Harkness of the University of Bristol and is published in Demography.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00 Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In this series, we discuss emerging findings from DIAL's Equal Lives project. Our guest today is Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and PI of Equal Lives. She's been looking at how economic disadvantage accumulates for single mothers, and the impacts on their income and risk of poverty of having a child and splitting up from a partner. I started by asking her about the background to her research. Susan Harkness  0:28  I think for a long time, there's been an assumption that single mothers are more likely to be poor or living in low income because they're not living with a male breadwinning partner. And I think one of the things that's been much less well recognised is that in the US, but also elsewhere, single mothers are much more likely to be poor than single fathers and I think one of the reasons for this is not just that they don't live with a partner, but also because they face an enormous economic hit because of motherhood. And I think the motherhood penalty. We know, we know it exists. We know mothers are much less likely to work than fathers. And when they do work, that they're more likely to be paid less. And what I wanted to do was try and connect to this research with research from single parenthood to see what the impact on single mothers' incomes was. Christine Garrington  1:16  So what was it here that you wanted to look at specifically and why then?   Susan Harkness  1:21  Okay, so I wanted to think about why single mothers were more likely to have low income so what was the penalty to single motherhood? And in doing that, I wanted to think about single motherhood is a process that sort of evolves over the life cycle. So first of all, we know that mothers when they have children, they face this economic penalty in the labour market, and then when they separate, they're left in this very vulnerable position because their employment earnings have just declined so much. Christine Garrington  1:49 And for this research, where did you get your information from? And can you tell us sort of why it is a good source for for looking at these particular issues?  Susan Harkness  1:58  Yes, so we looked at data from the Panel Study for Income Dynamics and it's a great source of data because it allows us to look at people over time. In the case of our study, we've followed them for over 10 years, since becoming mothers to look at what happened to their incomes around these kind of critical lifecourse transitions. One of the great advantages of it is that we can see how people were doing before they became single mothers and we can see how they were doing after and then we can kind of look at how each of these different life course events - motherhood, partnership dissolution - leads to changes in their economic circumstances. Another major advantage of this data is that it's got a really large sample size, and therefore we can think a bit more also about the heterogeneity the experience of single mothers. And what we mean here is that we can think about whether all single mothers effectively look the same or whether different routes into single motherhood have a different impact on their incomes. So what we did in this particular case was think about how single mothers differ according to whether they were previously married. They were previously cohabiting, or indeed they were married at the time at which they had a child. And this is a group which is accounting for a sort of growing share of births in the US and indeed in the UK over time. Christine Garrington  3:18  Right now you started by comparing the incomes of single, cohabiting and married mothers, what did you, what did you actually see there? Susan Harkness  3:26 So one thing that we see is, is I think fairly fairly well known but we know that for example, married mothers start from a position of having higher incomes than cohabiting mothers and single mothers. So there's an income gradient with cohabiting mothers sitting somewhere in the middle. But what we also know is that the, the income composition of those families is quite different. So whilst in single mother families, women are indeed largely dependent on their own earnings, and to some extent on benefit receipts, in cohabiting and married mother families, there's a much greater dependence of women on partner's earnings. And indeed if you look at the earnings, of women within those different family types, they're actually relatively similar. Married and cohabiting mothers tend to be more dependent on partners, whereas single mothers tend to be more dependent on their own earnings and on the state.  Christine Garrington  4:22 Yeah, right - so what was the earnings impact of divorce or separation for each of these groups and were they larger for some than, than others? Susan Harkness  4:29 Okay, so one of the things that we thought was really interesting is that if we look at what happens to women's own earnings following the birth of a child, the biggest negative effect was for women who were previously married. So we're not looking at wage effects specifically we're looking at the combined effect of changes in wages and changes in working hours and indeed participation. What we see is that for married mothers, we find much greater reduction in self-sufficiency or increased economic dependence as a result of childbirth, amongst cohabiting mothers, among single mothers, we see a smaller earnings effect, so earnings declined by less. And what happens then if we look at the income within those families, is that if we consider what happens to the income of married mother families? In fact, what we find is that although earnings fall quite substantially amongst married mothers, these are compensated for by increases in fathers' earnings who to tend to work longer hours and work more often when they have a child and therefore the overall impact on income is relatively small, whereas in single mother families, the birth of the child is associated with the fall in earnings and a really large impact on overall income. Christine Garrington  5:42 Okay, and you also considered how the loss of a male partner's income affected these separated and divorced mothers, what did you see there? Susan Harkness  5:49 So what we see for the loss of a partner's earnings is of course, married mothers tend to be partner to higher earning men and men who work more following the birth of a child and so when the partner leaves, we have a larger negative effect on their overall incomes. And part of this is because of the reduction in these married mothers' own earnings following childbirth. And part of the reason for that is that the, they have, they have farther, further to fall. So the, the loss of father's earnings fall this is somewhat greater. Christine Garrington 6:19 Yeah, so quite a lot of information there. What do we learn from all of this? That's new, Susan? Susan Harkness  6:24 If we think about what happens within married couples, I think because marriage sort of provides some security, is thought to provide some security for those who have children that we tend to see greater levels of specialisation within those households. What this means is that women see their earnings fall farther than cohabiting are single mothers, and it becomes harder for them to recover those earnings should they, should they separate so the overall impact should they become single mothers on their own labour market income is greater than for these other family types. And what does this mean? It means that actually the separation from marriage tends to have worse consequences than it does if you become a single mother through separation from cohabitation or divorce. Whilst you might think, for example, that maintenance might help offset some of these costs associated with divorce. In fact, this is often not really, not really the case because the levels of maintenance payments are relatively small. What we find is actually that single parenthood, regardless of the route in by which you become a single mother, is really quite a leveller and women who were better off before see the largest falls in their income. Christine Garrington 7:42 Okay, there was one other aspect of your research that really caught my eye and this was, these were your findings around what things are like for single moms who are living with parents. These are quite interesting, weren't they? Susan Harkness  7:51 Oh, I think this is, this is fascinating. So one of the things that I think increasing research is looking at is how, how single mothers maintain those sort of standard of, standard of living, when they're not able to rely on their own earnings or indeed on the state. And we know that in the US around one in 10 single mothers are living with their own parents. And in in this study, we find that actually living with your own parents is a really important mechanism for boosting families' income. And in fact, living with your own parents provides as much protection for household income as being married and a little more than if you find a new partner, for example. So it's really, really important living with grandparents is a really important route to kind of maintaining your standard of living following parental separation.  Christine Garrington 8:42 Important to acknowledge that the very rich data you used here is from the US but I wonder if you think that the picture might be reflected in the in the UK, where we are, and also possibly in other parts of Europe? Susan Harkness  8:54 Yes, absolutely. So one of the things we know about the UK is that and indeed other parts of Europe is that motherhood is associated with even larger reductions in overall labour supply. So we know that women when they have children are perhaps less likely to work but also much more likely to work part-time. So the the numbers that are working full time are far lower, after having children in the UK and other European countries, many other European countries than in the US. So what we would expect to find is actually that the impact of single motherhood on income is going to be quite different. So in the case of in the case of the UK, what we might expect to see is that it sees large losses in earnings associated with losses in employment for motherhood, are probably going to have an even larger impact on their well being - their economic well being - should they, should they subsequently divorce. But on a more sort of positive note, I think what we have in many European countries is greater welfare support for, for single mothers which is, is much more significant for boosting their incomes. Although of course this has the further drawback that it can also discourage women from working or working longer hours because of the design of various welfare support systems. Christine Garrington 10:18 Yeah, indeed. Now single mothers are a key area of interest for you as a researcher but also a really important group of people that policymakers are interested in and your research would seem to have quite clear and important ramifications and implications for welfare policy. Could you talk us through what you think those modifications are? Susan Harkness  10:40 Yeah, so I think what one of the things we often see focused on when we think about single parents is what to do about father absence, in particular, how to make fathers pay maintenance, for example. But what our findings are suggesting is that actually, when we think about how to support single mothers incomes, we need to go much further than that. And in particular, one when we think about, for example, welfare to work policies, which focus on single, single mothers. It's really the case that in my view, that these policies are something that happened far too late in the life course. So if mothers have already lost their jobs and their earnings potential has already been weakened as a result of motherhood, then trying to do something about that at the point at which they divorce seems to me to be far too late. If we look at other studies, more recently, they suggest that when mothers do well, those in single parent families do well as well. And if we think about policies to ensure that women are able to maintain their economic position after having children in the labour market, then we would want to think much more widely about policies such as childcare provision, which would allow mothers to work, reduce their economic dependence and improve their prospects should they separate. Christine Garrington  12:00  "Accumulation of economic disadvantage: the influence of childbirth and relationship breakdown on mother's income and poverty risks" is research by Susan Harkness and is published in Demography. You can find out more about the Norface funded Equal Lives project at Equal-lives.org, and about the wider DIAL programme at dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington, edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.

In epiosde 8 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Wendy Betts, Director of eyeWitness, an International Bar Association project launched in 2015 which collects verifiable video of human rights violations for use in investigations and trials. We're asking Wendy how the use of digital technology can help to hold accountable those who commit human rights crimes.   Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Wendy Betts. Wendy is director of eyeWitness an International Bar Association project launched in 2015, which collects verifiable video of human rights violations for use in investigations and trials. So today we're asking Wendy, how does the use of digital technology help to hold accountable those who commit human rights crimes? So Wendy, it's absolutely brilliant to have you on this episode of the right track. So welcome. Wendy Betts  0:38  Thanks, Todd. It's great to be here. Todd Landman  0:40  You and I met in Bergen in Norway, we were at the Rafto Foundation awards for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and Human Rights Data Analysis Group have featured in previous episodes on The Rights Track. And I see there is a kind of correlation, if you will, between the work of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the work that you do at eyeWitness. It is just that the data you're collecting is really video files and video footage. So tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing with eyeWitness. Wendy Betts  1:08  Absolutely. So at eyeWitness, we are helping human rights defenders in conflict zones and other places that are experiencing large scale human rights violations, to collect photo and video information in a way that makes it easier to authenticate. So that footage can be used in investigations and trials. So we work with human rights defenders in three ways. First, we're providing a mobile camera app that we designed to help ensure that the footage can be easily authenticated. And then we are helping to securely store that footage and maintain the chain of custody so it can eventually be used in investigations and trials. And third, we work to then take a working copy of that footage that we catalogue and tag to make it easier for investigators to identify footage that's potentially of interest to their investigations and incorporate that into those processes. Todd Landman  2:01  Well, that's a great summary of the work that you do. I recall when I was a student at Georgetown University, I worked in the Lauinger Library. And my job was to produce photographs in the pre-digital age. So this was processing rolls of film in the old cans used to kind of shake them with the chemicals and then use an enlarger and make photographs. And that was fine for special collections and photographing books. But one day, a Jesuit priest came into the library and handed me a roll of film and said I need 10 copies of each of these pictures. And they were actually photographs from the crime scene where Jesuit priests had been murdered in El Salvador. And I'm curious that when we enlarge those pictures and submitted them back to the authorities that requested them, is that kind of evidence still considered verifiable evidence? And what is it that the digital elements all of this adds to the veracity and the verifiability of evidence collected on human rights crimes? Wendy Betts  2:58  There's a long history of photo and video being used as evidence, that photo and video in its hard copy form would need to be verified to go to court. So generally speaking, the court would want to speak with the photographer, or in the absence of photographer, somebody that could help explain that that footage is indeed an accurate portrayal of that location at that time. And what digital technology has done is expand the ability of who can be the photographer to collect that potential evidence. So with the two trends of smartphones in everyone's pocket, plus the rise of social media platforms where people can share this information, you're suddenly seeing this massive proliferation of the amount of available information that could be used as evidence. But indeed, this also will need to be verified in much the same way. But the challenges to doing that are slightly different. And then the technology that we can bring to bear to do that is slightly different. Todd Landman  3:52  Yes, I understand those differences. And so there's a lot of debate today, if we take the War in Ukraine as a good example, when it first started, there was a flurry of activity on Twitter that said, don't believe everything you see on Twitter. So there of course will be manipulated images manipulated video, I see manipulated video every day, some of it you can tell straight away, it just looks awful. It looks like a video game. Somebody's saying, look, you know, Ukrainians are taking out Russian tanks. And actually you look at the tank tracks and you can see it just looks like a photoshopped superimposed image of a tank running over some really bad terrain, to the fully verifiable accounts that we are seeing coming out of that conflict. So how are things verified? How does one dismiss imagery in one instance and accept imagery in another? What's the expertise required to give that verifiable account? Wendy Betts  4:43  I think when you're looking at verification, what you really want to know is whether that footage was taken where and when it was claimed. And if that footage has been edited, or as you note in your examples has it been photoshopped to look like something else? And then is it possible that even if it was authentic to begin with, and I accurate to begin with hasn't been changed somewhere along the way? So has it been taken down off social media and changed and reposted? And there's been two trends that have developed to address how we can do this. So one is the plethora of open source investigation techniques that have developed in terms of how can you geo locate images using satellite footage and other types of technology? How can you Chrono locate, so how can you figure out when and where that footage was taken? Can you do frame by frame analyses to determine if that footage has been edited in any way? So that was one approach. And that has become increasingly professionalised. And is really coming to the fore in Ukraine. And then the other approach is the one that eyeWitness has taken where we developed a tool that can be used to hardwire that information in the point that that footage was taken. So those are called controlled capture tools, because you're basically controlling the information and controlling that footage, keeping it in a controlled environment for its entire lifespan. So you're collecting information about where and when that footage was taken, you're ensuring that footage can be edited. And you are maintaining that footage in that secure state through its lifespan. Todd Landman  6:04  So the app itself has the technology built inside it, you've actually hardwired that programmable element to the app, and it can't be tampered with. So if I download this app as a user, and I'm travelling through the world, and I want to document something, it's easy to use on a mobile device, easy to proliferate and sort of disseminate if you will out to users. And it's easy to learn by those users. Because the technology itself has been created in a way that preserves the identity and the verifiability of the images that are captured. Wendy Betts  6:39  That's exactly it. The eyeWitness app is designed to be really easy to use to pick up and take and start using and on the surface for the user interface. It's much like standard mobile camera, so you have to open the app instead of your camera. But you're recording footage in the same way, you can enter the secure gallery where the footage is stored to see what you've taken. And you upload it to eyeWitness, this is how we maintain the chain of custody and secure that footage until it can be used. And then you have the option to share it with your social media networks, you can attach it to a WhatsApp message, you can do a variety of things with it. All of the verification aspect is intended to happen behind the scenes kind of inside the technology. So the app is designed indeed to collect information about where and when that footage was taken from three different sources, none of which are the user themselves. It's also collecting information to ensure that that footage can't be edited. So we are calculating basically a digital fingerprint at the moment that information is captured, that stays with that footage. So if any changes wherever to be made to it, you'd be able to spot that by running the algorithm for the fingerprint again, and then that footage is stored encrypted on the device, and then it's transmitted encrypted to eyeWitness so it can't be intercepted or manipulated either at rest on the phone or in transit on its way to us. Todd Landman  8:00  So you have a secure server where all these raw files are held. Is that right? Wendy Betts  8:05  Indeed. So we've been fortunate to partner on a pro bono relationship with LexisNexis legal and professional and so they host our server in their secure hosting environment that they have for litigation services for a variety of confidential evidence that's used in cases around the world. So they host our server, which allows us to scale up quickly and scale up to meet the need. And Ukraine is a perfect example. We've received more footage from Ukraine since the invasion began, then we have globally in the last two years. So that ability to scale up quickly is very important, and more importantly, it is stored securely. So they have their state of the art security around that in a way that we couldn't necessarily put around a server if we were hosting it ourselves. Todd Landman  8:51  That's amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about the complexity of a Ukraine investigation? Let's take the case of Bucha. We know in Bucha, that there were atrocities committed of some kind, clearly there has to be an evidentiary threshold reached, there has to be a profile of perpetrators and victims, there has to be that whole disaggregation of very complex human rights events of the kinds that you and I discussed with the team from Human Rights Data Analysis Group, but what are the steps that eyeWitness takes? What's the role that you take in the preparation of, let's say, an investigation into something like the Bucha incidents that we saw? Wendy Betts  9:30  So I think if we back up to your comment earlier about just the sheer amount of footage that we've been seeing on social media, and including from places like Bucha, that I think there's a sense that there is plenty of evidence out there, and we've got everything we need. And I think what everyone needs to take step back and realise is how complex as you said these cases are. So you need information about what actually happened on the ground, what happened to these victims, and that takes the form of witness statements, it can take the form of physical evidence, it can take the form of photo and video, but we also need to know the context in which it's happening. If you want to elevate something to be a war crime, instead of a murder, you need to understand the conflict dynamic and what's happening. And then if you want to hold people at higher levels of authority responsible, and not just the people on the ground who pulled the trigger, you need to make those linkages. And that, again, is documentary evidence, it's witness evidence. So all of these pieces of this massive evidentiary puzzle have to come together. At eyeWitness, we see ourselves as one of these pieces, we are a photo video piece of evidence that can tell part of the story but has to work together with these other aspects. So we don't do full investigations ourselves and put all these pieces together, what we do is equip either civil society investigators, ordinary citizens, journalists, or others on the ground who have access to these scenes and are collecting photo and video with a tool to do it in a way that they can feed that information into investigations because it can be so easily verified, so they can contribute to this puzzle, in order to help hold the perpetrators responsible. Todd Landman  11:03  I think this whole portrayal of the contribution that you're making is really important. In our interview with the director of Human Rights State Analysis Group, Patrick Ball, the sort of data guru as it were in these areas, he said, you know, statistics are not a silver bullet. So the work that they do, would provide the statistical analysis that showed that certain things were happening that could not be explained by chance alone. But it was only ever one part of a very complex story alongside documentary evidence, alongside testimonies alongside forensic anthropology alongside many other things. And then ultimately, a determination of, let's say, genocide was a legal judgement that was either supported or not supported by the type of statistical evidence that was provided alongside other pieces of evidence. Now you're making a very similar case that whatever body is going to be prosecuting crimes, in whether it is Bucha, or the broader conflict in Ukraine, eyeWitness is only ever going to be one part of that much bigger story. Is that right? Wendy Betts  12:02  Exactly, exactly. I think all of these different strains of investigation have to work together, people collecting witness statements, the people doing open source investigation of footage and other information that was posted early on, people who have access to official documents, all of these pieces have to fit together, because as you said, in addition to showing just the baseline conduct happening on the ground, you need to show these patterns in magnitudes. And you can only do that by amassing large amounts of information that can show some of those patterns and run those types of statistical analysis that Patrick was talking about. So it all does fit together and complements each other. Todd Landman  12:42  Yeah. And you know, the conflict in Ukraine is by no means over. And you know, I read up a report, I think it was yesterday that said, there are up to 30,000 war crimes that need to be investigated. Now, each crime itself requires extensive documentation, and then you multiply that by the number of crimes. And of course, there may be future crimes committed that will need to be documented as well. So the scale of just this conflict in Ukraine, you said, you've received more images from Ukraine, and then you have in the last two years of other areas of the world, and we may get to talking about those other areas of the world. But to me, the scale of what's happening in Ukraine, and the time that's required to fully prosecute many of these crimes means that we're really going to be in this for the long haul. Wendy Betts  13:25  Justice, unfortunately, in these types of cases is definitely a long term process, and the arc of justice is quite long. And that's what we hope is part of the value added of eyeWitness and why we provide that secure storage aspect, because the photos and videos taken now may well not be involved in an investigation or a trial for years and years to come. And so we can safeguard that footage in a way that even at that time, we can hand it over and it could stand up to the scrutiny. But indeed, I think we're looking at a long term prospect for justice. Todd Landman  13:58  Yes. And outside the Ukraine context, what are some other examples of where eyeWitness has been collecting this video footage from other parts of the world? Wendy Betts  14:06  So eyeWitness launched publicly in 2015. And we really do work globally. And we respond to the inquiries and the needs of human rights defenders in various parts of the world. Now, some places we don't advertise especially where the security situation is quite serious for some of the human rights defenders using the eyeWitness app. But in other places, we have been able to be a bit more public. So we have been working actually in Ukraine since 2017. And we put out a report about shelling of civilian dwellings to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. So that's one area where we've been active even before the current events. We've also recently submitted a report to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings related to violence occurring in the middle belt area of Nigeria between farmers and herders. We've also been active in the Palestine context with partners there using the eyeWitness app. So we've been quite broadly represented around the globe. And we review accountability broadly as well. And so that's why I'm mentioning non-judicial approaches to accountability. Any efforts that can get at this conduct and get it and investigate it and helped to hold the perpetrators responsible is what we're interested in empowering human rights defenders to do. Todd Landman  15:25  Okay. And do you provide training alongside because it's one thing just to download an app and start using it, but you might make sort of fundamental errors in using the technology from the start? So do you provide a training manual or workshops or online training for users as they download the app and then say, well, actually, this is the best way to film things? Or do you just sort of allow the technology to run in the hands of the users? Wendy Betts  15:49  Our preferred approach is to work in long term partnerships with human rights defenders that want to use the app, we very much see the app as a tool and to be used effectively, you do need to put more skill building and strengthening around that tool. So we do work hand in hand with human rights defenders, who plan to use the app on not only how to use the app, but how to incorporate photo and video into demonstrating whatever types of violations that are looking into, we can provide training on how you actually film when you're at the crime scene. We work with a lot of human rights defenders whose primary efforts have been advocacy oriented, and those are very different photos than photos you want to take for evidence. And so we work to help them make that shift as well. And so then we give them ongoing feedback. Once their footage starts coming in, we can provide tech support, if they're out in the field, and we know they're going on a documentation mission, we can be ready to answer any questions if they have any. So we really want to work with them hand in hand to not just use eyeWitness but use it effectively. Todd Landman  16:54  I understand and does the technology work in the absence of a mobile signal in the absence of a WiFi connection? Can you collect videos on a phone, outside of network, and then when it gets back into the network, you're able to upload the images and videos that have been taken to a secure server? Wendy Betts  17:11  Our goal in designing eyeWitness is to make sure that it can work in the types of environments where these human rights defenders are active. And especially when you look at conflict zones where electricity may be disrupted, internet may be disrupted, cell service may be disrupted. So the app is designed to be able to collect, not only take the photos and videos, but all of the metadata that's needed to help verify where and when it was taken while offline. So you don't need to have access to the internet. Nor do you need to have a cell subscription or any other kind of data service that will collect all of that. It's designed to store that information securely in a gallery separate from the gallery on your phone. So it's hidden in a secure gallery. The idea being that these human rights defenders may have to make their way back to their headquarters or make their way back to someplace with internet before they're able to upload it to us and then delete it off their phones. So we wanted it to remain hidden in transit during that timeframe. So it is definitely aimed at helping individuals in contexts where there's high security risks, infrastructure challenges to be able to use the app. Todd Landman  18:17  You've definitely given that a lot of thought, I guess another question that flows from that is what's the minimum viable technical requirement on a phone? Obviously, it needs to be a smartphone with a camera and a video. But how far back in time can you go in terms of the age of a device because of the availability of resources, etc in some of these conflict zones? What sort of phone is the basic unit you require to use the app? Wendy Betts  18:39  That is a really good question, because it's such an important issue in terms of access and availability of these tools to the vulnerable segments of society that need them most. First thing I should say it's designed for Android, and we don't currently have an iOS version. Part of that is because the demographics of the places where we're working is primarily Android users. So it's designed for that operating system. And we've designed it to go back to android 6.0, which I think is roughly operating systems on phones back to 2015. So it does stretch back a fair way, we made a decision not to go back any further. And that's because Android changed how it handles security at the 6.0 version onward. And we could harden the security of the information both to protect the user and the integrity of the information from that version onward in a way that was more difficult in previous versions. So that's when it goes back to Todd Landman  19:32  And are there any plans to make this available in iOS? Or are there sort of limitations in terms of partnering with Apple to make that happen? Wendy Betts  19:40  We regularly revisit the question and we're actually currently in the process of again, looking at if we could replicate all the functionality that we currently offer security, the anonymity those types of questions, in an iOS version and then looking at the cost compared to the potential user base are the calculations we make. So we're looking at that right now again actually. Todd Landman  20:00  But for the user, this is free. It's an app that you download for free and then use. Is that right? Wendy Betts  20:05  Exactly. It's free. That's freely available. As I said, we would like to work in partnerships. But that's not necessary. Any individual can go to the Google Play Store now and download it and start using it. We do have written instruction guides on our website, we have a short video on how to use it and some other resources that are available. Todd Landman  20:25  Great. And then I guess my final set of questions really is about how this evidence connects to what we've say different photographic evidence you made passing reference to the use of satellite imagery, which has been a very powerful tool, I think the company planet takes a picture of the entire surface of the Earth every 24 hours with its sort of flocks of satellites, then they have the system, if one satellite goes down, they can easily replace another one within the flock. And they have tremendous number of images that are very high resolution, and I should say an increasing resolution. But that's one version of what you can see from space, as it were. And what you're saying is in the hands of users and defenders, you have almost a citizen science ground truthing that can take place as well. Are there any efforts to coordinate between your organisation and some of these providers of satellite imagery, if asked to do so? You mentioned the forced deportations or the destruction of houses. The Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, for example. So you could see satellites, just, you know, images before and after a village is destroyed. But equally, you could triangulate that with your users on the ground, saying, Here's a house being destroyed, I'm hiding in a bush filming this right now is that sort of partnership and, you know, sort of holistic approach being developed in your organisation? Wendy Betts  21:38  So we have certainly used satellite footage in some of our analyses in that Ukraine one about shelling is a key example. That case we didn't establish a partnership, we used what was publicly available that we can access to help go back and look at the dates and locations of the photos we have and then go back and look at satellite footage. And we use that primarily to determine when the attack actually took place. So we have photos dated as to when they were taken. But that doesn't necessarily give you the date of when the attack was. So we use satellite footage a lot to help determine Okay, well, this building looked intact on this date, and certainly looks more like the photo that we have on this date. And then that way, we were able to determine at what point the attack probably took place. We've also worked with another organisation that was doing an investigation of environmental damage in a different location. And in that case, they were able to get the latitude and longitude of the event that they were looking at using the app. And then they were able to get historic and current satellite footage for that location to be able to trace the trends of what was happening there. So they were looking at some environmental damage. So you can help see the change in the environment based on what you're seeing in the satellite photos. That being said, there's certainly the ability to work with satellite providers to help target so I think if you're setting out to do an investigation, and you know, you're going to be in certain places at a certain time and you need some of those satellites pointed at those locations. I think those type of partnerships are indeed possible. We haven't engaged with any of those at the moment because again, we tend to be led by our human right defender users and what they want to investigate. But I think there are organisations that are engaging in those types of partnerships. Todd Landman  23:19  That's great. That's very clear in your explanation. And then I suppose a follow up question would be you've been an operation now since 2015, you've had seven years of footage coming in and the secure servers and you've supplied images to cases, can you tell us the story of success, you know, it has been successful prosecutions in your mind from a legal perspective where you think that eyeWitness has made a definitive contribution to the outcome of those cases? Wendy Betts  23:44  Absolutely. So as I mentioned, we've launched the app in 2015. And we're looking at atrocity crime. So going back to your earlier point about the long arc of justice in these crimes, we have to kind of bear that in mind at what point they might actually go to trial. So we've provided a significant amount of information to investigations at different stages of the process. And so not all of those have gone to trial yet. But indeed, we did collaborate on a case that has gone to trial and resulted in a conviction. And this was a project that we did in partnership with WITNESS, which is a group based in Brooklyn, and with TRIAL International, which is an organisation based in Switzerland, who does strategic litigation. And we then all three of us partnered with a human rights defender group on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And in that case, they were investigating a massacre that took place in 2012 in two different villages in eastern DRC. And local human rights defenders were able to use the app based on training that they received from WITNESS on filming a crime scene, and to help put it into a case that TRIAL International was helping to build and they were able to use the app to go back and collect photos that helped to actually authenticate footage that was taken contemporaneously with the massacre. But that hadn't been stored in a way to protect the chain of custody. So they were able to go back and take footage of some of the same scarring injuries on the victims to demonstrate that the ones taken at the time, were accurate, and able to take photos of the mass grave, which could be used to help determine the number of bodies based on its dimensions and how that matched up with the reports of the number of people who had been killed, and with the photos that have been taken at the time of the burials. So all of this footage was entered into evidence by the prosecutor in the case, and was accepted by the court and was noted in the judgement about the power of the footage. And indeed, the two militia leaders were convicted of crimes against humanity. Todd Landman  25:51  Right. So that's a real success story, I had the pleasure of visiting WITNESS in Brooklyn back in 2011. And I recall that it's funny when you enter their offices, they sort of have a timeline of tech sitting in their front room, you know, cameras from ages ago, up to the latest stuff, and they're very, very good at training people how to represent human rights in a slightly different way that you do it. But working together, obviously has produced a great benefit. Now, it's that timeline of tech that interests me. And my final question is that, you know, technology continues to advance at an exponential rate. And what do you see for the future in this space? What would you like to do that you can't do yet, but you think will be possible in a few years time with respect to the technology that you've been working with and developing? Wendy Betts  26:32  That's a great question. There's so many exciting things that can happen with technology. I mean, there's already it's not even in the future, it's looking at virtual reality and using that for juries to kind of put them in the place of the crime scene. And that's all based on taking a number of photos and videos that can then be put through the algorithm to be transformed into virtual reality. There's the idea of being able to take 3D photo and video that you might be able to broadcast into the courtroom. I think the interesting component of that, though, is can the courts keep up? I think the courts now are trying to determine how to best handle digital evidence that's coming out of this flood of footage over the last 10 years. So I'm not sure we're ready to start talking about how we handle 3D images that are captured on a mobile phone. Todd Landman  27:20  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like DNA suddenly emerged as a new thing that, you know, transformed the legal profession in terms of solid evidence about whether somebody was actually present at a crime scene, and you could re litigate cases for many years ago, you've put your finger on that challenge between the advance of technology and the ability for legal entities to keep up and courts to keep up there have to be determinations around what is an acceptable piece of evidence. And that's a very interesting challenge for the future. But you've given us so much to think about here. And I think there is this fear of technology as a fear of manipulation of images. There's also the fear of cracking an encrypted storage of these images. But you have given us assurances and confidence in the technology that you developed the way that you've partnered with organisations to help you store this information. And then, of course, this chain of custody, the chain of evidence which is unbroken, and the ways in which these images really do contribute to, as you call it, the long arc of justice. So it's a very interesting conclusion to reach, at least at this stage, in listening to you and talking about how this form of technology which is in the palm of our hands, gives us the power in the palm of our hands to defend human rights in such interesting ways. And in my view, shows us that the digital transformation and technological advance we're seeing in the world can make a positive contribution to positive social change. So Wendy Betts has just leaves me to thank you very, very much for sharing your thoughts with us today on The Rights Track. Wendy Betts  28:45  Thanks so much for having me. It was a great conversation. Christine Garrington  28:49  Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track podcast, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3di. You can find a full transcript of this episode on the website at www.RightsTrack.org together with useful links to content mentioned in the discussion. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.   Additional Links: eyeWitness app  

In Episode 7 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is joined by Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and Contributing Writer at The Atlantic. Tom specialises in international security affairs including U.S. - Russia relations, nuclear strategy, and NATO issues. His recent book – Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy is an account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture.  Transcript Todd Landman  00:00 Welcome to The Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Tom Nichols. Tom is Professor Emeritus of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College and contributing writer at The Atlantic. He specialises in international security affairs, including US Russia relations, nuclear strategy, and NATO issues. He recently authored a book - Our Own Worst Enemy; The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy. It's an engaging account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture. So today, we're asking him who's responsible for this, and what we should  do about it. So Tom, it's fantastic to have you on this episode of The Rights Track. So welcome. Tom Nichols  00:51 Thank you. Thanks for having me. Todd Landman  00:53 So I have a rather unusual question to enter into this conversation with you and it involves Indian food, because in your book, you talk about the idea that you're not a big fan of Indian food. But tell me a little bit of the story. What happened when you just expressed this view that you know what, I don't like Indian food? Tom Nichols  01:10 Well, I didn't just express that I didn't like Indian food, I added this kind of snarky comment, because it was on Twitter, of course, and someone had said, post your worst food takes here. And of course, people said things like, well, I hate mayonnaise, and doughnuts are bad, and so on. But I said, Indian food is terrible, and we pretend that it isn't. And, of course, I meant my colleagues who would always drag me to Indian restaurants, and then spend the afternoon sweating and gulping water and you know, sweat running in their eyes. And I would always turn to them and say, so you can't possibly be enjoying this. Because I don't happen to like very spicy food. And this Firestorm broke out. I mean, within two days, you know, I was this, you know, genocidal racist maniac. You know, I was in all the Indian papers. I was in The Washington Post -  Russian television mentioned me. I mean, it was insane. All because I'm a middle aged New Englander, who just doesn't happen to like Indian food and is very snarky about it. The coda to this whole story is that finally the former US attorney in New York, Preet Bharara, when the pandemic finally lifted, he took me out and said I challenge you to come to dinner with me. And he took me to an Indian restaurant. And I said, I would sit there and I would just eat Indian food, while people were making donations that we're gonna be used for a COVID ward in India. And this challenge ended up raising about $135,000 for COVID relief in India. Todd Landman  02:42 That is fantastic. Now, I'm going to pick this apart a little bit, because what's interesting is what looked like an incidental and as you admit a bit of a snarky comment about your food preferences, what you really communicated there is the rapidity and the spread of information, geographically, how it gets picked up, it's a bit unusual how one tweet can be picked up and really run and other tweets just sort of die on the vine, as it were. So this captures this idea that you have in the book around the viral nature of information, regardless of its veracity, how it can spread around the world, and how the originator of that information might be vilified by an anonymous group of people out there. And then how stories get picked up. So is that your sort of summary of what happened there that it was just this kind of, you know, ridiculously rapid thing about it actually, just a personal preference? Tom Nichols  03:33 Yeah, absolutely. And there's two things to note about it. One is that the nature of hyper connectivity, where, you know, I mean, when I started my career, 35 years ago, in the late 1980s, a viewer mentioned in a newspaper, you know, people clipped that and sent it to you in an envelope and the thing that we used to call the US mail with a stamp on it, and they'd say, wow, you know, I saw that you were mentioned in a newspaper. Now, you can be mentioned in every newspaper in the world in 24 hours, you know, on the one hand, I suppose there's a good side to that, which is that we all have the opportunity to be more informed. But the second part of it that makes that so worrisome, is that the internet rewards negativity. And so instead of people saying, you know, taking that in kind of the light hearted or snippy spirit that I intended it, it was what rewards engagement is to assume that anyone you encounter in the virtual world has the worst intentions, and that it's your job to kind of, you know, reveal that to the world. I mean, I had people within about three days, literally sending emails to my workplace saying, I hope you die. Todd Landman  04:48 Just because you didn't like Indian food. Tom Nichols  04:51 And because I had said it in this very dismissive way, if I had said, and because also there were a lot of people deciding that this was an opportunity to show their own, you know, elevated consciousness about a part of the world about India. As I said, you know, many times after that incident, if I had said, you know, French food is overpriced, gluey junk, and we pretend it isn't, people would have shrugged, because there's no psychic income from defending expensive French cuisine. But this was, you know, this narcissism. And this is what I was getting at is that there are some times or some incidents that really speak to this problem that I talk about in the book of the rise of narcissism and people say, 'Uh huh!', you know, instead of reading this article, or tweet or letter, or whatever it is, this is an opportunity for me to say something about myself. And to say it loudly and to say, you know, by being very hostile to someone else, and I think that's kind of made the world crazy. When I wrote a piece initially about this tweet, I said, we've become planet Seinfeld. And famously, the creator said, it's a show about nothing. We are now a global culture that is constantly manufacturing things out of nothing, because that's a way that we generate satisfaction and actualization for ourselves. And it's very worrisome, because you can't sustain democracy on that. Todd Landman  06:20 Right? We'll get to the effect on democracy in a minute. I mean, I share your pain not in the palette, mind you. But you know, I write books like you do. I write articles for The Conversation for the Guardian, for other other outlets, and they get a modicum of interest and support. And then one time on BBC Breakfast, I was asked to comment on the intelligence reports about Russian interference in the US elections, and I happen to be out of sequence in the studio, I get on the couch, and they're running a story about a Marine who rescued people from Mount Everest. And they turned to me and I think, Wait a minute, they have the wrong guest. So I say 'you have the wrong guest' that got more hits, more attention, the analytics on my website went completely haywire. So that focus on either the negative or the humorous, can actually, you know, go out of control more than, you know, the erudite focused work that I tried to do in the day job, but I'm gonna get back to this point about the undermining of democracy. And I want to really start with a compelling argument you make in the book, and to me it references some really interesting political science literature, most famously published by Ronald Inglehart back in 1977, published a book called The Silent Revolution with Princeton press. And then he followed that up with a book called Culture Shift. And his main thesis was that at times of plenty, in advanced industrial democracies, there's a development of what he calls post material values. So people are not, if they're not concerned about roof over their head, food in their mouth job every day and a paycheck, they turn their attention to other things, like human rights, like nuclear power, like climate change, like women's rights and other issue areas that transcend traditional class issues that, you know, Marxists would want to talk about or those interested in the economy. Now, you're making a really interesting argument in the book, because you're basically saying that in those countries where we've had economic plenty, material progress, technological advance, and now we throw in an ability and a platform for people to share their you know, the thoughts they have, second by second onto a platform has actually created this phenomenon. You say people are too connected and too isolated at the same time. Tell us about that insight from the book. Tom Nichols  08:33 Right. It's great that you kind of do a touch back to Ron Inglehart, because there was so much that I wanted to think about with this book, and the idea that somehow, once you stop this kind of struggle for your daily bread, that you can actually think about other things, you know, at the time, I mean, now you might people listening might say, Well, that's obvious, you know, but that wasn't really obvious at the time. I mean, you know, people even through the Depression, we went from the depression into World War Two, we started thinking about things like making the world safe for democracy and all that. But then I think we went even further from some kind of post materialist thinking to postmodern thinking, where everything became mediated through our experience of it, that we just decided that the world was just one big TV show. It's kind of like The Truman Show or, you know, kind of virtual reality exercise where we were constantly connected to each other, and snooping in and out of each other's houses all day. You know, when people hear me say connected, I don't just mean by Twitter or Facebook. I mean, things like and I talked about this in the book, I mean, things like Zillow. I just gave a talk the other day where I had a group of I don't know it was talking to about 100 people. And I said, I mean, people here, come on, admit it. You've snooped on your neighbours, and looked inside their houses by going to Zillow and these kinds of hands sheepishly went up, you know, we spend a lot of time being very connected to and very interested in the lives of our neighbours, but not actually interacting with them in any positive way we don't talk, we don't do things with them. We don't. I thought maybe one of the other political science works here, we're going to name check. Here's one that I put in the book, which was Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, you know, where we don't join bowling leagues, we go bowling, and then we post pictures of it, you know, we don't actually interact with that middle stratum of people who are somewhere between close friends or family, and strangers. You know, there are so many people, I learned this, you know, when I decided in my years ago in my 40s, to take up golf to try and you know, get some physical activity. And suddenly, I realised I knew a tonne of people in my community, I didn't know them well. But I knew them enough to be able to have a conversation with them. I mean, I didn't join a country club, it was a public course. And, you know, and having a beer at the bar afterwards. And you know, I got to know a lot of people, we don't do stuff like that any more. And so we are both connected and isolated. And in a way that just rewards negativity, it rewards that using other people and their views and their lives as raw material for us to express our own grievances and sense of entitlement. And you know, gripes and basically again, to make it about us rather than about other people. Todd Landman  11:18 Yeah. And you know, the reference to Bowling Alone is brilliant, because the thesis of that book, of course, is that because people aren't Bowling Alone, because they're not going to the PTA. They are engaged in chequebook activism, and now we're going to pay pal activism, I think. But actually, it erodes social capital, it erodes the fabric of society, it erodes that connectivity, that chance encounters you, whether it's a golf club, a bridge club, a local social club, or just going down to the local bar and getting a drink. People are now experiencing the world really literally through a screen. And certainly during COVID, that was raised to very high relief that people were isolated. And I wonder if there's going to be a post COVID effect. But what you're describing is a sort of post industrial or post material postmodern resentment, that focuses not only on the negativity, but also I'm going to throw in another term here, this idea of relative deprivation, if you spend all your day, looking at how everyone else is living their life, and we know that's a fiction, we know that what we see on Facebook, and Instagram and any other platform is an idealised, artificial version of somebody as they go about  enjoying their lives. That creates resentment as well and  the sense of relative deprivation. Why does that person have many more fun things to share on social media than me, including a really nice slap up Indian meal I might add, and that resentment that develops creates that ennui that sort of, you know, just this desperate sort of sense of negativity? And what I'm curious then is how does this then connect to a problem for democracy and by extension, a problem for human rights? Tom Nichols  12:53 What when you think that everyone's living better than you, and you develop that constant sense of entitlement? And we know, by the way, that's spending a lot of time I mean, this psychologists have actually measured this. Spending a lot of time on Facebook actually, will depress you. Because as you say, what do people post on Facebook? Here's my daughter's wedding. Here's my son's graduation. You know, here we are at Disney, nobody posts their, you know, first day out of rehab pictures, their divorce decrees, you know, their court appearances, you know, no one puts that stuff, I can say, Wow, My life sucks. And the conclusion you come to is that somehow this is a failure of government, because government's supposed to fix all these things for you. And therefore, it's a failure of democracy. And I want to anticipate one criticism, I know, that's always out there about this, you know, there are people who will say, but these are legitimate gripes, because of things like income inequality, for example, because of the very rich and the very poor. You know, this is why it takes so long to write a book like this, the data just doesn't bear this out. The two most important things to understand is that the anti democratic attitudes are centred heavily in the middle class. Back in the 50s, you know, the term lumpen bourgeoisie started to peak out a kind of middle class that is bored and restless and hates democracy, because they think they're not getting everything out of it, that they should. The example I use in this in the book is a good, you know, now passed away, unfortunately, but an old friend of mine from school, who literally was complaining to me about how bad things were while he was sitting on his boat, you know, a working class guy with a high school diploma and nothing else sitting on his boat talking about how the world you know, had done him dirt. That's very much the problem - it's not the poor and the dispossessed, and minorities and marginalised people who are giving up on democracy. It is middle class white people in Italy and Britain and the United States and Poland, Turkey and so on. The other problem with the income inequality argument is that most of the anger and most of the dissent in the country is not focused on you know, poor people versus Jeff Bezos, it's the middle class, griping at each other about subtle gradations among them. There's even a thing that social psychologists called the HGTV effect, where people spend a lot of time watching these go home and garden TV shows. And they literally then decide they have to improve their house because they find it intolerable that people they see on television who are like them, somehow have, you know, granite countertops and hardwood floors and recessed lighting, and they look around and they say, How come? These people are just like me, I don't have that. That leads to this anger that says, democracy is a rigged game that's always arrayed against me. And somehow I'm getting screwed in all this. And so the right answer to this is to burn it all down. Todd Landman  15:45 Right. So that's the crucial point. And I know the work of Robert Pape, out of Chicago has been looking at those people that were most involved with the insurrection on January 6 In the US Capitol. And he actually says, look, a large proportion of these people were actually white collar professionals. You know, people were estate agents from Texas, hiring private aeroplanes to fly to Washington, DC to protest the rigged system, as it were, they got caught up in something they maybe didn't realise they were getting caught up in. And then when they were arrested, they said, Oh, my God, they arrested me. Yeah, it broke the law. Tom Nichols  16:20 I think this is a really important point. And I think Bob's you know, work on this, that he and his team who just basically just sat down and kind of trawled through all of the arrest records and cross indexed and kind of did the deep dive on each of these people. These were not unemployed factory workers living in opioid decimated wastelands. They just weren't. That's a comforting thought. And I say comforting, because people think that if that were the case, it's something you can fix with better social policy. But they weren't. They just were not those people. What they were were people who were again, bored, narcissistic, grandiose, one of them, the person you're talking about, the real estate agent from Texas basically said something to the effect of, I'm just too white and blonde and pretty to go to jail or something, you know, and she turned her jail term, which was only I think, 45 days, she turned it into a stunt. Which, you know, for a lot of us, I think it's always bothered me that these people got, you know, these kind of piddly 30 and 45 day jail sentences, you know, six months in prison in a federal prison might have sobered her up a little bit. Todd Landman  17:27 And I think more controversially, what of him said, You're treating us like black people. Now that of course as the racist dimension to that observation. But if we get back to the topic of the digital, then, the technology that you talk about and being too connected, the platforms that technology like WhatsApp and Parler and some of the other things that were available, of course, did allow for a collective action and one might even say connective action that these groups were able to communicate with each other to plan and coordinate. I don't need to tell you this. You're a national security affairs professor at the US Naval War College, you know, how groups organised but the sort of organising infrastructure, if you will, of the digital world allowed for this to happen. There was chatter, there were security agencies that absolutely knew there was chatter, and yet there was an absence of response, at least in a timely fashion to prevent this from happening. And of course, so we see, for example, you know, pro democracy movements organised in the same way, anti democracy movements, organised in the same way. And the recurring theme on our podcast, this series has been this kind of, you know, technology is neutral. It's whatever people do with it, that you have to be worried about. So what can you say about that? Tom Nichols  18:35 I hope people understand I am not a technophobe, I actually, I'm 61. So I came of age when the internet did, and I loved the internet, I have a huge social media account. And, you know, I was the geek tweaking some computers and doing all that stuff in the 90s, and even into my dotage. But I agree that the problem is what you do with the technology. The other technology that really made a lot of this possible that I think we need to say, give a shout out to are mobile phones, which allowed people to kind of track each other and stay in touch with each other during this moment. But of course, in a lovely kind of, you know, karmic irony here, it also allowed the government to be able to pinpoint exactly who was where, you know, by checking that data from cellphone towers and locators and all that other stuff that put a lot of these people in jail. But again the problem is the social normality underlying it - when it comes to the connectivity, when it comes to things like email and chat rooms and social media, the way I kind of stole this from a writer named Yevgeny Simkin who said 'Every town had an end of the world guy right? That every town had a guy with a sandwich board saying the end of the world is coming. What the Internet did was make every one of those guys  able to reach out to every other one of those guys in every one of 100,000 towns and to believe hey we're a movement instead of saying I happen to be the one guy who's just kind of a bit off and you know and paranoid about the end of the world. No we're a movement - we're a social force and you see this with a lot of other things and sometimes with really tragic effects. The New York Times reported on a group of people who believed that the Government is watching them which is a problem that peopke with emptional issues have had long before there was an Internet. I mean I grew up with an Uncle who had that exact same problem in the 1950s and 60s. But they have now actually formed a kind of social movement by reaching out ironically through social media to say see it's not us that has the problem it's a real thing because enough of us believe it. That is how extremism grows through this. There is no counterveiling social  pressure. When you're the one guy who is you know an abject Hitlet-admiring racist, it matters that everyone around you says that's a terrible thing to believe. You're wrong. If you can go online and find 100,000 other peopke who believe that same thing, which you always will be able to do because it's a big world, then suddenly, you say, well, maybe I'm not wrong. Maybe I'm part of a movement, maybe everybody else is wrong, because look at all my new friends. That's the real danger here. It takes people out of their social environment, removes them from normal kind of interactions about what might be right or wrong, or good or evil, and lets them go find the community of people who will agree with them about anything. And that I think, is the behaviour we've really seen growing. I'll just add one more point, which is, those of us who write and have any kind of public persona, used to get the occasional crank letter here and there, angry crank letters, and people reaching out in the most hostile and violent way possible. Because again, this used to be something that was socially unacceptable, it required a certain modicum of effort, you actually have to write something down, put a stamp on an envelope, whatever, you know, is now just commonplace. It's just part of the cost of doing business. If you step at all into the public eye, it's just a normal part of being in the public view now, and again, I think, because people encourage each other to do it. Todd Landman  22:16 Yeah. A couple of keystrokes from a troll, and suddenly you've gone viral in a negative way. So Tom, I want to push you a bit on this then. So we have the socio economic question. We have the middle class point, the post material resentment, point, a bowling along point, all these things which come together and rather tragic and scary ways that undermine democracy that potentially compromise many different sets of human rights. But I wonder in the remaining time, we have together you might say, what are the couple of practical things we can do as a solution to actually curb the worst forms of this behaviour to regain faith in democracy and human rights in ways that sort of mitigate against the developments that you set out in the book, Tom Nichols  22:54 I'm sorry to say that I got to the end of the book, and I wasn't that optimistic. But I did have a couple of things. One is that we need to concentrate on small scale projects. But all of this, everything I'm about to say requires human beings engaging in an act of will, and self reflection to step away from their screens, and to turn off the TV for a moment. And to take a walk and say, What kind of person am I really and what kind of person do I really want to be? There are a lot of things that need to be done in your community. The problem is that as a very narcissistic grandiose culture, even people who mean well, you know, will say things like, well, we have to change the structure of the US Senate, or we have to do away with the electoral - Well, I have bad news for you, you're not going to do away with the Electoral College as heroic. And as satisfying as you may think that that is that you're going to change the US Constitution tomorrow. That's not going to happen. What you can do is reach out and work with other people in your community to register voters to volunteer at a polling site, to phone bank to help get the potholes filled to go to a city council meeting, to go to a school committee meeting. People don't do any of that because it's boring. And I noticed because my mother was a city alderman, I come from a working class background, uneducated, you know, high school dropout parents, but my mom, one year got very angry about the nature. I tell the story in the book, got very angry about a drug market operating down the street from our house. So she campaigned on it. She went and  got elected to City Council and fixed it. You know, you can do things like that. I was at a meeting recently where I talked to three or four local elected officials, who all told me that they had been in their jobs forever because they had no opposition because literally they were getting reelected every year or two years as Selectmen or Assemblyman or assessors or treasurers or whatever. It wasn't their town, because nobody wanted the job. Todd Landman  24:49 No one else was running against them. Tom Nichols  24:52 Yeah and because again, even well, meaning people say well, that's beneath me, that's too boring. I'm going to reform In the United Nations one day and you know, solve world hunger, and that's unfortunately, what we do. So that's one thing. I think the other is that if you are involved with a political party, at least here in the United States, and I think this probably would hold true for Britain, and other places as well, parties need to mean something. You know, in the United States, we had two prominent political figures, one of whom hijacked his party, the Republican Party under Donald Trump, and one of whom nearly hijacked the Democratic Party away from their nominating process, Bernie Sanders, who never joined the Democratic Party, he wasn't even a member of the party, you know, and I think that parties used to have some kind of coherent, ideological content to them. And now they're just tribal flags of convenience. And I think people ought to think about that. But I'm a former Republican, I worked for a Democrat, I'm now an independent, I'm not joining a party at this point in my life. But if you are younger, and you feel strongly about parties, then you know, they should mean something, and they should stand for something. But all of these mean, stepping away from the constant censoring stream of the internet, putting your own ego a little bit on hold, being kinder and thinking better of other people, and working on projects at a scale where you can start building up Todd, you mentioned social capital, and start rebuilding that Bank of social capital, those little interactions that give a society the resilience to hold on through bad times. Todd Landman  26:28 That's brilliant. And those examples are great, you really have highlighted this tension between, you know, hyper narcissism and community really . And you know, I was struck listening to you that what you're really saying, it goes right back to Alexis de Tocqueville, and his assessment of the strength of American democracy was in the natural inclination for Americans to join things and to help one another. And I think that in this current period, we've lost sight of that. And what you're saying is step outside yourself, step outside your home, get off the grid, help somebody, invest in your community. And you know, don't take yourself so seriously, actually, the technology will always be there, as we've been discussing on this series of the podcasts, technology advances, if it does follow Moore's law, it doubles every year, and it's likely to continue to do so. But really, there's a human story here that you need to step outside yourself, step outside your home, and engage with others and rebuild that social capital and social fabric in order to hold on to the institutions that have so well governed. Our society is not just the American society, but also democracies around the world. And we are seeing this democratic backsliding taking on at the moment, and you know, your views around joining, helping, reaching out and stepping away from the narcissistic self that is somehow isolated within this electronic bubble is the first step. So thank you so much for appearing on this episode of the Rights Track with us. It was absolutely brilliant listening to you and engaging with you. And for now, all I can say is, thanks very much, and have a great day. Christine Garrington  27:59 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track podcast, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3di. You can find a full transcript of this episode on the website at www.RightsTrack.org together with useful links to content mentioned in the discussion. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes. Tom Nichols  27:59 Thanks for having me.  

In episode 6 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, we're joined by Susie Alegre, an international human rights lawyer and associate at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights. Susie's work focuses in particular on the impact of technology and AI on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds – explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we are asking her how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world?    Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to the Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the sixth episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Susie Alegre. Susie is the international human rights lawyer and associate the Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights, in particular the impact of technology and artificial intelligence on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think; The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds - explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we're asking her, how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world? So Susie it's great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track. Welcome. Susie Alegre  0:47  Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Todd Landman  0:49  So I love the book - Freedom to Think - I've read it cover to cover. In fact, I read it probably in two days, because it's such a compelling read. And I guess my first question for you is, why is the freedom to think broadly understood belief, expression, speech, religion, thought, why is all of that so critical to us as human beings? Susie Alegre  1:10  I think the way that I've looked at it in the book is really dividing those elements up a little bit. So what I focused on in the book is freedom of thought and opinion and what goes on inside our heads, as opposed to the more traditional discussions that we have around freedom of speech. And one of the reasons for that is that while freedom of speech has consequences and responsibilities, and freedom of speech can be limited, that freedom in our inner worlds to think whatever we like to practice our thoughts and opinions and decide whether or not there's something we should share, is what allows us to really develop and be human. And the right to freedom of thought and opinion, along with belief and conscience, insofar as we practice that inside our heads is something that's protected absolutely in international human rights law, which I think reflects its importance. And when you consider other absolute rights and human rights law, like the prohibition on torture, or the prohibition on slavery, the right to freedom of thought inside your head alongside those other rights, really gets to the heart of human dignity, and what it means for us to be humans. Todd Landman  2:24  Yes and so in protecting those rights, we are giving people agency because I was caught really captured by one thing you just said there about, we choose what we want to share. So a lot of us can have a million thoughts a second, but we don't share all of them. Although in the current era, it seems that people are sharing pretty much everything that they're thinking. But we'll get to that in a minute. I'm just curious about this idea of agency that, you know, you choose what to share, you also choose what not to share. And that element of choice is fundamental to being human. Susie Alegre  2:53  Absolutely. And what the right to freedom of thought, well certainly a key element is right to freedom of thought and freedom of opinion, is what's called freedom in the forum internal that's inside, you know, in our inner lives, it's not what we then choose to do, or say in the outer world. And having that inner space, it's really important for us to be able to develop who we are, you know, I'm sure all of us have had thoughts that we wouldn't particularly like to be recorded. And I don't know if you've seen the recent drama Upload, which. Todd Landman  3:28  I have not. Susie Alegre  3:29  Well it's worth a look, because I was watching one of the episodes where it was about people being unable effectively to shut off their thoughts or their thoughts were being live streamed if you like. And I mean, you can only imagine the horror of that, you know, that was a comedy. A similar story played out in a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Hood Maker, which was a situation where you had people who were able to read other people's thoughts, and the only way that you could protect yourself from this mind reading was to wear a hood. And so protecting your thoughts from mind reading was really seen as an act of rebellion and effectively made unlawful and that I think shows just how important this space is. It is if you like the absolute core of privacy. So privacy becomes like a gateway right to that central core of who we are, and how we decide who we're going to be. Todd Landman  4:27  I like this idea of a gateway right - that's really cool. Now, in the book, you have this really the first part is quite a deep dive into history. I mean, you go right back to Socrates, you worked your way through Galileo, you work your way through people that challenge the status quo, through freedom of thought, whether it was scientific practice, or religious belief or any kind of thought, but what are some of the high points of this history and shall we say the analogue attempts to control people's thoughts? Susie Alegre  4:53  Yeah, as you say, I looked right back and and Socrates is if you like, a classic example of a martyr for freedom of thought. One of the interesting things as well about Socrates is that we don't have anything written down by Socrates, because Socrates was himself very suspicious of the written word and what that did for humans ability to debate. But what he did do was absolutely question the status quo. And he delighted in creating arguments that would undermine Greek democracy at the time. But one of the reasons why we all know the name of Socrates and remember, Socrates, is because Socrates was effectively judged by his peers, and forced to take his own life by Hemlock because of his scurrilous ideas, and his attempts to twist the minds of young Athenians and to question the gods. So while Socrates might be sort of seen as an example of a champion of freedom of thought and freedom of speech, it was very clear that at that time in history, you didn't really have freedom of speech, because it ultimately landed up with a death sentence. Some of the other areas I looked at were people like Galileo and questioning whether the sun and the universe travelled around the Earth or the other way around, and that really landed him in house arrest. So really, again, questioning the status quo of the church, and certainly religions through the centuries have been one of the prime movers in curtailing freedom of thought and freedom of religion, if you'd like. Todd Landman  6:32  Yeah, in my world, the Galileo story is a kind of clash between observational data and belief. Susie Alegre  6:38  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But again, it sounds like one of those arguments of you know, well, you can have your own opinion and every opinion is sort of questions, but in another century, and in that century, you'll end up under house arrest, when you challenge the beliefs of the status quo and of the powers that be. Todd Landman  6:56  Yes, we see that being played out today, in the scepticism around science, whether one takes an extreme view about for example, being a flat earther. Or if there's doubt about scientific discovery, scientific development, the way in which countries respond to the COVID crisis, the hesitancy around vaccines, masks mandates, that kind of general scepticism around science, is also one where sure, there's freedom of thought, belief and opinion. But then there's also tested peer reviewed scientific evidence for the best thing we think we can possibly do under times of great uncertainty. Susie Alegre  7:31  Absolutely. And that area is a prime area where you see the difference between freedom of thought and opinion and freedom of speech and expression. So where you have sort of COVID conspiracy theories, if you like spreading through social media or spreading really proven false information that can harm people. You know, there is then a legitimate reason to restrict that expression and the spread of that expression, to protect public health. Doesn't mean that people can't still think those things. But there really have to be limitations on how those expressions are spread, when they are absolutely damaging to public health or to other people's rights. Todd Landman  8:18  Yes, exactly. And I don't think you covered this in the book. But I just want to push you a little bit. You mentioned about Socrates written word not being written down. But with the invention of the printing press historically, how had that changed freedom, expression, thought, belief? What's the role of that technological advance in your understanding of the history of this idea? Susie Alegre  8:39  Well, the printing press just really accelerated the way that information could be shared, it effectively accelerated the impact of expression, if you'd like. And interestingly, actually, I was asked recently, to compare regulation of the printing press and of printing around that time and how long it took to get serious regulation as compared to trying to regulate the internet today. And I said, rather flippantly, well, people were arrested, and books were burned. That was how regulation worked initially in response to the massive impact of the printing press. And while I was being flippant when I thought about it afterwards, well actually, that is how they tried to regulate the printing press. And one of the reasons I looked back at the past of freedom of thought in the ways that we didn't really have freedom of thought historically. To me, that was important because it showed what a sea change, having human rights law has been for us as human beings. So you know, people may complain about cancel culture, but certainly in the UK cancel culture very rarely involves actually being put in prison. Certainly it doesn't involve being told to drink hemlock or certainly not being obliged to drink hemlock. Human rights have really put the brakes on the ability of the powers that be to control us. But they've also put an obligation to protect us from each other. Todd Landman  10:13  And there's a certain duality then because if I think about what you just said, the powers that be, let's translate that into the rise of the modern state, as it were. And you draw on reading some, you know, quite regularly through the book you draw on Orwell's 1984. You draw on Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism you draw on Huxley's Brave New World. So why did you draw on those sources? It seems to be you're alluding to the power of the state, the power of control, all those sorts of aspects. And yet, in order for human rights to work, we still need the power of the state. So there's two sides of the coin problem that we face in this quest to regulation. Susie Alegre  10:52  Absolutely. And drawing on those sources, in particular, in particular, Orwell and Huxley. I mean, perhaps because I'm a bit of a masochist, I spent the start of lockdown reading 1984. And just marvelling at how prescient it was, and how accurately it portrayed the developments of technology in our life. The Speak Write machine, the way that Winston Smith is employed to rewrite history, if you like, sort of creating in real time, disinformation in 1984, was somehow a real surprise to me having not read it since 1984, was just how accurately prescient it was. And similarly, reading Brave New World and the consumerism and the use of distraction as a means of social control, rather than the oppressive jackboot that you see in 1984. And seeing the ways that potentially commercial enterprises and a light touch can be used to have an equally corrosive and problematic effects on our societies. So the reflections of the images of Huxley and Orwell in particular was so stark that I felt that I had to use them because it seemed that rather than taking those as a warning from the 20th century, we've taken them as a template for the development of technology and consumerism in our lives. Todd Landman  12:23  So I suppose that really allows me now to segue nicely into your concerns over the digital world and how this digital world relates to human rights. And I guess my entry point is this famous line you have in the book where you say, you know, I told my daughter, she can't have Alexa. And she asked me why. And I said, you can't have an Alexa because it steals your dreams, and sells them to other people. Talk me through that. Talk me through your fears and worries around Alexa and what that means for the broader digital problem that we face. Susie Alegre  12:52  Yeah, Alexa is certainly a case in point. And as I'm sure anyone else with children has had the experience, your child comes home and their friends have got whatever technology it is, in this case, Alexa, and I know several people, several families where the kids do have Alexa in their bedroom. So you will always get these arguments as well sounds so has it so it must be great. For me the idea of Alexa the idea of actively choosing to bring a listening device into your home, that is constantly listening to what is going on in your home and sharing that with you have no idea who using that information in ways that you have no real idea how that's going to land up is something so astonishing. You know, having spent years working on human rights and counterterrorism, and also most recently, working in oversight on interception of communications, and how sort of allergic people or if you like, and quite rightly, to state intrusions to the idea that the state might be bugging your home, to then actually pay money and to let a private actor come in and listen to everything that's going on in your home for profit, just to me seems really astonishing. And yet somehow, it's become so normalised that as I said, I know lots of people who do have Alexa and are delighted to have Alexa. Plenty of people in the lockdowns suddenly sending around videos from their Ring cameras outside their doors, but this idea of constant control constant monitoring of our lives for someone else's profit. To me seems like something that is an really fundamental shift and something that we should all be really concerned about. Todd Landman  14:51  Now you're in addition to the Alexa example you're also very concerned about, shall we say the unregulated or the unleashing of and I will use the generic term algorithms in the digital world? So why are these algorithms problematic? From your perspective? What do they do? How do they affect people? Or is it a way that they're affecting people? And people don't even know? And is it that ignorance of the effect that concerns you? Or is it just the development of algorithms in the first place that concerns you? Susie Alegre  15:20  Now, I mean, algorithms are digital tools, if you like. So it's not the algorithm itself. There are two things really well, there are many. But let's start with two. One is the ability to understand why an algorithm is operating in the way it's operating. So an algorithm is effectively told to take information and translate that information into a conclusion or into an action, but understanding exactly what information is taken, how that information is being weighted, and then how a decision if you like, as being taken and what impact that decision will have, is often not very clear. And so where an algorithm based on huge amounts of data, for example, is being used to decide whether or not you might be fraudulently requesting benefits, for example, in the benefits system, that raises really serious concerns, because the outcome of not getting benefits or the outcome of being flagged as a fraud risk, has a really, really seriously detrimental impact on an individual life. Todd Landman  16:29  Yes. And you also give examples of credit rating. So if typically, somebody wants to get a mortgage in the UK, the mortgage company will say, well, we're gonna run a credit check on you. And they might go to one of the big data providers, that gives you a score. And that score is a function of how many credit cards you have any loans, you might have had any late payments you might have had on a loan or a mortgage in the past. And in the absence of a particular number. The company may reserve the right to say, you can't have a mortgage and I think you give the personal examples of your own struggles setting up a bank account after having lived abroad. Susie Alegre  17:03  Yeah. Todd Landman  17:04  Talk us through some of that. Susie Alegre  17:05  Yeah, absolutely. So as you say, I talk a bit in the book about returning from Uganda, where ironically, I've been working as a diplomat for European Union on anti-corruption. And I came back to the UK to work as an ombudsman in the Financial Ombudsman Service. But when I applied for a bank account, I was suddenly told that I couldn't have the bank account. Because the computer said no, effectively. The computer had clearly decided that because I was coming from Uganda or whatever other information had been weighed up against me, I was too much of a risk to take. The fact that I had been fully vetted as an ombudsman, and that the money that would be going through that bank account was going to be salary from the Financial Ombudsman Service was not enough to outweigh whatever it is the algorithm had decided against me. Eventually, I was able to open an account a few months later. But one of the interesting things then working as an ombudsman was that I did come across cases where people had had their credit score downgraded because the computer said so and where the business was unable to explain why that had happened. I mean, from an ombudsman perspective, I was in a position to decide what's fair and reasonable in all circumstances of a case. In my view, it's very difficult to say that a decision is fair and reasonable if you don't know how that decision has been reached. But those kinds of decisions are being made about all of us all the time, every day in different contexts. And it's deeply concerning that we're not often able to know exactly why a decision has been taken. And in many cases, we may find it quite difficult to even challenge those decisions or know who to complain to.  Todd Landman  17:14  Yeah and this gets back to core legal principles of fairness, of justice, of transparency of process and accountability of decision making. And yet all of that is being compromised by, let's say, an algorithm, or as you say, in the book, the computer says no. Susie Alegre  18:49 Completely and I think one of the key things to bear in mind that even the drafters have the right to freedom of thought and opinion in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, discuss the fact that inferences about what you're thinking or what your opinions are about, can be a violation of the right even if they're incorrect. So when you find the algorithm, making inferences about how risky a person you are, whether or not the algorithm is right, it may still be violating your right to keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself. You know, you should only be judged on what you do and what you say, not on what somebody infers about what's going on in your inner life. Todd Landman  19:50  Not on what you might be thinking. Susie Alegre  19:52  Exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. Todd Landman  19:54  Right now, we've had a couple of guests on previous episodes that I would put broadly speaking in the camp of the 'data for good' camp. And when I read your book, I feel like I'm gonna broadly put you in the camp of 'data for bad'. And that might be an unfair judgement. But is there data for good here? I mean, because, you know, you cite the sort of surveillance capitalism literature, you have some, you know, endorsements from authors in that tradition. But if I were to push you, is there a data for good story that could be told nevertheless? Susie Alegre  20:23  I think there might be in public data. So for example, in the US, and I don't know if they are included in your guests, but there's data for black lives. And they've done really interesting work from public data, you know, flagging where there are issues of racial and systemic injustice. So that kind of work, I think, is very important. And there is a distinction between public data and private data, although how you draw that distinction is a really complicated question. But in terms of our personal data, one of the things that I think is important in looking at how to address these issues, is about setting the lines for the things that you can never do. And what I hope is that if you set down some barriers, some very, very clear lines of what can never ever be done with data. Then you will find technology, particularly technology related to data, and that includes the use of AI interpreting and working with data will develop in a different direction, because at the moment, the money is in extracting as much personal information as you can out of every single one of us and selling them. Todd Landman  21:40  And the degree of the extraction of that information is both witting and unwitting. So you also make the point in the book, if somebody signs up for a Facebook account, they just hit agree to the terms and conditions. But actually the time it takes to read the terms and conditions could be two or three days to get through to the fine print. And so people are just saying yes, because they want this particular account with not actually knowing the degree to which the sharing their personal information. Is that correct? Susie Alegre  22:06  Absolutely. And the other problem was the terms and conditions is that if you don't like them, what exactly you're going to do about it? Particularly if you're looking at terms and conditions to be able to access banking or access the National Health Service. If you don't like the terms and conditions, how exactly are you going to push back. But that point that you've made as well about the consent button, there's also an issue around what are called dark patterns. So the way that technology is designed, and that our online experience is designed to nudge us in certain directions. So if you're asked to agree the terms and conditions, the easiest thing is to hit the big green button that says I consent. Again, we see it with cookies, you know, often you've got a simple option where you hit I consent, or there's a complicated option, where you can manage your cookie settings and go through a couple of different layers in order to decide how much you want to be tracked online. And so that is clearly pushing you in the direction in time poor life experience, to hit the easiest option and just consent. Todd Landman  23:16  I feel that everybody you know, I read through Flipboard, which is a way of aggregating news sources from around the world by topic. And I sort of follow politics and law and international events, music and various other things. But every news story open up because of GDPR I get a pop up screen that says accept cookies, manage cookies. And I always say accept because I want to read the story. But what I'm actually doing is telling the world I've read this story, is that right? Susie Alegre  23:43  Yeah, absolutely. The cookies question as well as one where, actually, why should we be being tracked in all of our activities? All of our interests? And as you say, you know, telling the world that you've read this article is partly telling the world what you're interested in and what you're thinking about, not just that you've read this article in an abstract sense, you know, it's telling the world about your interests. One of the things that is also disturbing that people often don't realise is that it's not just what you read. It's even things that you may hover over and not click on that are equally being tracked. And it's not just on the page where you're reading the article. It's about being tracked all around your online activity being tracked with your phone being tracked, where you are not just what you're looking at on the phone. It's so granular, the information that's being taken, that I think very few of us realise it and even if you do realise that as individuals, we can't really stop it. Todd Landman  24:52  And I think for that reason I take a little bit of comfort because I wasn't targeted by Cambridge Analytica. I probably played some of the games on Facebook, you know the personality test stuff, but I never got ads as far as I was concerned that were being, you know, foisted upon me by the Cambridge Analytica approach. I use that as, let's say, a metaphor. But I know that there was micro-targeting based on certain profiles, because there was an attempt to leverage voters who had never voted before, or voters who were predisposed to in particular vote to vote for certain things. But again, it's that unwitting sort of profile that you build by the things that you hover over or the things that you'd like or the things that you at least read and accept that button on cookies. And of course, we now know that that microtargeting actually might have had a, you know, a significant impact on the way in which people viewed particular public policy issues. Susie Alegre  25:41  Completely, and I mean, I don't know whether I was or was not targeted by Cambridge Analytica or similar, around that time around 2016/2017. I don't know if you've come across a Who Targets Me, which is a plugin that you can put onto your browser to find out particularly around election times, who is targeting you. And I have to say that when I very briefly joined a political party for a couple of months, I signed off my membership after a couple of months, because I discovered that they were targeting me and people in my household through this, who targets me plugin. So even though theoretically, as a member, I was already going to vote for them. But that information was being used to pollute my online environment, as far as I'm concerned, which was a bit of an own goal, I imagine for them. Todd Landman  26:32  So that really does bring us to the question of what is to be done. So you know, I was waiting in the book for sort of what's the regulatory answer, and you do give some good practical suggestions on a way forward, because there is this challenge, particularly where we need services, you know, we do need mortgages, we need access to health care, we need public information, we need all the benefits that come from the digital world. But at the same time, we need to protect ourselves against the harms that digital world can bring to us. So what are the sort of three or four major things that need to happen to maybe mitigate against the worst forms of what you're worried about in the book? Susie Alegre  27:10  Well, one of the difficulties in the book was coming up with those things, if you like, what are the key things that we need to stop, and particularly in an atmosphere where we are seeing regulation happening, rapidly trying to play catch up, we've just seen the Digital Services Act in the European Union being agreed, we have the Online Safety Bill on the table in the UK, in Chile, we've seen in the last year legislation around neuro rights being introduced. And so it's a very fast paced environment. So trying to come up with suggestions that go to the heart of it while recognising the complexity and also recognising that it's in a huge state of flux. I wanted to really highlight the things that I think are the core of how we've got here and the core, very obvious things that we should not be doing. The first one of those is surveillance advertising. And that is advertising that is based on information, granular information, like we've been talking about about our inner lives, including how we're feeling potentially at any single moment in order to decide what images what messages we should be delivered. And whether those are political messages, whether that is commercial messages, whether it's just trying to drag us into gambling, when we're having a bad moment online. All of those kinds of things are part of this surveillance advertising ecosystem. And while surveillance advertising isn't the whole problem, I think that surveillance advertising is the oil that is driving this machine forward. If you don't have surveillance advertising, there isn't so much money in gathering all of this information about us. Because that information is valuable because it can sell us stuff, whether it's selling us a political candidate, or whether it's selling us a particular pair of socks tomorrow. And so surveillance advertising, I think is the key. And I think banning surveillance advertising would be the single most effective way to start change. Another thing that I think could make a real sea change in the way tech develops is recommender algorithms. And again, the things that are being recommended to us the way that we receive our information, whether that is on Netflix, whether that is on new services, potentially, very personalised recommendations of information are a way of distorting how we think and how we see the world based on information about our emotional states information about our psychological vulnerabilities, a whole raft of things that could lead to that. That I think is a real vehicle for social control. And so you may want occasionally, or even always, to have somebody suggesting what you should watch, when you're feeling tired, you don't want to make a decision yourself and you're happy to just be given whatever it is. But recommender algorithms and that kind of personalization of information feeds should never ever be the default. At the moment for most of us that is the situation. When we open up our laptops. When we open up social media, when we look at our phones, we're being given a curated personalised experience without necessarily realising it. So addressing that, and making sure that personalization is not the automatic choice would make a really big difference. Todd Landman  30:53  It's just an amazing set of insights. You've taken us from Socrates to socks here today. And it's been an incredible journey listening to you and so much to think about and so many unresolved issues. And when I listen to you, and I read your book, you know, I feel like I should get off the grid immediately, and put my hood on because I don't want anyone reading my mind and I don't want anyone selling me socks. But for now, Susie, it was just great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track and thanks ever so much. Susie Alegre  31:20  My pleasure. Thank-you so much for having me. Christine Garrington  31:23  Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.    

In the final episode of the DIAL podcast we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives and what its longer term consequences might be. We're joined by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen from the University of Turku in Finland. Elina is the Scientific Coordinator for DIAL and, as the programme draws to a close she reflects on some of the programme's highlights,  key findings and implications for the future.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this final episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, from the University of Turku in Finland. Elina is the scientific co-ordinator for DIAL and today, as the programme draws to a close, she's here to reflect on some of the program's highlights, key findings and implications for the future. So welcome, Elina thank you very much indeed, for joining us. Now, first of all, I'm guessing it's been no mean feat and indeed, I know, it's been no mean feat, keeping an eye across 13 fantastic research projects with researchers based all over Europe. But just take a minute or two, if you would to remind us of what exactly the DIAL programme is and what it's involved over the last few years. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  0:57  So thanks a lot, Chris. The DIAL programme is, as you said, kind of transnational programme. And we've had 13 research projects involved. And all of those involve international collaboration. And it's based in the social sciences and behavioural sciences, financed by NORFACE, which is a research organisation bringing together different funding institutes across Europe. And so the focus of DIAL has been on inequality and in particular inequality across the life course and trying to understand some of the structures of inequality cross nationally and some of the mechanisms kind of producing inequality and and what that means to people and societies as a whole. Christine Garrington  1:41  Wonder if I can ask you why it has been so important to look not just at inequality, per se, as you were saying there, but at how inequality manifests itself over the life course, because this is an important thing, isn't it? And indeed how, when and where it sort of accumulates? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  1:57  Inequality is a really complex and multifaceted issue. And so I think one one part of it is that inequality comes across in many different domains. So it's important to take into account inequalities, for example, in education, labour market, health, and so on. And then I mean, to really understand where it comes from and what it means it's important to look at the determinants across time, I mean, both across time for an individual and their parents, and so on, kind of that life course aspect, but also, for countries to see how it develops across time. Inequality isn't something that just is, I mean, it develops. And so kind of building on that kind of developmental process to really kind of inform us about how we can do something about it, or how we can really kind of understand where it comes from, it's important to take that into account. Christine Garrington  2:58  Now, you talked about the programme largely being based in the social sciences. But one of the key things about the project is that we've seen researchers from different disciplines as well as different countries coming together to try to tackle, as you say, as you rightly say, this incredibly complex area around inequality, what's been the thinking there? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  3:20  Well, I mean, inequality is something that interests a lot of academics working in different disciplines. And, and they come from it from from kind of different angles. And I think, because it is kind of a complex issue, and it's an issue that kind of manifests itself in different ways. So really building on on the strengths of different disciplines, I think is a key key strength here. So we don't only look at inequality in one domain, for example, say, say something like education, which would then be kind of a subset of disciplines that tend to be interested in inequality in education, but also how education is linked to inequalities in in other aspects and, and in addition to the kind of different domains that come from different disciplines, also, the ways in which we, we analyse it and building on the strengths and knowledge of different disciplines. I think is key here, key to, to just building a comprehensive picture and learning from each other, as well as as then taking that knowledge forward. Christine Garrington  4:34  It would be remiss of us not to talk about COVID. And in some ways, it was something of a setback for plans to to stage events and meetings around the the programme of research to get the word out there about it. But it also provided in some respects, a rather unexpected opportunity, didn't it to use the programme to look at inequality in the context of COVID. So, so tell us a bit about that. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  4:58  Yeah, so obviously the research programme began before COVID. And so the projects had their their kind of plans of what they wanted to do and the analysis that they were going to do. But given this massive impact that COVID had on on society and and on inequality as well. A lot of projects then decided that this would be a really important aspect to look at and an opportunity also to learn about inequality in a changing societal context. So different projects have taken this into account in different ways. But for example, there's been kind of really important work on on just what happened to inequality for example, due to lock down and and the economic upheaval of COVID, not just the health implications, but then also using that upheaval, to think about how inequalities might be changed. And for example, so work by Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez, Suzanne Harkness and Anette Fasang, looking at what happened to housework, during COVID. People were having to stay at home, both parents and children and seeing what happens to inequalities between men and women. And how the, the the number and age of children influences that and kind of what they saw was that obviously, this change in in family habits changed house work habits, but at the same time, when locked down ended a lot of couples returned to normal. So so even though there was a massive shift, and and people behaved differently for a short period of time, we can see that these kind of entrenched habits, then then go back to normal quite quickly. Christine Garrington  6:43  Yeah, really interesting piece of work that so. And also, despite COVID, you were able to, nevertheless, to involve a great number of stakeholders in in the research, what messages did you receive from them, I wonder about what was emerging? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  6:58  So yeah, we've had some really interesting discussions with stakeholders, both policymakers and then kind of non-governmental organisations involved in both practical work and lobbying as well. And they've been really interested in in the work that we're doing. So in particular, we've talked to stakeholders involved in kind of gender inequality work, and how participation in the labour market is unequal between men and women, and in particular, between mothers and fathers. And then we've also talked a lot to stakeholders involved in kind of childhood disadvantages, and how different types of children are put at a disadvantage. And what are some of the mechanisms kind of potentially either alleviating those disadvantages, or that are currently making those disadvantages larger, and that would kind of be important to look at. So we've kind of talked both about the the bigger picture of inequality, but also some of the mechanisms and obviously, stakeholders are, are often interested in what they can do. And then we've also had really good discussions about especially with policymakers also about the kinds of data that going forward, would be needed to, to kind of really analyse these things further. And I think there's a lot of kind of shared interest in collecting data or making administrative data available for researchers to be able to address inequalities in the future. Christine Garrington  8:28  Yeah, now a major part of your role, Elina has been to pull together all of these different strands of work in some way to ensure that we get to a, what we hope is a coherent picture of what's been learned from the programme as a whole. And I wonder whether it's possible in the short period of time that we have to say what has been learned from the programme as a whole? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  8:48  Well, that's no mean feat. To then kind of say what's been learned because I think there's such richness in the research coming through and I mean, we've only kind of touched upon some of the aspects just now. And so we what we've been trying to do is, is bring together kind of thematically, things we've learnt in terms of, for example, gender inequalities, as I just mentioned. So So really looking at further at kind of motherhood, penalties and how, how those might be potentially for example, by by further training ameliorated although at the same time, we need to remember that women tend to nowadays have higher education levels than men. So education isn't always the key here. So also looking at kind of gender and sexual minorities, even though we've been making progress in terms of legislation and policy. The discrimination can still be kind of an ongoing issue for people and and kind of the legacy of the past is still a major issue for for LGBT citizens across Europe and even though legislation has progressed a lot to still the practices in terms of, of workplaces or educational institutions aren't aren't really catching up necessarily, to such a large extent. And then moving on to kind of a different area, I think there's been a lot of really interesting work in terms of, of the role of genetics, which is a big new area of research in terms of social sciences, and how that plays into the reproduction of inequalities across generations and over the life course, and how that changes depending on the environment that people live in. So, so we're learning a lot about so called gene environment interplay, and which is obviously kind of something that social scientists are really keen to look at is the the environmental aspect of, of how genes play out. So so we're learning a lot about the fact that genes aren't our destiny as such, but but the the context or the environment matters a lot for that. Christine Garrington  11:00  Yeah, lots of really fascinating and very, very innovative work that's going on in that area, for sure. Now, you're talking about stakeholders a moment ago, you've been responsible also for helping to ensure the dissemination of this research to to those non-academics as well as other researchers. So I'm interested to know and I think others will be interested to know what sorts of resources there are available. For those interested to know more, aside from the obviously, the dozens, and I know, there are dozens of journal articles and working papers that have have been produced if you'd like for the scientific community. But what else is there. Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  11:34  Starting from those journal articles, I think we've tried to make a kind of effort to make those more accessible in terms of both bringing them all to our website, but also providing summaries that are not just the academic abstract. So even looking at the journal articles, starting from from summaries that are more accessible to everyone involved, and not just researchers in those fields, I mean, abstracts can sometimes be a bit difficult to disentangle. Then bringing together the research we've we've been producing policy briefs that, I mean, obviously are aimed at policy audiences but I think those bring together thematically some of the research as well in a really nice way. So those are available on the on the website, then obviously, this podcast series, I think is has been a great way of disseminating the research. In addition to that, so we had our final conference last autumn. And some of those videos from the presentations are available still through the website. I mean, there's both recordings of presentations that bring together entire projects, but also kind of individual, more finely specified research topics. But But in particular, there's there's videos of researchers presenting their whole project at the final conference. So I think those are also a great resource. Christine Garrington  12:57  Yeah, indeed, a wonderful library of materials that people can dip into at their leisure and really catch up on and get to grips with the important things that have emerged from this, this work. So finally, Elina, the ultimate aim of a programme like this is obviously to improve our understanding and knowledge on the one hand and influence change for the good with the understanding on the other. And I wonder if you're able to say how, I know it's very difficult, but if you can say how all this important work might feed into the thinking and policies of those seeking to reduce inequalities today, and in the future? Elina Kilpi-Jakonen  13:32  At the same time as advancing academic knowledge, we definitely have wanted these research results to be relevant for policymakers and to reach policymakers and indeed, kind of other organisations interested in in these types of inequalities and processes. I mean, on the one hand, there has been really great comparative work on the kind of institutional influences that policies in different countries have and I think that's a really important thing to draw from in terms of, for example, education policy, or family policies for work life balance and the gender inequality in pay so, so looking at the across national differences and comparing countries and then learning from that. But then also, I mean, there's been really detailed work into kind of the mechanisms of inequality and more specific interventions for example, and how those influence inequality and and then really digging more deeply into how inequality is reproduced and what we might be able to do about that. So for example, work on on parenting and how that reproduces inequalities among children and and then thinking about well, how we might be able to to provide more equitable parenting for children and what we can do about that. So I think there's, there's been work on multiple levels that hopefully we'll be able for policymakers to draw on in terms of developing these things in the future. Christine Garrington  15:07  Thanks to Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, DIAL's scientific co-ordinator for joining us for the final episode of this fourth series of the DIAL podcast. You can find all the resources that Elina mentioned in this episode on the DIAL website at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access all our earliest series.

In Episode 5 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we're in conversation with Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the impact of childhood circumstances on individual outcomes over the life-course (IMCHILD).    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. Today, we're delighted to be joined by Andreas Peichl, Professor of Macroeconomics and Public Finance at the University of Munich, and Principal Investigator of a DIAL project looking at the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course. So, welcome, Andreas, thank you very much for joining us. And I wonder if you can start by telling us a bit about what this project has been investigating and why? Andreas Peichl  0:39  So the project IMCHILD the Impact of Childhood Circumstances on Individual Outcomes over the Life-Course, had the aim to investigate how early decisions that usually parents make for their children's are really at the beginning of life, the early childhood, how these what we call circumstances for the child. So this is something that children typically cannot influence. Because these are decisions by made mostly by parents, how these circumstances affect decisions later in life. So for example, the transition to adulthood, be it educational or occupational choices, family formation, or later labour market outcomes. And the really, the idea was to see whether we find that the early childhood circumstances matter later in life. And then the next question, if this is the case, was what are the causal links? What are the mechanisms for this? And also, what can policymakers do about it if they aim at achieving something like equality of opportunity? So what can policymakers do to to level the playing field, so to say, later in life. Christine Garrington  1:54  Now, I'm interested to know as we record this conversation, COVID is something we certainly seem to be learning to live with right now, although COVID wasn't an issue, when you started this project, it certainly became one. And you've taken time to consider which children have been most affected by school closures for example. Can you tell us a bit about what you found there? Andreas Peichl  2:14  First, what we found is that in any country that we looked at, and especially in Germany, that was the main focus of this part of the analysis, but we also looked at other countries. That low achieving students, so students that were already not doing too well, in school, they were affected the most. And at the same time, students from non academic parents and lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, they were also affected the most. So sometimes, it's a combination of those two factors that are the same children, so low achieving, and low socio-economic status, but it's not exclusive. So, in general, low achieving students and lower socio-economic background, especially non-academic parents, those were the kids that were affected the most by, for example, school closures. But in general, we see that there was a large decrease in learning time for all students in school. And so basically, the whole cohort, were really affected by this. Christine Garrington  3:21  Right and, of course, as we, as we say, as we talked about learning to live with COVID, there are going to be already are, if you like longer term implications of this for children, educators and policymakers who are keen to ensure that any pre-existing inequalities don't become more deeply ingrained. Have I got that right? Andreas Peichl  3:42  Yes. So it's, it's really through it, we need to make sure that these existing inequalities don't become large. And right now, it looks as if they are becoming much larger actually. And we also see that this has long term impact. So if you lose some part of a school year, so for example, if you lose 1/3 of a school year, this, we can find or in the past, this was associated with a drop in lifetime income of 3, 4 or 5%. And so this, this can have huge implications for the generation of students affected. And so it's really important because we will have to live with COVID. And we need to make sure that we don't have to close schools, again, by investing in digital infrastructure and so on and making it possible that even when people are at home or this case, also not only for COVID, but also for other reasons that they can still participate in schooling. So this will be really important. Christine Garrington  4:46  Yes, indeed. Let's move away from COVID. One of the project's key aims was to investigate how the circumstances as we said that a child grows up in influences some of the most important decisions they make later on, you mentioned in your first answer about education and work and all of those key decisions that can take us down a certain path. Tell us a bit more about what you were hoping to get to really sort of get to grips with here. Andreas Peichl  5:13  So the starting point for research is rooted in the philosophical theories of distributive justice. And they, and also from an economic point of view, there's always the question, how to tackle inequalities. And in general, there are three ways to tackle inequalities. One is, the typical way is what we call redistribution. So this is, after all, the labour market outcomes, for example, are observed and we put a taxes and pay transfers and benefits to people to redistribute incomes. But the philosophical question then is, when we do this, how much do we want to redistribute how much inequality in the labour market do we want to have? And we know that for efficiency reasons, it's not good to have perfect equality, because then people don't have incentives to work and or to earn income. But we also know that very extreme inequality is not very good. But we don't know exactly where this optimal level is. But what we know is that there are other inequalities, where it's clear that this is something that we don't want. And this is what we in one paper, we call it unfair inequality, or this is inequality, where it's beyond your control your your poor, because there's something that you cannot influence. And this is what we wanted to investigate in this project. What are these circumstances, that children but also people later in life, have that make them for example, poor or rich? So is it the parental background, or we are in some work, we're also we're looking at the genetic endowment of people, but also other things, the places where you grow up could matter. And then it's important for policymakers, if you start tackling these inequalities already early in life, then maybe you don't need so much redistribution later in life. Because if there's a level playing field, and everybody has the same chances to achieve incomes, then typically inequalities in the labour market will be much less pronounced as they are today. So it was really the aim to see how much of the inequality that we observe today, for example, in labour earnings, labour market outcomes, how much of this can be explained by by early childhood circumstances already? Christine Garrington  7:35  And what were the key things to emerge from the work that you did? Andreas Peichl  7:38  The first thing is that, that we came up with some novel ideas and measures how to exactly measure this, this unfair bit of inequality to really disentangle this, not only in theory, but also empirically and, to some extent, also, using some some novel methods. For example, machine learning and big data ideas, in some ways or another. But also, the other thing was really trying to auto assemble also data, large datasets in paper in Sweden, really looking over several generations to see what is really the, the impact of these childhood circumstances. But what we see is really that childhood matters a lot. I mean, it's not surprising, everybody, I think, if you if you think back of your own childhood, or if you're, if you're having kids, you see how much impact parents can have have on children. And if there's inequality in let's say, how good parents are or how parents treat their children, then it's clear that this will lead to inequalities down the road. And so but I think what what's really interesting in our research was to put numbers on this to really see which inequalities seem to matter more and which maybe to a lesser extent, and then also trying to get at the main mechanisms and sort of the causal links between what it was what is it really that has an impact on on outcomes of children later in life? Christine Garrington  9:15  And you wanted to really sort of dig deep and see how those decisions that we've been talking about translate into later, later life social and economic outcomes, didn't you? What did you see there? Andreas Peichl  9:27  So yeah, we see that it's really that these these childhood circumstances matter in later life so it's, they matter directly in early childhood and then when when kids go to school or to high school, so really educational choices, but also educational performance is affected by these early childhood circumstances and then it continues, it's it's occupational choices, that matter it's but it's also we see impact on family formation - when to marry when to have children be it earlier or later in life, this is affected. And it matters for for labour market outcomes for career aspirations for, and then for for which jobs for which incomes people earn and so on. So it really matters all the way. We're also still working on projects to see whether it matters for early retirement decisions, for example, in general retirement decisions. So it seems to be that really the whole later life is affected by these early childhood circumstances. Christine Garrington  10:39  Yeah, that's so interesting. And I know that, you know, you are particularly keen to see whether you could actually, you know, really find causal links between early life circumstances and later life outcomes, you know causality, something that we know is always very, very difficult to show. But could you see that in any anything you did? Andreas Peichl  10:58  Yeah so we were looking, we were, of course, trying to establish causal links. But the perfect design research designed for to establish a causal link is to have some random allocation of the treatment and then have a control group. But it's, of course, not possible to randomly assign children to parents. So you need to come up with with different ways for for to identify these causal relationships. And typically, you can look at, at policy policy reforms and one policy that is affecting children are parental leave policies. So there's variation across countries, but also sometimes within countries. So for example, in Germany, there was a difference in these policies between former East Germany and West Germany. And what we see is children where the parents had more parental leave time, paid parental leave, when the kids were born, and were young, that these children later in life were happier. So they had a higher life satisfaction, then compared to children, where the parents didn't have as much paid parental leave, and then didn't take up as much parental leave. So it's really that also that these these policies at the very beginning at the start of the life, so like parental leave, has an impact. And so that's something where policy makers can start with. Another thing is what you can see is in schools, when you have, for example, all day schools versus only schools in the morning, or until until lunch, which is where there's a lot of variation, also within Germany, across states, you see that if you have these all day schools, there is a positive impact on on grades and also then later attending the university track. And in in the end on going to university for children. Which is basically also sort of to some extent levelling the playing field a bit because it's taking out the, the influence of part of the influence of parents on on the learning success of children. And so this is really this having this all day schools and parental leave and related policies can have an impact and can reduce inequalities later in life. So this is really important also for policymakers to think about it. Christine Garrington  13:24  Yeah, some really interesting and important findings from your project, Andrea's and I wonder for you, personally, if you like, was there anything that really surprised you or was a real standout? Andreas Peichl  13:34  So I think there were many interesting findings, and it was not completely unexpected that childhood circumstances matter. But I think what surprised me the most is that in a developed country, like Germany, it's these early childhood circumstances really matter all the way, basically until retirement. And it's and that a lot of policies are in place to with the aim of levelling the playing field, but they do not really succeed. So for example, in Germany, kids from parents with an academic background, about three quarters of these kids go to university, whereas only less than 20% of kids from non-academic background parents go to university. And it's all the schooling and the resources that are put into the system don't seem to help here. And so in many other countries, developed Western countries, it's not better in some countries like the US it's even worse. And so that's really something where I think the the policymakers in the in the next years need to put emphasis on to really make sure that we can somehow achieve equality of opportunities. Christine Garrington  14:52  Yeah, I wonder if you would say that there's anything that we've learned from your project that we really didn't know before? Andreas Peichl  14:58  We always knew that these circumstances matter, but we did not really maybe know how much and some of the causal links, but I think one thing, what we have also investigated and are still working on is also the impact of, for example, genetic endowment. And this is something where in recent years, there were advances where such data became available. And we can really see that, that this really matters for in their associations of your genetic endowment with other outcomes later in life. And this is really something to think about and what to do there. Because the policy implications there are not so clear. Christine Garrington  15:39  Yeah, that's such a fascinating area, for sure. Now, I mean, you've you've said a lot already about policy, which I think has been really, really interesting and important. But for all of those interested in tackling inequality through interventions in policy or practice, I wonder if there are any sort of essential takeaways or recommendations from this work that you would want to share? Andreas Peichl  15:59  So I think, if you want really want to tackle inequalities, much of the focus currently, I think, is on redistribution. So after all, the labour market outcomes are there and people earn incomes, but I think that's, that's really too late. Our project shows you need to start much earlier. So it's really you need to tackle it before people go to the labour market. So really education, and it's important and to to level, the playing field there. And there, especially it's the early childhood education so that other people have already shown that it's the first three or six years that are really, really important. And so for policymakers, they should put much more emphasis on, let's say, schooling and educating teachers for this early childhood education. And in a lot of countries. One thing is that child care, it's typically it's child care and not child education at these ages, as it's called, so it's making sure that the basically the kid survives the day, but it's, it's more important, so you need to really also make sure that the kids start learning something so this and then parents often have to pay for it, varying amounts depending on the country and so on. But so you should make this free for really from the beginning from starting with six, eight months old, this should be free and there needs to be enough educated teachers for the different age range. So to really start with very early ages, because typically what we see in many countries is that the children from from better off parents go to these these institutions, but not those from the from worse off parents and so it's really about the starting there to level the playing field because if you only do it later with redistribution, then it's too late and you've missed all the chances to change something. Christine Garrington  17:57  Thanks to Andres Peichl for discussing the findings and implications of DIAL's IMCHILD project. You can find out more about this and other dial research on the website at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access earlier, the forthcoming episodes.  

In Episode 4 of Series 4 we're talking to Professor Sakari Lemola from the University of Bielefeld and formerly from the University of Warwick. Sakari is one of the Principal Investigators of the DIAL project PremLife, which has been looking at what factors can provide protection and increase resilience for preterm children's life course outcomes.  Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Professor Sakari Lemola. He's from the University of Bielefeld and formally from the University of Warwick, and one of the Principal Investigators of the DIAL project, PremLife, which has been looking at what factors can provide protection and increase resilience for preterm children's life course outcomes. So Sakari, thank-you so much for joining us today. It's great to have you on the DIAL podcast. I wonder if you can start by telling us a bit more specifically what this project has been investigating and why? Sakari Lemola  0:45  So the PremLife project has been particularly focused on the role of protective factors for social and educational transitions after preterm birth. Preterm birth is defined as birth before the 37th gestational week. Then there are two further categories one distinguishes between moderately to late preterm children at its birth between the 32nd and 36th gestational week - moderately and late preterm children. But they're also very preterm children who are born before the 32nd gestational week. So in the PremLife project, we specifically look at both of these groups - the very preterm children and moderately and late preterm children compared to term born children and try to figure out what are their disadvantages they have in their lives? And also, what are protective factors that may improve their outcomes? In some domains they actually do really well when certain protective factors are present. Christine Garrington  1:50  Can you tell us something about how common preterm births are? Sakari Lemola  1:54  The incidence of preterm birth has been rising in the last few decades. So in the UK, around 7% of all babies are born preterm each year. This means that two children in an average sized primary school class are likely to have been born preterm and in spite of the advances in neonatal care of preterm birth in the last few decades, and also decreasing mortality rates, which is a very good thing. Negative long term, sequels and consequences of preterm birth have still remained, particularly for very preterm children, those born before the 32nd gestational week that means eight weeks too early or even earlier than that. That leads to medical complications, which often require distressing but life saving treatments frequent are, for instance, neonatal asphyxia, hypoxia due to immature lungs. Necessary treatment involves ventilation, continuous positive airway pressure, surfactant treatment, but also treatment with stress hormones, prenatal corticosteroids treatments to accelerate the long development. Christine Garrington  3:10  And so Sakari what does life look like for those children compared with their full-term born peers? Sakari Lemola  3:16  They often have an increased risk for poor cognitive development, they show poor educational outcomes, less favourable employment outcomes in adulthood and increased risk for developing mental health problems. And in the PremLife project, we try to specifically answer the question, first of all, of course, what are protective factors for those born preterm. But also we try to focus also to figure out out about what are the social and emotional development of the preterm birth, particularly related to social relationships, wellbeing and things like self-esteem and self-confidence. Christine Garrington  3:58  Now, there's considerable policy interest across Europe and indeed elsewhere and ensuring that obviously, that children get the best possible start and in helping those children who for whatever rate, whatever reason may not get off to the best start. How has your work tied into that sort of policy context would you say? Sakari Lemola  4:17  In the PremLife project, we particularly aim to answer what can be done by policymakers, by practitioners, stakeholders to improve preterm children's and adolescent development? So two focal points were, one was on preschool training in math and literacy. The second point was about how schooling should be organised in general. So we compared school systems in Germany, where so called school tracking takes place. That means children are sorted into higher or lower tracks after the first few school years and we compared Germany with the UK and Finland where no school tracking takes place. That means better and the lower performing children remain in their school classes in the UK and in Finland. But children with special needs they receive remedial teaching but they are not sorted into a different school or different school classes. A third focal point was related to physical activity in childhood and adolescence and what role physical activity actually plays for mental health and social emotional development. Christine Garrington  5:32  A key piece of work from the project involved the assessment of adults who had been born preterm. What was sort of the main thinking, the main driver for for this work? Sakari Lemola  5:42  Previous work has shown that preterm children have an increased risk for poor cognitive development and they also show poor educational outcomes. And particularly, most work has focused on childhood, but less work on later outcomes like adolescence and also in adulthood. In the PremLife project we have now also focused on adolescence and adulthood. And also particularly, we focused on differences in socio-emotional outcomes in adulthood, particularly regarding social relationships, a topic that has previously been neglected So, children who were born preterm in adolescence and in adulthood, they seem to be less satisfied with their social relationships, they are less likely to be partnered in adulthood, and they are also have decreased fertility so they are less likely to have children on their own later in life. Christine Garrington  6:44  Okay, and what were the key things then to emerge about how those people who were born preterm faired later on in life? Sakari Lemola  6:52  So we found out that children born preterm to still show differences compared to their term born peers, when they are grown up particularly. Yeah, they show more mental health problems, particularly anxiety disorders, they show lower wellbeing then full term born children in friendship relationships, they are less likely to experience intimate relationships in adulthood, they are less likely to become parents on their own. Somehow, it is likely that anxiety and shyness play a role which is increased in preterm children, they are more anxious about making a step for instance, in social relationships, and that may lead to lower rates of being partnered and becoming parents themselves. Christine Garrington  7:47  Okay, now, you made some key recommendations from this. Can you talk about those recommendations and just how practitioners, policymakers and those people born preterm might benefit from from those recommendations? Sakari Lemola  8:00  With regard to schooling and education outcomes a key recommendation is the importance of early training and early support in math and literacy. So what we found is that preterm children, they appear to disproportionately benefit from preschool training in math and literacy. So, preterm children who perform well in math, reading and writing when entering into school, so very early on age of five, six years, they were more likely to receive GCSE grades that qualify later to go to university than their term bond peers actually. However, it was exactly the other way around for preterm children who perform poorly in math, reading and writing at school entry, they were less likely to get sufficient GCSE grades compared to their term born peers with similar preschool skills. So their skills at school entry, the skills and math, reading and writing appear to be more important for preterm children than for term born children. And that highlights how important early support and rhythm medial teaching plays there. A second point is that school tracking as it happens currently, is it's the current policy in in Germany, is a negative thing for preterm children probably also for for other children with early difficulties. Where people from a migration background who are not as fluent in German, for instance, as German children so children with more difficulties in school should rather receive remedial teaching but they should not be sorted out into lower performing school tracks as it is currently the case in Germany. We compared it with the outcome of preterm children who go to school in Finland and in the UK, and they seem not to have that. There is no such a negative effect of the school tracking because there is a different policy in the UK and in Finland. Christine Garrington  10:11  And what about the social and emotional side of their lives? What did you find there Sakari? Sakari Lemola  10:15  Here we had focused on two factors that appear to be relevant for preterm children. So this involves sensitive parenting on one hand and physical activity and playing sports in childhood and adolescence and preterm born children benefit from both from sensitive parenting and physical activities, such as playing sports. So both factors seem to increase self confidence and have to be considered as protective factors against the negative outcomes of preterm birth, particularly negative outcomes regarding social and emotional development. Christine Garrington  10:53  So much interesting research to emerge from this project Sakari. I wonder what the key things have been for you, things that have really caught your eye or have been of particular interest to you, things that maybe surprised you? Sakari Lemola  11:05  I think the key findings and surprising findings are that this early training in math and literacy, writing and reading are disproportionately important for preterm children compared to term born children. And this may generalise also to other children who may have a more difficult start in school for them. Most probably it is important to have early support. A second important finding was related to the school tracking that means the grouping of the children to higher and lower performance levels in school. So this has a particularly negative effect on preterm children, as we found out in Germany with an effect that, of course, isn't present in the UK where there's no such good tracking. Christine Garrington  11:53  Okay, that's really helpful. Now, you've been really active in sharing your findings, not not just with academics, but health practitioners and policymakers. I know what has been the response from them, I'm interested to know. Sakari Lemola  12:03  So overall, we had very positive feedback from practitioners and policymakers and we are also confident that the messages will be heard, but of course, time will tell what will be applied and what not. Christine Garrington  12:20  Thanks to Sakari Lemola for discussing the findings and implications of DIAL's PremLife project. You can find out more about this and other DIAL research on the website at dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes.   

In Episode 3 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Richard Blundell. Richard is the Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the principal investigator of a DIAL project looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. In this episode we explore the work done by this project tackling inequalities in adolescence and working life.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this episode, we're delighted to be joined by Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at UCL, and director of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Richard is also the principal investigator of a DIAL project, looking at human capital and inequality during adolescence and working life. So welcome, Richard, thank you very much for joining us today. Richard Blundell  0:40  Thank you, Christine. Christine Garrington  0:41  I wonder if you can just start by telling us a little more specifically what this project has been investigating and why. Richard Blundell  0:48  Yeah, I'd be delighted to. What we're looking at in this project is the evolution of inequality through adolescence and working life. Relating to the education streams, people choose how it affects their outcomes going forward into working life, what happens during working life, what kind of training seems to work, what routes to better jobs are for people who don't, for example, go to higher education, university. Whether training can offset some of the gender gaps that we've been seeing opening up in the labour market, and whether choices in higher education matter for future labour market outcomes. So it's very much about not the early years of school - there's another project looking at that, that runs in parallel with our project, similar investigators, we're working together with them. What we're looking at here then is from adolescence onwards, and how the inequality evolves during adolescence and working life. Christine Garrington  1:58  So one area of focus has been women and work really very, very interested in in this, you've looked at the gender pay gap, the role of childcare, on women's ability to return to work, and indeed, on the role of job training, among other things. So what would you say for you are the key things to have emerged from this particular area of work Richard? Richard Blundell  2:18  Yes, this is obviously absolutely central, the kind of pay gap between men and women and how it opens up through working life is something that's been really hard to tackle and getting behind this, what are the drivers of it, and how to address it is really key to solving some of the most important inequalities that we see in working life. We're working with researchers, mainly economists, and education researchers in Norway, in the UK and in France. That's rather good, because those three countries have rather different systems of routes through education, into work, and different opportunities for women and men as they progress through their working life. And we wanted to understand what those differences could tell us about the gender pay gap. And therefore what policies could be perhaps most useful in addressing the gender pay gap. Christine Garrington  3:25  There are a couple of key things to come out of this one there. Richard Blundell  3:28  Some of its, you know, in some sense, pretty obvious. That is that work experience is really important for pay and for earnings as you go through your career for career progression. And of course, when children come along, women spend a fair amount of time not in work, perhaps still in employment on maternity leave, but not actually gaining the work experience that turns out to be so important in career progressions. We've kind of known that. But it's become really acute, even part-time work is really not sufficient for women to keep up at work with their male colleagues. There are two kind of routes to addressing this. One is to provide good quality childcare, that can have two major benefits. One is it can provide good quality inputs and care for children, which is particularly important, especially in disadvantaged families. But it can also allow women to spend more time at work and developing their career profiles. There's also a very large importance of mothers and fathers spending time with their children. And so when children come along, it's kind of inevitable, really, that work may take second place, and that there'll be less time engaged in work experience in progression. And remember, it's exactly these years in the 20s and early 30s, where all the big career progression is made in working life, and women really fall behind there. So an alternative we've been looking at, and it turns out to be rather interesting is to work instead of on work experience, but on the human capital itself, once women come back into work. Christine Garrington  5:25  So what might that look like in reality, then Richard? Richard Blundell  5:27  So you can imagine the following scenario, a woman or a man, but unfortunately, it's particularly typically, the woman who takes time off, once she returns to work, you can imagine her engaging in a training programme, and that can make up some of the loss. Well, we weren't that optimistic about that to begin with. But we've become more optimistic for two reasons, particularly in the UK and in Norway. In Norway, using the Population Register, we can follow people, right the way through their working careers, we can follow the whole of the Norwegian population. It's an exhaustive data set on everything everybody does - their qualifications, where they're working, their family structure, and so on. And what we found is that it's particularly successful for women to who've had a child early on in their career to return to some kind of schooling qualifications, and that can have a big boost to their career profiles and address some of the gender gaps that occur. In the UK it turns out similarly, women who returned to work spend quite a bit of time in training. And we found that that training, work related on the job training, it has to be accredited, and it has to be work related, those things have a payoff. And we feel that there's real room for improving this type of training. It's all part of designing education and training routes, during your working career, that work much better than the ones we currently have. And boy in in the UK, we've been training way behind in the organisation of formal routes into education and training through your working life, especially for those who don't go to university. Christine Garrington  7:29  Now, I want to move on to talk about COVID. And obviously, although not expected when your project began, the pandemic, obviously, as well as being a terrible thing for us all did provide, however, what I'm guessing was quite a fascinating and important opportunity to look at the impacts of COVID on on people's lives in this context of inequality. So what did you, what did you get to focus on there? Richard Blundell  7:52  Once we were into the first major wave of COVID, it was clear that it was going to exacerbate a lot of the inequalities during adolescence, during education and during working life, let alone health of course. The longer run impact that we're seeing is on learning - the loss of learning, the loss of school time, the loss of engagement in learning, because of being not able to go to school, those children from deprived families have had much, much more learning loss over this period, than the privilege than children in more privileged families. It suddenly became clear that space was really important. But for learning for children, it was absolutely critical. If children didn't have a quiet place with good digital access, a good setup for engaging in online classes, then that already put them behind behind. And there's many studies showing there's a huge gradient in space, in digital access, in access to these kinds of technologies across the income and and socio economic gradient. Losses have been extremely large, up to half a year of schooling loss for many, many children. The second point is that if you're at home with educated parents, who are working from home and still have time to interact with you, you're going to get that input from them. schooling is the great equaliser. It puts children from deprived backgrounds in an environment where they can learn perhaps things that they couldn't learn at home. And that was taken away. The work on Norway and France shows exactly the same there. So learning loss, huge. This doesn't usually happen in recessions by the way. This was very, very specific to COVID. Christine Garrington  9:55  And what about when you looked at matters related to work. Richard Blundell  9:58  All on the job training, apprenticeships just didn't happen. In fact, for those in their early careers, you know - 18, 19, 20 - there was an almost complete end to apprenticeships. Apprenticeships fell back by 70% or more for that younger group, exactly the group that I was mentioning before. It's vital that we get this on the job, accredited training, because they're the ones not going to university, those going to university have been served rather better. I know from my experience here that we've at UCL, we've been keeping online classes and activities going at a pretty high level, actually. And the kind of students that we have here, can engage in that quite fully. But that's very different for a student who didn't make it to university, and who's trying to gain their experience and training through apprenticeships, there's just been no engagement. So this loss of learning has been huge. Christine Garrington  11:11  I'm interested to know whether women were worse affected than men in this context? Richard Blundell  11:16  We thought it might affect women more but in fact, overall in employment and what have you, it's been pretty neutral in the UK, that's just because of the structure of industry we have here. But it hasn't been neutral at home. We've seen, of course, mothers and fathers both having to do more childcare, because schools have been closed during lockdown, or children have been at home during self-isolation, even in periods without lockdown. But mothers of taken, have borne the brunt of the childcare at home, we followed women and families in surveys throughout COVID. And found that although childcare activities have increased for both male and female parents, there really has been an extra load on women. And again, that's going to affect their careers, and other aspects of their life going forwards. All those things that we were concerned about before COVID. And that were the absolute centre of this project have all become all the more heightened through COVID. And I think the policy recommendations that have come out of this project are very, very relevant for the post COVID world that we're now entering. Christine Garrington  12:41 Yeah, I wonder how how easy it has been? Or how difficult I guess it's probably the better question to to feed those recommendations in such a fast moving event that COVID has been and, you know, was it possible for that to feed through all of those findings, all of those important things into the policy sort of making cycle in order to try to mitigate some of those impacts? Or, or was that that must have been very challenging. Richard Blundell  13:09  For policy makers, at least civil servants have been very open, of course, to try and to figure out what's been going on. And remember, the initial policy responses, at least on simple measures of inequality have been remarkably successful. You know, we haven't ever had a recession, really, where there's been so much support thrown into the economy, of course, we're gonna have to pay for that. But some of the short run impacts, I think were mitigated, what we've focused on here, are the longer run ones, you know the the loss of learning, the loss of training, the loss of work experience, they're not showing up even yet, they're going to show up in the next few years. And it's critical, we have an opportunity now to address them. And there is a lot of interest across the whole policy world, and government and around the world. In addressing this. In fact, as part of this project, we fed into the G20 meetings last year in Rome, and a major part of our work was used to suggest a kind of coordinated approach to designing the best interventions now to address what's been going on with loss of education, and loss of work experience and training across more or less the whole developed world. Christine Garrington  14:27  Really great to hear that there's been such an appetite for findings like these important findings to feed into policy, but I guess the devil is in the detail, right? Richard Blundell  14:37  Unfortunately, these are gonna have to be huge programmes. And the thing about huge programmes is that they can be hugely expensive and not necessarily very effective. We need to get this right. We need to get these education interventions and these training interventions done in the most efficient and effective way. And that's where we can learn from other countries that do at least some things better, some things worse, we're all learning from each other. And this project which brought in, you know, Norway, which has a pretty effective system of education and training right across the board, not just for those going to university, which is where we tend to focus. And France, which has, again, a very different system. So we can learn, we can learn from that. But yeah, I see a long impact of COVID, not just long COVID. But it's hidden a bit at the moment, by the way, because of the uptick in the economy. You know, there's quite a demand for certain types of jobs, as you'd expect, when there's, you know, we're coming out of a big, big recession like that, but I'm pretty sure that that's hiding these big losses, they will turn up over time. So yeah, there's, there's a big hunger for this. We're feeding a lot of a huge amount and working a lot with Department of Education here with the Treasury on what what should be done with other policy groups. And similarly in Norway, and France. Christine Garrington  16:08  Now, I know we've talked about the labour market a bit, but I wonder whether there's anything else that you really would like to stress about that side of things, because this was a major part of your work? Richard Blundell  16:19  We had to invent things on the hoof and everyone was involved in that the furloughs remember, the furlough system didn't exist. In fact, in the UK, and in many other economies, we've not, we've not been particularly good at providing general what one might call social insurance. That is, if people fall on hard times get reduced earnings, you know, do we make up the difference? At least in the in the shortish run, we don't particularly do that very well, in the UK, we target very low incomes. We have a very targeted universal credit and benefit system. So it does prop up incomes at the bottom. And it does that actually quite well. Not always administratively perfectly, but it does it. But if you look at someone who's on a kind of lower middle income, which is the group that really was hit during COVID, there's very little support for them. Universal credit doesn't do a great job, it just doesn't replace their incomes - the furlough system did it replaced 80% of their income. And, and it was very successful in doing that, to the extent that as I said, you know, income falls and inequality increases didn't happen in the way they often do during recessions. So in that sense, these policies have been very successful. On the downside, you know, they're the things I mentioned, they've been very good at short run income support, at least for for many groups. But they've not been very good yet at addressing these losses in, in human capital investments. And work is about two things. It's about earning money today. And it's about in investing in skills that will earn you even more, or give you a better career profile, at least in the future. And it's those longer term investments that I feel, or a fear of being really left to one side. Christine Garrington  18:17  I wonder whether you've seen anything that relates to how these inequalities manifest in respect of where people live, where they come from, is there something around place that's quite important as well? Richard Blundell  18:28  We kind of knew there were geographical differences and differences by family background, it just, you know, we can see that in workings of our society. But I didn't realise how big they were. And I think it's been quite a shock to us. It's not surprising, you know, that the emphasis now is on levelling up, at least it's suggested it is in education is very important. What we found in this research, you know, looking at how well people do at school, and then into university, if they go there, and then into work is really striking, you know, some areas of the UK, for example, and this would be true in other economies as well, by the way, very few children actually make it to university. Take areas like Grimsby or Skegness those kinds of places we almost think of as left behind communities, children just don't do so well. And not only that, if they do manage to get into higher education, they often don't return to those communities. So those communities, once you look at people in work that just have many, many fewer people with higher education qualifications and skills to other areas. Let's call them the thriving areas, many of which are in the southeast or in the more successful cities. And these differences are really important because they're having huge impacts in the way people think about their well being levelling up political discourse. Christine Garrington  20:07  You talked earlier a bit about their fabulous data in Norway that you had available to you. But we've also got some great data here in the UK, haven't we, particularly when it comes to tracking young people through education? Richard Blundell  20:20  We have the National Pupil database that follows all children through school, through higher education, or through their education and training and into work right up to about the age of 28/29 now. So we're, and that will go on. So this is a remarkable, a remarkable dataset of the kind that you would typically think of finding only in a Scandinavian country. So this has allowed us to do these differences. And we can look at two children doing exactly the same courses in the same university, and just look at the differences of outcome by parental background and they're still there, they're still quite important. So parental background really matters. But so does course choices and university choices. These things, I guess we knew that have a big impact. All these things that people are doing through their their education, and early working lives and at university have a long lasting impact. And many of the differences you can take back to geography, and parental background, and the early education investments. This is really providing a real detail in what's driving the inequalities that we see at least in working, working careers. Christine Garrington  21:47  Yeah, on that note, I'd like to put a final question to you really about, you know, for those interested who in tackling inequality, obviously, including yourself and your fellow researchers, the wonderful team that you've talked about there. But for those who have responsibility for creating interventions through policy or practice, are there any essential takeaways, implications or recommendations for your project that you'd like to share? Richard Blundell  22:11  If there's something we're going to really have to address the in the UK and elsewhere it's these geographic divides. It's what is creating a lot of the political turmoil, I think, whether it be almost in any elections, we've seen the left behind areas. You know, the evidence is clear, these geographical divides, by socioeconomic background, and by areas are really important and long lasting. And it's really up to us to figure out the best ways now, to address them as quickly as possible. They've been exacerbated through COVID and so they become even more urgent, I think, in the policy debate. Christine Garrington  22:56  And I guess my final final question, is there something specific that we should be focusing on? Richard Blundell  23:03  There's a lot, but let me just pick on one, it's a kind of old topic, it's the it's the point about good jobs. You can have successful interventions for people who come from, you know, backgrounds or haven't been quite successful at education investments, you can make better choices during education. And we've seen how, with the data and work we've been doing, how that can be improved. But it's really the match of the skills, the firms and the kind of work related nature of these training investments that's so important. And what we have learned here is that, you know, small interventions on one aspect of this are not going to solve the problems. So you can think of the example of the, of just providing a job. What we've seen here is that just providing a job, say, Amazon warehouse job is not really going to help much with career profiles, you really need to match workers, develop their skills, and bring the right kind of firms that can enhance career profiles into these more left behind deprived areas. If we can get that to work, then there's great hope that we can do something for the careers and wage profiles of people who've been doing rather less well than we'd like in society. Christine Garrington  24:39  Thanks to Richard Blundell for joining us for this episode of the DIAL podcast. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org and also on the IFS website at ifs.org.uk. Much of the work of Richard and his colleagues has also fed into the Deaton Review on inequality so do take a look there as well. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.

In Episode 5 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Amrit Dhir, Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz – a team of technologists committed to getting decision makers the data they need to drive better criminal justice outcomes.  Transcript Todd Landman  0:00  Welcome to the Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Amrit Dhir. Amrit is the Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz, a team of technologists committed to getting decision makers the data they need to drive better criminal justice outcomes. He has previously spent over a decade at the intersection of technology and new business development, working, for example at Sidewalk Labs, Google for Startups and Verily. Today, we'll be exploring the practical uses of technology and data in the criminal justice system. So Amrit, it's great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track. Welcome from California. Amrit Dhir  0:44  Thank you so much, I'm really glad to be here. Todd Landman  0:46  It's great for you to join us. And I want to start with a simple question. We had a guest - Sam Gilbert - on our last episode, we made this distinction between the sort of data for good and data for bad and there's a very large sort of argument out there about surveillance capitalism, the misuses of data, you know, behavioural microtargeting and all these sorts of issues. And yet I see that where you're working at Recidiviz there's a kind of data for good argument here around using technology and data to help criminal justice systems and the healthcare sector. So just briefly, could you tell us about this data for good and data for bad distinction? Amrit Dhir  1:19  Yeah, well, as with most things, I think it's difficult to pigeonhole anything into one of those camps, everything it seems, can be used for good or bad. And so data itself is not one or the other. I think it's about the use, I think that's what Sam was getting at with you as well. With Recidiviz, you know, what we've understood is that data that's been collected over a long period of time, especially in the context of the United States, and our unfortunate kind of race to mass incarceration, from basically the 1970s until about mid-2010s. We've collected a lot of data along the way, and we're not actually using or understanding that data. And so what we do at Recidiviz is we bring that data together, so make it something that can be better understood and better utilised, to help reduce prison populations to help drive better outcomes. So we're focused on taking data that's been, again, collected over quite a long period of time and consistently collected, but also making it better understandable. Todd Landman  2:17  So this sounds like big, messy, disparate, fragmented data, is that correct? Amrit Dhir  2:22  Most of those things, most of the time. It's definitely fragmented most of the time, it's not always necessarily what we'd call big. Because, you know, coming from Google, I think of big in the terms of, you know, search query type volume. So in corrections, it's not necessarily that big, but it is certainly messy, and it is certainly fragmented. Todd Landman  2:42  You know we had a guest on Rights Track, some while back, David Fathi from the American Civil Liberties Union, he explained to us the structure of the American sort of prison system, not justice in itself, but prison system with, you know, 50 state prison systems, plus a federal prison system and a mix of public and private prisons. So it's a mixed picture in terms of jurisdiction, the use of incarceration and of course, the conditions of incarceration. So what's the sort of data that's being collected that you find useful at Recidiviz? Amrit Dhir  3:13  Yeah, I'll actually add a piece of that as well, you're exactly right to say, you know, every one of the 50 states has a different system, the federal system is itself separate. But then there's also county jails. And those systems are running completely separately from even the states that they're in. So it is messy. And the data also extends, by the way, so we're talking about what we consider the back half of the system. So once someone has already gone to prison, we think of that as the back half. Whereas there's a front half of the system as well, which is the courts, your prosecutor and defence attorneys, and up to policing. And so all of those different segments have their different datasets as well. At Recidiviz we're starting at the back half, largely, because we think there's a lot more impact to be had there, at least for now. And the data extends to many things. So it can be first of all, admissions data. When someone comes into a facility, what sentence did that person come in with? Where is that person going to be in the facility? As in like, where's that bed? And then, as often happens, there are transfers between prisons, within prisons. That's another set of data. There are programmes that the person may be participating in. Some of these are built with the spirit of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Those are important and knowing how they work and when they work, and if they work is important. And then when someone gets out of prison, that's not the end either. We've whole infrastructure of supervision. And broadly, those are grouped into two categories - parole and probation. And someone may be back out in their community and still under a degree of supervision that's more than what someone who has not been in prison goes through. They have to check in with their parole officer. They have certain requirements, they have certain restrictions. All of those are data points as well. How are you checking in with your parole officer? Did you have to take a drug test? Did you ask for permission to leave the state, all of those things. And as you can imagine, even just by the list I've given you, which is just a very small percentage of it, all of those are sitting in different data silos and are interacted with by different people within the system and it gets pretty tricky. Todd Landman  5:21  And you collect data on the sort of sentencing? So you know an analysis of that plus demographic makeup of the prison population, time served? And also, the use of the death penalty and or deaths in custody - is that data that you can collect? Amrit Dhir  5:37  Yes, so we can do all that. And I'm glad you pointed out racial and demographic data, because that's a big part of what we do and what we highlight, because you may not be surprised to hear that in the US, there are like pretty severe disparities when it comes to race, ethnicity. And these are things that departments of corrections. So those are the executive agencies within each state, we usually call them department of corrections, although they'll have different names in different states. They have this data, and they want to make better sense of it. Their stakeholders want to understand it better. So generally, these agencies report to the governor, but they're also accountable to the legislature. So there's a degree of sharing that data or better unpacking that data that's important. Then we also have, I would broadly, categorise, and we say these kinds of things a lot where there's broad categorizations and then there's also much more detailed ones. But broadly, you can think of this as public data, and then departments of corrections data. So the public data is what's available anyway - we can go out there and find without any data sharing agreement with any agency. As these are government agencies where this data is required to be public. And so you'll find researchers and universities and different organisations accessing this data and publishing it or analysing it, we do that also. But we also get data sharing agreements directly with departments of corrections, and help them unpack that as well. So there's a kind of complimentary interaction there between the two datasets. Todd Landman  7:09  I understand. And how do you actually reduce incarceration through data analysis? I'm perplexed by that statement you made quite early on when you were talking to us. Amrit Dhir  7:18  There's a couple things and I'll categorise this. My broad categories into three categories. There are leadership tools, line staff tools, and then public tools. So let me start with public tools, because I think that's more related to what we just talked about in the previous question. The public tools are ones that are available to you and me. And so there's two that you can look on our website and find right now. One is a public dashboard that we call spotlight. As of the date of this recording there are two that have been published one for North Dakota and one for Pennsylvania. I encourage everyone to go check those out. If you just Google, you know our name Recidiviz and Pennsylvania, you'll see it come up as the first result. And there you can see that all the data in a accessible way. So the 'viz' in Recidiviz stands for data visualisation. We worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to better represent the data that they have, so that the public can see it. And you can see the breakdown, by ethnicity, by district, by sex by other filters, and really get in there in some detail and see what's happened also over time. So that's one that's the public dashboard. That's largely to raise awareness. And it's something that when you talk to departments of corrections, you learn that they have lots of FOIA requests, which are Freedom of Information Act requests, so requests from media, from researchers, from the public, but also from the legislature. And so that's one thing that we do that just broadens the conversation. Another are what we call policy memos. If you go to our website, and or if you just type in Recidiviz.org/policy, these are one-page memos that we have our data scientists put together that assess the impact of a particular administrative or legislative policy proposal. So imagine that you are looking to Pennsylvania for example, wanting to make a change to geriatric parole, or if you want it to end the criminalization of marijuana, we can then and we have gone in there and analyse the data that's publicly available. And sometimes we also access our data with collaboration with the DOC. And we can tell you what the both impact on the number of basic liberty person years that are returned. How people will get out of prison earlier or not go to prison at all, as well as how much money the state in these cases will save. And so that's a great way to inform policymakers to say hey, this is actually a good policy or a bad policy, because it's going to get people out of prison and it's going to also save you money. Todd Landman  9:57  Yeah the concept it's like a variable called liberty person years that you use. And then of course, it's almost like a time series interrupted model where if you get new legislation, you can look at that liberty person years before the legislation and after to judge the degree to which that legislation may or may not have made a difference, right? Amrit Dhir  10:16  Exactly right. And I encourage folks just to go check, check some of those memos out, there's probably like 50 on there now. And they're very easy to understand, very easy to access. They're all one page. They're all very beautifully visualised. Because you can take this very, as you said, messy and fractured datasets, but actually come to some pretty simple insights. And I would say simple and actionable. And so that's what we do there. And that was a long description of public data, but I can go into the other two, if you're ready for it. Todd Landman  10:43  Yes, please. Amrit Dhir  10:44  Okay. So working backwards, we'll go to line staff tools. And so this line staff, meaning people who are working within corrections or on supervision. And let me take the example of supervision first, because one thing that's interesting and that I actually learned only while at Recidiviz is that half of prison admissions in the US every year, come from supervision. Meaning people who are getting their parole or probation revoked and are going back to prison. That's half of the emissions we get every year. And that's a huge number. Todd Landman  11:15  Wow. Amrit Dhir  11:15  And so this, you can think of this as the back end of the back end, it's the very last piece. And so for Recidiviz we were kind of assessing where we should start, that seemed like the right place to do so because the impact was just so great. Now, put yourself in the shoes of a parole officer. These folks have pretty difficult jobs in that they often have, you know, up to 100 and sometimes more, we've seen up to 120 people that they are I'll use a verb 'serving' as a parole officer. So the idea is you got people that have been returned to the community, they've been in prison, they now are trying to get jobs, they're trying to get job training. They're trying to reintegrate into their communities, and the parole officer is there to help them do that, and keep track of how they're doing. Now, that's one thing to do if you got 20 people, you want to keep track of and help and connect to the right resources, but if you've got 100, and you're supposed to meet with them every month, it becomes impractical. And that ends up meaning sometimes that parole officers aren't doing as good a job as they'd like to do. Because it's just too hard, just too much to manage. Todd Landman  12:22  You need a structured database approach. Amrit Dhir  12:24  Exactly. So that's where data can be very useful, because we can automate a lot of what a parole officer needs to do. And rather than having to check, you know, we've heard up to 12 different datasets to figure out where are the programmes my the people I'm serving are have available to them? When do I know if I need to do a home visit? Where do I find a list of employers that I can send them to? Where are housing options for them? All these are in different places, but we at Recidiviz, bring them all together, give them an easy-to-use tool, so that we can actually service them even you know, on their smartphones, in an app, to show them, hey, did you know that this person is actually eligible to be released from parole if they just upload a pay stub? And hey, do you want to just take a pay stub with your phone, and we can do it for you? I mean, how much easier that is than you having to go through all 100, figure out who's eligible based on your own recall or some other antiquated system and kind of struggle to try to help people. We can help you do that. And that's a big thing that we've done. Todd Landman  13:22  I mean it's almost like an E-portfolio approach that there's this way to archive parolees meeting certain milestones and conditions. And it makes the management of those cases so much more straightforward. Whilst there's also a record of that management that makes it easier for the parole officer to serve the people that they are serving. Amrit Dhir  13:42  Exactly. You got it exactly right. And by the way, there's, you know, a degree of nudging that can be done in this as well, if you're familiar with like the Cass Sunstein and others, behaviour psychology, but how, you know, instead of saying, hey, this person needs a drug test, and have that'd be the first thing that you prioritise. I mean you can say, hey, this person needs help finding a job. And here are some resources, here's some employers in the area that we know employ people who are formerly incarcerated. It's a great way to actually not only automate and make the life of the parole officer easier and better, but also to kind of encourage the better behaviours within those communities. Todd Landman  14:16  Now that makes sense. So what's the third channel then? Amrit Dhir  14:18  Ahhh the third one is leadership tools. And this is for the directors and their deputies, the most senior people in a department of corrections, they may come in. And actually what we're seeing now is that a lot of the people who are coming in today and are sitting in these roles are reformers. They believe that the size of our criminal justice system in the United States is just too large. And they are motivated to improve outcomes. And they're focusing on things like recidivism, which is a term for people coming back to prison after being released. And that's a number you want to have low naturally. But historically, what happens - actually not even you know what historically -what happens today. He is that these recidivism reports will come out maybe every three years. Yeah. So if you're a director, and by the time they come out, they're almost three years old. So you're almost like because the six year timelines, and you want to know, hey, I instituted this new reform this new programme, I want to know if it's been successful, you won't know until a couple years out whether it worked. And so what we do instead is to give you real time data, we can tell you what's happening on your team and in your agency on a real time basis. And also project out based on what we're seeing with some meaningful kind of population projections as well. So that helpful. Todd Landman  14:34  That's fascinating. And let me ask you just another technical question. So when people are released from prison, is it typical for them to also have a sort of GPS tag on their leg for a certain period of time? And does that form any of the data that you look at? Amrit Dhir  15:52  So it depends? It's a very good question. And it's one of the more controversial topics today in this space, and especially in the Reform Movement, there's a concern that we may be heading towards, from mass incarceration to mass incarceration, and that people will be monitored and supervised within their communities. And I think that is a very meaningful concern that we need to be careful of, because we don't want that to happen. But to broadly answer your question about the state of this today, it depends on where you are, it depends on the county depends on the state depends on all those things, in terms of whether you are wearing a device that electronically monitors, you know, we don't track that ourselves, that's something that we do or want to do. Our approach is to helping people get off of supervision and get into programmes and other kinds of initiatives that help them on their way. Todd Landman  16:43  Excellent. So this discussion really opened up into, you know, the bad side of the question, I guess, you know, you just have to go into this with our eyes open, I suspect that you're triangulating a lot of data. You're providing that in real time on dashboards, a lot of it's in the public domain. What are the risks around this? What are the pitfalls? What's the risk of re-identification? What's the risk of, you know, lapsing into kind of credit scoring philosophies? And just, as you said about the tags, there's worry about that kind of, you know, E-surveillance and E- carceration. Equally, someone could backward engineer some of your data and actually profile people. So, what's the downside of this approach? Amrit Dhir  17:21  Yeah, that was a great list. So there's certainly a concern of bias entering any analysis of a dataset. And we are very careful about that. So one thing to note is that everything that we do is open source. So it's open to the technology community to take a look at what's kind of under the hood. And that's important, because we would do want to make sure that we are not only participating and contributing to the broader ecosystem that are, in this case, tech and criminal justice ecosystem, but that we're also held accountable to them. So that's the first thing that we do, we also are very mindful and transparent about our data ethics policies, and how we handle those kinds of questions and sometimes ambiguities. So if you look at, for example, the spotlight dashboard that I mentioned that you'd find for Pennsylvania, North Dakota, you will see in the methodology that we explain what happens when there's a question. So for example, if someone puts down three different ethnicities, how do we manage that in the data visualisation that just shows them as one. Our approach there is transparency and engagement. Todd Landman  19:31   Have you done any links with the ACLU on this? Because they're quite interested in prison conditions. They're interested in incarceration, sentencing, etc. Do you do any kind of briefing with the ACLU? Amrit Dhir  20:16  Yeah, so two things actually on that. I will take them in reverse order. So first of all, we do work with ACLU. If you look at our website, on the policy page, which again, are those one page memos, the ACLU has requested a number of those. And there's naturally different chapters of the ACLU in different states in different parts of the country. And we work with different stakeholders within the ACLU as well on those. The other piece, though, get one of the back to what you said about three strikes. There's another piece of that I think people may not be as familiar with it. I certainly wasn't, which is this issue of technical revocations. So if you're on supervision, like I said, half of prison emissions every year are from revocation of your supervision, meaning you're going back to prison, from parole or probation. But half of those, so a quarter of all emissions every year are from technical revocations. And those are when someone breaks a rule, that is not a law for the rest of us. Right. So it's not that they stole something, it's not that they got caught breaking a law, that they broke a rule of their parole, and sometimes these are ones that you and I would feel horrified to learn of. So that, you know, we've got examples of people, for example, going to an open mic night where there was alcohol presence, and that person wasn't allowed to be around alcohol. Being in the wrong County. Being out past curfew. All of these things that are, and you know there are anecdotes all over the place of the kinds of things that send people back to prison that we as society would not tolerate. And those are also some of what we're reducing. Todd Landman  21:49  That's amazing, that sort of distinction to draw between, you know, breaking a rule and breaking the actual law, I guess the rules follow from the law. But I get your point in terms of, you know, how would somebody know if they crossed the county line, particularly if they're at an area they don't know well. So this has been a fascinating exploration with the ways in which you have triangulated datasets, made them more visible, put them into real time, and I have to reflect on what you said. I mean, I grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So I'm going to immediately read all your Pennsylvania data. I actually grew up near a prison in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, you know, so it'd be interesting to see how things have moved on from the time that I lived there many moons ago. I won't tell you how long ago that was. But, but this is a really good conversation for us to have around some of the ways in which different types of data can be leveraged for good. And also some of the challenges of that, or the misuse of that information, as well as the sort of things that you don't collect, you know, the fact that you don't collect data on these tags. And that that varies, of course, and the variation you see in terms of the population that you're collecting data on varies because of the fragmentation of the US prison system and the sort of federal system that the US is structured in, but also data that no one really brought together in one place before. And I think that when we hear this data for good argument, we hear a lot of people saying we're actually bringing datasets that haven't been brought together before in order to derive insights from those data and do something that is for good and brings about positive social changes result. So I just think this tour that you've given us today is absolutely fantastic. And on behalf of the Rights Track thanks so much for being on this episode with us today. Amrit Dhir  23:25  Oh, thank you for having me. It's been fun. Thank-you. Christine Garrington  23:29  Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

In Episode 2 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast, we are in discussion with Professor Hans van Kippersluis from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Hans, a professor of applied economics, is the Principal Investigator on the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities, which has used innovative methods and data to explore the interplay between nature and nurture in generating health and education inequalities.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series four, we're looking at what's been learned from some of the DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer term consequences might be. For this second episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Hans van Kippersluis, Professor of Applied Economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. And Principal Investigator of the DIAL project, Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities - put more simply nature versus nurture. So Hans, welcome to the podcast. And I wonder if you can start by talking us through what researchers working on this project have actually been looking into. Hans van Kippersluis  0:42   What we've been doing in this project is essentially incorporating the recent availability of genetic data into social science and most prominently economic analysis. And so most of our work has focused on the interplay between genes and the environment. So in the introduction, you mentioned nature versus nurture, but actually more accurately, what we're doing is nature and nurture jointly into how they shape essentially education and health outcomes. And I think this is also the main innovation of our project, because biologists have studied nature before; social scientists have  of course, extensively studied nurture, but not many have studied the interplay, the interaction between the two. And I think this was sort of the main innovation for why we got the funding some five years ago. And so what we have done is mostly studying this interplay. But along the way, we have also made some methodological contributions to a field which is very new. Then we've also used genetic data to test all their theories, and also, I think, enrich the framework of equality of opportunity. Christine Garrington  1:35   Yeah, fantastic project. And as you've just said, you've made unprecedented use of genomic as well as survey data in the research, tell us a bit more about the information that you've been able to access? And how you've been able to use it? Hans van Kippersluis 1:47   Yeah, sure. So the interesting thing is that more and more social science datasets, so data sets that have been traditionally used by social scientists, and these are mostly extensive surveys,  are now collecting DNA information from their respondents. And this is often from blood or saliva. And what they did is basically, so more than 99% of DNA is the same across human beings. And so what we are using is only this remaining less than 1% of the variation. And these are called snips. And snips are points of your DNA that differ across human beings. And there's roughly 1 million of them. And so what we do, basically also other people have done is sort of aggregating these tiny effect sizes into an index. And this is called the polygenic index. And this is telling us something about your genetic predisposition towards a certain outcome. And this is quite interesting, because this data, this new variable, essentially can be added to existing datasets. And so we have a wealth of information that has been collected in the past on surveys on existing data. And then we simply add one indicator, one new variable. This is telling us something about people's genetic predisposition. And just to be clear, this is not like a deterministic variable. It also exhibits quite a bit of measurement error and noise. But at the group level, and that's what we have been doing is it sort of does tell us something about your genetic predisposition, and it can help us understand how certain life outcomes like education, like health, are shaped by the interplay between your genetic predisposition and your environment. Christine Garrington  3:07   Indeed, let's talk a little bit now then about some of the research findings. And you know, what's come out of this now, one piece of research we've spoken about this actually, in an earlier podcast episode, actually drew links between mothers smoking in pregnancy and their baby's birth weight. I wonder if you can just sort of summarise that for you what actually came out of that what we learned Hans van Kippersluis 3:28   this was work with with my PG students, Rita Dias Pereira and colleague Cornelius Rietveld. And for birthweight we knew that maternal smoking is one of the key environmental risk factors. And we also knew from genetic studies that genes matter in determining your birth weight. And so what we did here was essentially looking at the interaction between the two. So can higher polygenic indices protect against maternal smoking? And the answer, unfortunately, perhaps was no, in the sense that we found very, very little interaction between genes and the environmental exposure of maternal smoking. So it seems that both matter, but there doesn't seem to be any meaningful interaction between the two. So that was, to some extent surprising, but on the other hand, also perhaps logical in the sense that maternal smoking is apparently such a devastating environmental exposure that even higher genetic predisposition cannot protect you from this. Christine Garrington  4:16   Yeah, really interesting. And anybody who's interested in that can listen to Rita actually discussing that in series three, Episode Seven, of our DIAL podcast called Mums Who Smoke and their Baby's Birthweight. So do check that out if you're interested to know a little bit more about what Rita and all of the all of your colleagues did. Now, there have been some interesting findings Hans from the project around the role of genes in a child's education and specifically around parental investments. I wonder if you can explain a bit more about what you were looking to understand there.  Hans van Kippersluis 4:50   Yes, yeah, so this is one of my favourites studies. It's joint work. Also with another PG student   Muslimova and my colleagues Stephanie von Hinke, Cornelius Rietveld and Fleur Maddens. And the starting point there was actually a theory of human capital formation from economics. And it dates back all the way to the work of Nobel laureate Gary Becker. And one of the crucial assumptions in that model is that parental investments are complementary to your genetic endowments. And this assumption is actually very hard to test because often we do not have a good measure of endowments. And if we do, it may already be contaminated by parental investment. So many people, for example, use birth weights. But of course, well as we just learned, maternal smoking may have a large effect on your birth weight, so it's not fully free of your parents' behaviour. And the other thing is that your parental investments often respond to endowments. So if you have a child with specific needs, of course, parents respond to this. So the problem of testing this assumption is that endowments and investments are actually always very closely entangled. And that makes it very hard to test whether they are complementary or not. So what we did here was using one's genetic endowment, and that is actually has a very nice property and that it's fixed at conception, so it cannot be affected by your parental investments. And what we did was using the child's birth order to proxy for parental investments. So what we know from earlier studies is that firstborns tend to get more parental attentions on average than later points. So this is one after all, because they have undivided attention until the arrival of later borns. And this extra parental investment is actually independent of your endowments. It simply derives from the fact that you have more time if you have one child as opposed to multiple children. So what we did in this study is looking within families comparing siblings that were first born to later borns, and then further analysing whether this firstborn advantage was stronger for firstborn siblings who randomly inherited the higher polygenic index for educatio. I think this was a nice, very unique setting to test this theoretical assumption that parental investments are complements to genetic endowment. Christine Garrington  6:45   What did you find here? Then what do we learn about the role of genetics in affording in affording certain children advantages later on in life? Hans van Kippersluis 6:53   So what we found was that indeed, the firstborn effect seems to be stronger for siblings who randomly inherited higher polygenic indices. And I think this is evidence in favour of this theoretical assumption of complementarity between endowments and investments. And it also means that your genetic predisposition cannot just give you a direct advantage. But it also means that this advantage may be kind of amplified by your parental or your teacher investments. And this complementarity, I think also suggests once again, that for disadvantaged children, so the other side of the coin, we need to start very, very early and follow up these early investments also with data investments to make them as productive as possible. Christine Garrington  7:29   So Hans, some fascinating research and findings. I wonder if there's been a standout or surprising finding for you from the project.  Hans van Kippersluis 7:36   I  think methodologically, what we've learned is that there's still a world to explore in terms of using genetic data in social science, because what we have seen is that polygenic indices can be a great tool to improve our understanding of the things we just talked about. But I think the way we use these polygenic indices, are shall I put this sort of a bit naive, in some sense, because what we do is we first construct a score or an index by regressing an outcome on all of these 1 million individual genetic variants. And as you can imagine, if you do these 1 million regressions, then it will be a lot of noise in  these coefficients, and these estimates also come with some uncertainty. And what is surprising to me, what I've learned is that many researchers simply sort of seek to use this polygenic index as if it's some kind of a transferable and deterministic index. And there's hardly any account in the literature on the uncertainty in this index. And I think what we have done in one paper is actually showing how this uncertainty is sort of leading to different conclusions, because what we did is basically looking at the polygenic index for cardiovascular disease. And in cardiovascular disease, more and more people are using these polygenic indices, this genetic data for personalised decisions regarding, for example, the use of statins. And what we did was sort of constructing six different polygenic indices using different discovery sample using different methods of constructing this polygenic index. And what was fascinating and actually maybe astonishing to see is that only 6% of the individuals are in the top quintile of the polygenic indices, if you look across these six different ways of constructing the same polygenic index. And I think this is fascinating, because it shows that even though polygenic indices are now increasingly being used, apparently it matters a great deal about how you construct these things. And this is one thing we have shown, I think this is quite remarkable, and also an important methodological contribution. Christine Garrington  9:19   A really important contribution to how this research might develop in the future. Right, absolutely. And then just finally, Hans, I wonder what this all of this work tells us about the interplay between genes in our environment, or, as we've talked about nature and nurture, not nature versus nurture, in better understanding and in tackling inequality. Hans van Kippersluis 9:41   So it's very hard, I think, to give sort of direct policy leads or implications, but there's a few leads. One thing is that I think we need to start early. We knew already that inequalities arise early in life. And I think this focus on genetics gives us yet another clue that it's very important to start early. And also because of the work I mentioned about complementarities, it's very clear that later investments are more effective if the person has had already more investments early in their life. So that's clearly one more general policy implication, I think. And I think our work is also showing how sort of genes and environment shaping jointly inequalities. And I think this has important implications for the discussions about equality of opportunity. I mean, if you look at politicians across the entire political spectrum, everybody seems to be agreeing that equality of opportunity is a great thing, and that your health and your income should not depend on your parental background. But let me ask two questions about this. One is, what about your genes? There's hardly any discussion about whether inequalities that are deriving from genetic advantages or disadvantages are fair or not. And what we've also shown in this project is that parental background seems to reinforce genetic advantages. So even if you believe that parental background should not be leading to inequalities and your genes may, then how do you treat the interaction between the two? So I think we should have a clear discussion here a societal discussion about what is fair here. And I think that's why our research is very important, because 30 years studies have already shown that people's preferences for redistribution, for example, depends strongly on whether they perceive inequalities as fair or unfair. So I don't think we are political activists here. But I do think that showing how genes and the environment jointly shape outcomes such as health, education, income, but really help people to make up their own mind as to what they regard as fair or unfair inequalities. Christine Garrington  11:23   Hans thank you very much some some big advances here. But still some big questions to answer, I guess is the is the summary but fascinating work and thank you for taking time to share it with us. So finally, thanks to Hans van Kippersluis  for discussing the findings and implications of DIAL dial project Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities. You can find out more about this and other dial research on the website at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode, which is produced and presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you find your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes.    

In Episode 1 of Series 4 of the DIAL Podcast we're in discussion with Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell is the Principal Investigator on Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities while Helen is a Research Associate on the project Social InEquality and its Effects on Child Development.    Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to inequality over the lifecourse. In Series 4 we're looking at what's been learned from DIAL projects about how and when inequality manifests in our lives, and what its longer-term consequences might be. For this first episode of the series, we're delighted to be joined by Professor Kjell Salvanes and Dr. Helen Wareham to talk about the impact of inequality on the lives of children. Kjell heads up a project called Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities, while Helen is a research associate on the project, Social InEquality and its Effects on child Development. So Helen, let's start with the work that you and your team have been doing, looking at how young children are getting on and where inequalities might be occurring. I wonder if you can just start by explaining really a bit more about that the main focus of your project. Helen Wareham  0:50  So the main focus of SEED, that's the acronym we have the project is to identify the mechanisms that social inequalities have on children's, particularly their oral language development, and where we can try and identify what patterns there are in those inequalities, and the impact that it has, and whether those continue throughout children's lives, and into adulthood as well. We're a team of around 20 researchers, and we're quite a broad range of specialists. So we have everything from speech therapists, developmental psychologists, but also medical staff, so ENT, ear, nose and throat specialists. And we're spread across a number of countries, as well. So there's a sort of focus around the countries involved in the project. So that's Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, but also how we can look across those different countries and with broader collaborations with teams in France, the USA and Australia as well. Christine Garrington  1:44  So tell us a bit about what your team of 20 researchers in all these different countries has been actually doing over the last few years. Helen Wareham  1:51  In the three main countries for the project, we have really rich cohort data. So that's where people have been interviewed they've there's been kind of assessments that have happened with children, quite often from birth, and then they've been tracked at regular points throughout their lives. And these create really rich data sources. So we can look at what happens in children's lives and how that then changes over, over time. Because we have this rich data, we're able to look for really complex novel methods to try and understand the impact that inequalities have on children's lives over time. And a lot of the work in our projects has been driven by PhD students. They've been looking at everything from the impact of slight and mild hearing loss on children. So my colleague Lisanne who's based at Rostam University in the Erasmus Medical Centre there has found that there's a significant impact on behavioural and school performance in children where they have the kind of slight or mild hearing loss, that's all just so clinical, but just enough that it's obviously then impacting their later life. And then my colleagues, Natalie and Wei have been looking at the interactions between parenting behaviours, and children's language and behaviour development. And then my colleague, Claudia has been looking particularly at instances of sort of poverty and how that impacts on children's language development. Christine Garrington  3:12  I know you've been very successful as well Helen in engaging more broadly with this work outside of the research and the academic community. Helen Wareham  3:20 While we've kind of been doing a lot of this very in-depth research, we've also been able to engage more broadly with policymakers. Right at the start of this project, through our partnership with the Liveness Association, we were able to meet with some members of the EU Commission to discuss our project. We were given the opportunity as well to comment on some early care and education guidelines that the Commission we're working on, and that that's since then been published. So well, yeah, quite a bit of over the last few years I suppose. Christine Garrington  3:50  So I guess what we're keen to know, what many people will be keen to know, that is, after all of this work, what would you say are sort of the key things that have emerged that that maybe we didn't know, before, now, you've had this opportunity to delve so deeply into these issues. Helen Wareham  4:04  There's sort of three key things that have come out of this. One has been, we've really been able to look really in depth at some of these relationships to kind of get an idea about how some of these relationships work. Some of the nuances I said, you know, about parental behaviours and interactions with children. And that's been great. But then also, I think one of the really key things we found is just how persistent inequality is, and how significantly it impacts on families and then children's lives and it's a really it's not just a persistent relationship. It's it's deeply entrenched, in that persistant-ness, it's very slow to change that. So when we think about inequality, we often think we can make a change and it will kind of happened within someone's lifetime, when we're looking at, you know, what happens over the course of a child's life. But actually to resolve certain inequalities, we're really looking at some of this being a multi-generational approach that no matter how good a start, we sometimes we're able to provide all the interventions we can deliver, that isn't going to necessarily manifest in that child's lifetime, it could be two, three generations later. Christine Garrington  5:18  Now that's all really interesting. I think we'll come back and talk about that a bit more in a second Helen. And Kjell, I'm guessing that quite a lot of what Helen has just said resonates with, with you. And I know there's a real synergy between what Helen and her team have been looking at and what your projects been investigating. So let's just take a step back here and get you to talk us through what it what it is that you've been trying to get to grips with. Kjell Salvanes  5:39  The background for our project is, you know, the increased inequality that we're seeing in many countries. What we are trying to do is to understand, you know, increase in the socio-economic gradient, as they say, you know, the difference between different groups of people. And in particular, we're interested in inequality, showing up both in education, but also, in terms of behaviour, you know, crime and stuff like that. Christine Garrington  6:04  Tell us a bit more about some of the specific things you were looking at, and why. Kjell Salvanes  6:07  Precisely we try to understand how shocks in a family are affecting their children in different stages of the life of a kid. The other part is, the importance of public policies, let's say day-care policies, family leave policies, and how that can affect the development of children, and especially what economists call investment in human capital or education or their skills. And also how the dynamics in the families how that is important how, you know, let's say there is an income shock, because Dad loses his job, how the dynamics in the family being changed, and the role or the mom and the dad, in affecting the children. Christine Garrington  6:50  I know, you have a fantastic team, largely economists from leading institutions in Norway, France and the UK, but you're interested in broader things, including health, you know, particularly around child development and, and outcomes. So tell us a little bit more about how you've gone about looking into these questions. Kjell Salvanes  7:10  I mean, we are using data - very detailed registered data from Norway, and France, and also partly now from the UK. And we are combining these type of approaches using registered data, which sort of consists of generations of families, and also combining it with experimental work, interventions, and also surveys. Christine Garrington  7:35  and what does all this fabulous data and these methods enable you to do? Kjell Salvanes  7:40 You can look at the whole development of kids from, you know, pre birth basically to, then we can look at adults, but you can also look at up to, let's say, 60. A lot of what we have been doing is to try to distinguish between the impact of something that is happening early on. It could be a negative shock, it could be policy intervention, or it could be parental decisions early on preschool, you know, middle years of schooling, and then early teenage. We see a lot of differences, you know, before they start school. And then the question is how this interacts with what is happening in the, in the early and later school years. We looking at different types of skills. I mean, you know, so it could be, you know, more the cognitive types of school skills, but it could be also socio emotional skills, how you you know behave. Christine Garrington  8:36 Indeed and can you talk us through what what's emerged that you think is of particular interest? Kjell Salvanes  8:42 You know, one of my colleagues at UCL Gabriella Conti, her work and partly together with us have been looking at early health outcomes for kids, and how that can predict the performance of kids when they are teenagers, but also as adults. So I think that part of the project has been very important. The second thing that I will speak a little bit is that, you know, one of the teams in in Paris, they have looked at training programmes for the children in daycare. So they have actually looked at an intervention among daycare teachers, and trying to set up a programme where they can teach language acquisition skills, you know, from the age of three months to three years. And that also seems to be have had a very positive effect, because, you know, language skills, or skills at the age of five seems to be very predictive of what is going to happen with children as adults. And the third thing that, you know, we'll talk a little bit about a project that I've done myself where we look at the kids growing up that was born to teen moms, which is a big issue in many countries. In the UK, for instance, I think, you know, more than 20% of the kids are being born to teen moms. And how that effect their adult acquisition of human capital and how they how well they perform in the labour market. And what we find there. And I think this is a new finding is that it's not only the mom that is important, I mean, usually in the literature, you find that this has a negative on average effect on the kids in their later life. What you find here is that the role of the dad is also extremely important. The matching, so to speak in the, in the non-marriage market here, you know, who they get the kids with, is also not without selection. So the selection of kids, for these kids is important. And the role of the dad is also extremely important, not only the mums, which of course, has strong policy implications. Christine Garrington  10:54 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, on that note, I'd sort of quite like to ask you both really, whether there's a standout finding from, you know, the wide range of research that both projects have done that you think that everyone who's interested in tackling inequality from as early as we possibly can, should know and understand. Kjell you want to kick us off? Kjell Salvanes  11:14 Yes, I mean, we put together these three teams for some reasons, because the let's say the family policies differs a lot across these three countries. The Norway is one of the Scandinavian countries have a very active family, family policies, parental leave since the mid 70s, and stuff like that, and also daycare coverage 100% now. France is a little bit in between and you know, and not so active family policy in the UK, I have to say so. So there are differences. And what we see is that the impact of family policies on child development seems to be very important. And I think that also has, of course, clear policy implications. Christine Garrington  11:58 Yeah, Helen, is that I'm guessing that's something that possibly resonates with with you and your project as well. But is there one particular thing that you think is, it's really important that everybody takes away from all of this? Helen Wareham  12:10 Yeah I think, particularly from our projects, and I think Kjell has been sort of saying this as well is about how important it is to realise that right from the start of children's lives, it's a vital time, you know, inequality doesn't wait. It's right there from the start. So I think, in tackling inequality, knowing and understanding that the inequalities that are there, in families, in parents to be, are then transmitted to their children, and that then affects children's later life outcomes. And I think what we've really learned from our work is we've learnt lots of sort of small pieces of information about the kinds of activities parents can be doing, particularly relationships in child development, you know, kind of between the relationship between children's language development and their socio emotional development. But ultimately, those things are mediated, they're heavily influenced by wider household opportunity and resource that's available. And if we aren't able to ensure that people have those opportunities to interact with their children, to spend time with them to be able to do activities with them. Either because their economic situation doesn't allow it, or they simply don't have the space and resources available to do those kinds of play activities, and talking and reading with children then continues the cycle of inequality. Christine Garrington  13:39 Yeah, no, that's so interesting and important. And I wonder, so what are the wider implications of these findings? So we talked a lot here about, you know, about policymaking and policy makers and early intervention. But for those sort of seeking to design those interventions to tackle inequality, or even practitioners working in the fields, such as teachers in schools, who may also have a role to play in this, you know, what are the takeaways for them? Helen, you go first, and then I'll move to Kjell. Helen Wareham  14:07 I think if I'm honest, this is actually quite a difficult question to answer at the minute. Because inequalities, you know, we see the landscape of inequalities, you know, I think the acronym DIAL referring to inequalities as dynamic, I think, is really useful and interesting, because inequalities react to global events. Which we, you know, we've experienced over the last few years and are continuing to see, but kind of inequality at the centre of that doesn't really change and it hasn't really changed. And I think that's something that's really important to acknowledge that we understand a lot about the nuance and the mechanisms and how inequalities affects people's lives. But there's still a fundamental issue at the centre of that about the key factors of inequalities that haven't changed. And I think then that means as a, as a researcher, I can sort of provide evidence about some of these relationships and even put together interventions that will help children catch up with their language development at a later point. But it doesn't address the fundamental issue. That kind of we've created as a society, you know, where parents aren't able to spend time with their children, because they're having to work three in four jobs. So you know, working 14 hour days, to ensure that children have a roof over their heads and are fed. I think it's a lot to ask of teachers, there's a lot of strain on teachers already know, they're kind of going above and beyond, when I think schools are struggling to even heat classrooms. It's hard to know kind of what to put out there as what policymakers can be doing and practitioners as interventions, when I think we have a kind of responsibility to address those fundamental needs. So I think that means as a researcher, what I have to do is kind of advocate for that greatest viable change. And let people know the you know, the evidence is there of what interventions we can deliver. But we've got to get people to a point where they can, you know, parents can spend time with their children, and talk to them and read to them. And children can go to school, and be in an environment where they're able to accept and receive learning, and people can go to work and feel that they can go and do the job and not have so many other concerns. Christine Garrington  16:24 Yeah, absolutely. No quick fix no simple answers, right? And Kjell I'm guessing again, a lot of that probably feeds into your thinking too. Kjell Salvanes  16:34 Yeah, you know, so at least partly, what I tend to find is that there has been strong improvements both along the differences across, you know, in terms of education, you know, from different children from different backgrounds, and also in terms of income. So there has been a lot of improvements, I think that is important to say, but are some areas where, we haven't seen so much gains, or there has been you know, it's more difficult, and especially among the very poor, you see also in the Nordic countries, that seems to be very difficult to get them sort of above a certain level. And so there's a lot of persistence at the bottom across generations. And also at the top, there's a lot of persistence, you know, the rich, do well independent and the poor do not do that almost independent of policy. So I think, to better understand these two mechanisms, and especially, you know, for the poor, what is it exactly? Why do don't they take more education? Why do they don't perform better in the labour market? What is it exactly? Is it lack of resources? Or is, do they have different expectations? They don't think that they can do it or is it information, they don't know about it, or they know about it, but cannot do anything about it, let's say because of the restrictions that Helen mentioned. So I think this is the area where I think we need much more to understand much more what's going on. Christine Garrington  18:06 That brings me very nicely to my final question for you both, which is if you'd like is whether you have a feel for what needs to happen now? I mean, you've both alluded to it. But you know, both in terms of research, but in terms of how do we move things forward? How do we get to a point at which change can happen? And that's a difficult one I know, Helen. Helen Wareham  18:25 It is a difficult one, because I think there's a lot of structural inequalities that exist. And those are difficult to change. And I think that that's thing as a sort of longer term view about what needs to happen. Now, and I think we are kind of globally at a very critical point. The pandemic, in particular, I think has highlighted to people the need for certain changes to happen, climate change has been another one where there's a real need and call for action. And for larger, more structural changes to happen. And I think that can go a long way to addressing kind of very fundamental structural inequalities. And that's it, it's, it's that need to look on a longer term beyond kind of quick wins and marginal gains. And that's where I think the research around child development, first couple of years of children's lives are so pivotal, an investment and a shift towards ensuring that children have the best possible start they can in life doesn't initially pay off. It's a long term strategy. But it means in 10-20 years time, what we get is a huge payoff in terms of a happier, healthier, more skilled workforce, and a real step towards breaking some of those inequalities. I think a shorter term thing about what could happen right now is I think the education gap we have particularly around those children who have kind of recently finished their kind of national standard level of education during the pandemic, you know, we've seen a widening in that education gap. Ensuring that as many children as possible have achieved a national standard of education, I think is is really key because we know that achieving that will create a shift and a potential to kind of open up opportunities for children to be able to go on to further study and improve their education or to be able to enter the workforce at a better point than we are seeing. So I think there's a real potential, there's a short term acting to make sure that the children, particularly those affected by the pandemic have been supported and are achieving at least a national standard of education. Kjell Salvanes  20:33 And one of the things that sort of resonates what Helen is saying is that it has become clear that differences among kids is seen very early on, you know, before they start school. So that means that the family and early years are extremely important. And I think that was not the focus, let's say 10 years ago, it is the focus now. And I think we need to understand much more about that. So that is one thing you see also increased inequality, not only, you know, in a socio-economic dimension, but also regionally. Certain areas, let's say in England, Southern England, around London, you know, are prospering. I mean, while other places, let's say in the north of England, and the same thing in Norway, in the North of Norway and other places, they sort of are falling behind. So I think that dimension is also very important. It's not one thing that's going on the different things that are going on, and I think this is also has high has important implication for economic policies, you know, to stabilise those areas. Christine Garrington  21:36  Thanks to Kjell Salvanes and Helen Wareham for discussing what's been learned from their respective DIAL projects on this episode of the DIAL podcast, which was presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. You can find a range of resources including working papers, journal articles, policy briefs, podcasts and blogs on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org.

In Episode 4 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Sam Gilbert, an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Sam works on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book – Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future – explores the different ways data helps us, suggesting that “the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us”.  Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In Series 7, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the fourth episode of this series, I'm delighted to be joined by Sam Gilbert. Sam is an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, working on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book, Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future explores the different ways data helps us suggesting the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us. And today, we're asking him, what makes data good? So Sam, welcome to this episode of The Rights Track. Sam Gilbert  0:41  Todd thanks so much for having me on.  Todd Landman  0:44  So I want to start really with the book around Good Data. And I'm going to start I suppose, with the negative perception first, and then you can make the argument for a more optimistic assessment. And this is this opening set of passages you have in the book around surveillance capitalism. Could you explain to us what surveillance capitalism is and what it means?  Sam Gilbert  1:01  Sure. So surveillance capitalism is a concept that's been popularised by the Harvard Business School Professor, Shoshana Zuboff. And essentially, it's a critique of the power that big tech companies like Google and Facebook have. And what it says is that, that power is based on data about us that they accumulate, as we live our lives online. And by doing that produce data, which they collect, and analyse, and then sell to advertisers. And for proponents of surveillance capitalism theory, there's something sort of fundamentally illegitimate about that. In terms of the way that it, as they would see it, appropriates data from individuals for private gain on the path of tech companies. I think they would also say that it infringes individual's rights in a more fundamental way by subjecting them to surveillance. So that I would say is surveillance capitalism in a nutshell.  Todd Landman  2:07  Okay. So to give you a concrete example, if I'm searching for a flannel shirt from Cotton Trader, on Google, the next day, I open up my Facebook and I start to see ads for Cotton Trader, on my Facebook feed, or if I go on to CNN, suddenly I see an ad for another product that I might have been searching for on Google. Is that the sort of thing that he's talking about in this concept? Sam Gilbert  2:29  Yes, that's certainly one dimension to it. So that example that you just gave is an example of something that's called behaviour or retargeting. So this is when data about things you've searched for, or places you've visited on the internet, are used to remind you about products or services that you've browsed. So I guess this is probably the most straightforward type of what surveillance capitalists would call surveillance advertising.  Todd Landman  2:57  Yeah, I understand that, Sam, but you know when I'm internally in Amazon searching for things. And they say you bought this other people who bought this might like this, have you thought about, you know, getting this as well. But this is actually between platforms. This is, you know, might do a Google search one day. And then on Facebook or another platform, I see that same product being suggested to me. So how did, how did the data cross platforms? Are they selling data to each other? Is that how that works?  Sam Gilbert  3:22  So there's a variety of different technical mechanisms. So without wanting to get too much into the jargon of the ad tech world, there are all kinds of platforms, which put together data from different sources. And then in a programmatic or automated way, allow advertisers the opportunity to bid in an auction for the right to target people who the data suggests are interested in particular products. So it's quite a kind of complex ecosystem. I think maybe one of the things that gets lost a little bit in the discussion is some of the differences between the ways in which big tech companies like Facebook and Google and Amazon use data inside their own platforms, and the ways in which data flows out from those platforms and into the wider digital ecosystem. I guess maybe just to add one more thing about that. I think, probably many people would have a hard time thinking of something as straightforward as being retargeted with a product that they've already browsed for, they wouldn't necessarily see that as surveillance, or see that as being particularly problematic. I think what gets a bit more controversial, is where this enormous volume of data can have machine learning algorithms applied to it, in order to make predictions about products or services that people might be interested in as consumers that they themselves haven't even really considered. I think that's where critics of what they would call surveillance capitalism have a bigger problem with what's going on. Todd Landman  4:58  No I understand that's, that's a great great explanation. Thank you. And I guess just to round out this set of questions, really then it sounds to me like there's a tendency for accumulated value and expenditure here, that is really creating monopolies and cartels. To what degree is the language of monopoly and cartel being used? Because these are, you know, we rattle off the main platforms we use, but we use those because they have become so very big. And, you know, being a new platform, how does a new platform cut into that ecosystem? Because it feels like it's dominated by some really big players. Sam Gilbert  5:32  Yes. So I think this is a very important and quite complicated area. So it is certainly the case that a lot of Silicon Valley tech companies have deliberately pursued a strategy of trying to gain a monopoly. In fact, it might even be said that that's sort of inherent to the venture capital driven start-up business model to try and dominate particular market space. But I suppose the sense in which some of these companies, let's take Facebook as an example, are monopolies is really not so related to the way in which they monetize data or to their business model. So Facebook might reasonably be said to be a monopolist of encrypted messaging, because literally billions of people use Facebook's platform to communicate with each other. But it isn't really a monopolist of advertising space, because there are so many other alternatives available to advertisers who want to promote their products. I guess another dimension to this is the fact that although there are unquestionably concentrations of power with the big tech companies, they also provide somewhat of a useful service to the wider market, in that they allow smaller businesses to acquire customers much more effectively. So that actually militates against monopoly. Because now in the current digital advertising powered world, not every business has to be so big and so rich in terms of capital, that it can afford to do things like TV advertising. The platform's that Facebook and Google provides are also really helpful to small businesses that want to grow and compete with bigger players.  Todd Landman  7:15  Yeah, now I hear you shifting into the positive turn here. So I'm going to push you on this. So what is good data? And why are you an optimist about the good data elements to the work you've been doing? Sam Gilbert  7:27  Well, for me, when I talk about good data, what I'm really talking about is the positive public and social potential of data. And that really comes from my own professional experience. Because although at the moment, I spend most of my time researching and writing about these issues of data and digital technology, actually, my background is in the commercial sector. So I spent 18 years working in product and strategy and marketing roles, and particularly financial services. Also at the data company, Experian, also in a venture backed FinTech business called Bought By Many. And I learnt a lot about the ways in which data can be used to make businesses successful. And I learned a lot of techniques that, in general, at the moment, are only really put to use to achieve quite banal goals. So for example, to sell people more trainers, or to encourage them to buy more insurance products. And so one of the things that I'm really interested in is how some of those techniques and technologies can move across from the commercial sector, into the public sector, the third sector, and be put to work in ways that are more socially beneficial. So maybe just to give one example of that type of data that I think contains huge potential for public goods is search data. So this is the data set that is produced by all of us using Google and Bing and other search engines on a daily basis. Now, ordinarily, when this data is used, it is to do banal things like, target shoes more effectively. But there is also this emerging discipline called Infodemiology, where academic researchers use search data in response to public health challenges. So one great example of that, at the moment has been work by Bill Lampos at University College London and his team, where they've built a predictive model around COVID symptoms using search data. And that model actually predicts new outbreaks 17 days faster than conventional modes of epidemiological surveillance. So that's just one example of the sort of good I believe data can bring. Todd Landman  9:50  So it's like a really interesting example of an early early warning system and it could work not only for public health emergencies, but other emerging emergencies whether they be conflict, or natural disasters or any topic that people are searching for, is that correct? Sam Gilbert  10:05  Yes, that's right. I mean, it's not just in the public health field that researchers have used this, you just put me in mind actually Todd of a really interesting paper written by some scholars in Japan who are looking at citizens decision making in response to natural disaster warnings. So floods and earthquakes that that migration patterns I guess, would be the way of summarising it. Those are things that can also be detected using search data.  Todd Landman  10:31  Well, that's absolutely fascinating. So if we go back to public health then. I was just reading a new book, out called Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID. And it's edited by Matthias Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer. And there's a really fascinating chapter in this book that transcends the nation state, if you will. And it talks about platforms and pandemics. And one section of the chapter starts to analyse Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and telegram on the degree to which they were able to control and or filter information versus disinformation or misinformation. And just the scale of some of this stuff is quite fascinating. So you know, Facebook has 2.7 billion daily users, it's probably a bigger number now. And you know, 22.3% of their investigated Facebook posts contain misinformation about COVID-19. And they found that the scale of misinformation was so large that they had to move to AI solutions, some human supervision of those AI solutions. But what's your take on the role of these big companies like we've been talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and their ability to control the narrative and at least provide safe sources of information, let's say in times of COVID, but there may be other issues of public interest where they have a role to play?  Sam Gilbert  11:57  Yes, I think this is such an important question. It's very interesting that you use the phrase, control the narrative, because of course, that is something that big tech companies have traditionally been extremely reluctant to do. And one of the things I explore a bit in my book is the extent to which this can really be traced back to some unexamined normative assumptions on the part of tech company executives, where they think that American norms of free speech and the free speech protections of the First Amendment that's sort of universal laws that are applicable everywhere, rather than things which are culturally and historically contingent. And for that reason, they have been extremely reluctant to do any controlling of the narrative and have tended to champion free speech over the alternative course of action that they might take, which is to be much more proactive in combating harms, including but not limited to misinformation. I think this probably also speaks to another problem that I'm very interested in, in the book, which is what we are concerned about when we say we're concerned about big tech companies' power, because I think ordinarily, the discussion about big tech companies power tends to focus on their concentrations of market power. Or in the case of surveillance capitalism theory, it concentrates on the theoretical power that algorithms have over individuals and their decision making. And what gets lost a bit in that is the extent to which tech companies by providing these platforms and these technologies actually empower other people to do things that weren't possible before. So in some work I've been doing with Amanda Greene, who's a philosopher at University College London, we've been thinking about that concept of empowering power, as we call it. And as far as we're concerned, that's actually a much more morally concerning aspect of the power of big tech, big tech companies than their market position.  Todd Landman  14:11  Yeah. So I like it that you cite the First Amendment of the American Constitution, but interestingly, the international framework for the protection and promotion of human rights also, you know, has very strong articles around protection of free speech, free assembly, free association, which of course, the tech companies will be interested in looking at and and reviewing. But what it raises to I believe really is is a question around the kind of public regulation of private actors, because these are private actors. They're not subjected to international human rights law in the way that states are. And yet they're having an impact on mass publics. They're having an impact on politics. They're having an impact on debate. So perhaps I misspoke by saying control the narrative. What I'm really interested in is we seem to have lost mediation. We have unmediated access to information. And it seems to me that these it's incumbent upon these organisations to provide some kind of mediation of content, because not all things are true just because they're said. So it gets back to that question, what where's the boundary for them? When will they step in and say this is actually causing harm if there's some sort of a big tech Hippocratic oath about do no harm that needs to be developed? So that, so there is at least some kind of attempt to draw a boundary around what is shared and what is not shared? Sam Gilbert  15:34  Yes, so the idea of a Hippocratic oath for tech workers is definitely out there, the writer who has explored it more than I have is James Williams in his book Stand Out Of Our Light. I think that that is certainly something that would help. I also think that it is beneficial that at the moment, we're having more discussion about data ethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence, and that that is permeating some of the tech companies. So I think more ethical reflection on the part of tech executives and tech workers is to be welcomed. I don't think that's sufficient. And I do think that it's important that we have stronger regulation of the tech sector. And I suppose from my perspective, the thing that needs to be regulated, much more than anything to do with how data is collected or how data is used in advertising. Is this what sometimes referred to as online safety, or other times it's referred to as online harms. So that is anything that gives rise to individuals being at risk of being harmed as they live their lives online. There's actually legislation that is coming through in the UK at the moment called online safety bill, which is far from perfect legislation, but in my opinion, it's directionally right. Because it is more concerned with preventing harm and giving tech companies a responsibility for playing their part in it, then it is concerned with trying to regulate data or advertising. Todd Landman  17:13  Yeah, so it's really the result of activity that is trying to address rather than that the data that drives the the activity, if I could put it that way. So if we think about this, do no harm element, the mediating function that's required at least to get trusted information available to users. I, I wonder if we could pivot a little bit to the current crisis in Ukraine, because I've noticed on social media platforms, a number of sites have popped up saying we're a trusted source for reporting on on the current conflict, and they get a sort of kite mark or a tick for that. I've also seen users saying, don't believe everything you see being tweeted out from Ukraine. So where does this take us and not only COVID, but to something as real time active and horrific as conflict in a country, we can talk about Ukraine or other conflicts about the sharing of information on social media platforms? Sam Gilbert  18:08  Yes, well, this is a very difficult question. And unfortunately, I don't have the answer for you today. I guess what I would point to is something you touched on there Todd, which is the idea of mediation. And we have been through this period with social media, where the organizations, the institutions that we traditionally relied on to tell us what was true and what was false and sort fact from fiction, those organisations have been disintermediated. Or in some cases, they have found themselves trying to compete in this very different information environment that is much more dynamic in a way that actually ends up undermining the journalistic quality that we would otherwise expect from them. So this is not a very satisfactory answer, because I don't know what can be done about it, except that it is a very serious problem. I suppose just to make one final point that I've been reminded I've been reading stories on this topic in relation to the Ukraine crisis, is that the duality of this power that tech companies and that technology has given to ordinary users in the era of social media over the last 15 years or so. So if we were to rewind the clock to 2010, or 2011, the role of Twitter and Facebook and other technology platforms in enabling protest and resistance against repressive regimes that was being celebrated. If we then roll forwards a few years and look at a terrible case like the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, we are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum where the empowerment of users with technology has disastrous consequences, and I guess if we then roll forward again to the Ukraine crisis, it's still not really clear whether the technology is having a beneficial or detrimental effect. So this is really just to say, once again, when we think about the power of tech companies, these are the questions I think we need to be grappling with, rather than questions to do with data. Todd Landman  20:31  Sure, there was there was a great book years ago called the Logic of Connective Action. And it was really looking at the way in which these emerging platforms because the book was published some years ago about lowering collective action costs, whether it was, you know, for protest movements, or, you know, anti-authoritarian movements, etc, we did a piece of work years ago with someone from the German Development Institute on the role of Facebook, in, in opposition to the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and Facebook allowed people to make a judgement as to whether they should go to a protest or not based on number of people who said they were going and and so it lowered the cost of participation, or at least the calculated costs of participating in those things. But as you say, we're now seeing this technology being used on a daily basis, I watch drone footage every day of tanks being blown up, of buildings being destroyed. And you know, part of my mind thinks it's this real, what I'm watching. And then also part of my mind thinks about, what's the impact of this? Does this have an impact on morale of the people involved in the conflict? Does it change the narrative, if you will, about the progress and or, you know, lack of progress in in the conflict, and then, of course, the multiple reporting of whether they're going to be peace talks, humanitarian corridors and all this other stuff. So it does raise very serious questions about the authenticity, veracity and ways in which technology could verify what we're seeing. And of course, you have time date stamps, metadata and other things that tell you that that was definitely a geolocated thing. So are these companies doing that kind of work? Are they going in and digging into the metadata, I noticed that Maxar Technologies, for example, is being used for its satellite data extensively, and looking at the build-up of forces and the movement of troops and that sort of thing. But again, that's a private company making things available in the public sphere for people to then reach judgments, media companies to use, it's an incredible ecosystem of information, and that it seems like a bit like a wild west to me, in terms of what we believe what we don't believe and the uses that can be made of this imagery and commentary. Sam Gilbert  22:32  Yes, so there is this as an all things, this super proliferation of data. And what is still missing is the intermediation layer to both make sense of that. And also tell stories around it that have some kind of journalistic integrity. I mean what you put me in mind of there Todd was the open source intelligence community, and some of the work that including human rights organisations do to leverage these different data data sources to validate and investigate human rights abuses taking place in different parts of the world. So to me, this seems like very important work, but also work that is rather underfunded. I might make the same comment about fact checking organisations, which seem to do very important work in the context of disinformation, but don't seem to be resourced in the way that perhaps they should be. Maybe just one final comment on this topic would relate to the media, the social media literacy of individuals. And I wonder whether that is something that is maybe going to help us in trying to get out of this impasse, because I think over time, people are becoming more aware that information that they see on the internet may not be reliable. And while I think there's still a tendency for people to get caught up in the moment, and retweets or otherwise amplify these types of messages, I think that some of the small changes the technology companies have made to encourage people to be more mindful when they're engaging with and amplifying content might just help build on top of that increase in media literacy, and take us to a slightly better place in the future. Todd Landman  24:26  Yeah, I mean, the whole thing around media literacy is really important. And I I also want to make a small plea for data literacy, just understanding and appreciating what data and statistics can tell us without having to be you know, an absolute epidemiologist, statistician or quantitative analyst. But I wanted to hark back to your idea around human rights investigations, we will have a future episode with a with a group that does just that and it's about maintaining the chain of evidence, corroborating evidence and using you know, digital evidence as you, you know in ways that help human rights investigations and, you know, if and when this conflict in Ukraine finishes, there will be some sort of human rights investigatory process. We're not sure which bodies going to do that yet, because we've been called for, you know, like a Nuremberg style trial, there have been calls for the ICC to be involved as been many other stakeholders involved, but that digital evidence is going to be very much part of the record. But I wonder just to, yeah go ahead Sam.  Sam Gilbert  25:26  Sorry I am just going to add one thing on that, which I touched on this a little bit, and my book, but I think there's a real risk, actually, that open-source intelligence investigations become collateral damage in the tech companies pivot towards privacy. So what some investigators are finding is that material that they rely on to be able to do their investigations is being unilaterally removed by tech companies, either because it's YouTube, and they don't want to be accused of promoting terrorist content, or because it's Google or Facebook, and they don't want to being accused of infringing individual's privacy. So while this is not straightforward, I just think it's worth bearing in mind that sometimes pushing very hard for values like data privacy can have these unintended consequences in terms of open source intelligence. Todd Landman  26:24  Yes, it's an age old chestnut about the unintended consequences of purposive social action. I think that was a Robert Merton who said that at one point, but I guess in closing that I have a final question for you because you are an optimist. You're a data optimist, and you've written a book called good data. So what is there to be optimistic about for the future?  Sam Gilbert  26:42  Well, I suppose I should say something about what type of optimist I am first, so to do that, I'll probably reach for Paul Romer's distinction between blind optimism and conditional optimism. So blind optimism is the optimism of a child hoping that her parents are going to build her a tree house. Conditional optimism is the optimism of a child who thinks, well, if I can get the tools and if I can get a few friends together, and if we can find the right tree, I think we can build a really incredible tree house together. So I'm very much in the second camp, the camp of conditional optimism. And I guess the basis for that probably goes to some of the things we've touched on already, where I just see enormous amounts of untapped potential in using data in ways that are socially useful. So perhaps just to bring in one more example of that. Opportunity Insights, the group at Harvard run by Raj Chetty has had some incredibly useful insights into social mobility and economic inequality in America, by using de-identified tax record data to understand over a long period of time, the differences in people's incomes. And I really think that that type of work is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this enormous proliferation of data that is out there. So I think if the data can be made available to researchers, also to private organisations in a way that, as far as possible, mitigates the risks that do exist to people's privacy. There's no knowing quite how many scientific breakthroughs or advances in terms of human and social understanding that we might be able to get to. Todd Landman  28:52  Amazing and I guess, to your conditional optimism, I would add my own category, which is a cautious optimist, and that's what I am. But talking to you today does really provide deep insight to us to understand the many, many different and complex issues here and that last point you made about, you know, the de-identified data used for for good purposes - shining a light on things that that are characterising our society, it with a view to be able to do something about it, you see things that you wouldn't see before and that's one of the virtues of good data analysis is that you end up revealing macro patterns and inconsistencies and inequalities and other things that then can feed into the policymaking process to try to make the world a better place and human rights are no exception to that agenda. So for now, Sam, I just want to thank you so much for coming on to this episode and sharing all these incredible insights and, and and the work that you've done. So thank you. Chris Garrington 29:49 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed transcript on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes. Further reading and resources: Sam Gilbert (2021) Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Digital Future. Bill Lampos' covid infodemiology: Lampos, V., Majumder, M.S., Yom-Tov, E. et al. (2021) “Tracking COVID-19 using online search”. Infodemiology Japan/natural disasters paper: [1906.07770] Predicting Evacuation Decisions using Representations of Individuals' Pre-Disaster Web Search Behavior (arxiv.org) On “empowering power”:  Greene, Amanda and Gilbert, Samuel J., (2021) “More Data, More Power? Towards a Theory of Digital Legitimacy”. On the Hippocratic oath for tech workers: James Williams (2018) Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Matthias C. Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer (eds.) (2022) Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19. W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra  Segerberg (2013) The Logic of Connective Action; Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics.

In Episode 16 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we're discussing ability grouping in UK primary schools and how it affects children's enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest today is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's LIFETRACK project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.  Does ability grouping affect UK primary school pupils' enjoyment of Maths and English? is research by Vikki Boliver and Queralt Capsada-Munsech, and is published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're talking about how grouping children by ability at school affects their enjoyment of certain subjects. Our guest is Queralt Capsada-Munsech from the University of Glasgow, who as part of DIAL's Life Track project has been looking at primary school children's enjoyment of English and Maths at age seven, and later at age 11 to see whether ability grouping positively or negatively impacts their enjoyment of those subjects.   Queralt Capsada-Munsech  0:29  There are people who are advocates of ability grouping, and their main argument is usually that high ability pupils improve their attainment, while there is no detriment in lower ability, once their academic performance mainly. But you know, the opponents in the general debate of ability grouping, what they say is that high ability students only do marginally better when they are grouped with a, yeah with a group of students that are homogenous to them. While lower ability ones are the ones that are substantially worse off from these ability grouping. And what we have seen mostly in previous research is that there is the main mechanism that we call that is the self-fulfilling prophecy of low attainment that you know, because you are grouping the low ability grouping and people, and students are aware of that. So they just know that they are not doing as well. And they continue to do more poorly while those that are in the high ability grouping, so they think better of themselves. And that leads them to better academic achievement. And usually, the way it has been measured has been based on what we call academic self-concept that basically is asking students, how good are you at maths, at English or at school in general?  Christine Garrington  1:48  So talk us through some of the policy context here - ability grouping as an education policy. Queralt Capsada-Munsech   1:53  In the gaze of the UK ability grouping was encouraged by the New Labour governments in the 1990s and in the 2000s. And the main idea was that it would raise standards generally, with higher grades in brightest kids in particular, that was something that was quite influential in past decades. And that had clearly an effect in policy because, you know, the prevalence of grouping practices still remains in place. And it increased quite a lot for the past few years. And we see in the UK, even that ability grouping is becoming increasingly common in early years, you know, at ages three and four and even in Key Stage One ages five to seven was, which was something that we didn't see in the past. While you know, in the 1990s, there were fewer than 3% of primary schools who reported that they were streaming students by 2008 16% of seven year olds, were being streamed by ability for all subjects and 26% were being taught in ability sets for English and Math so that's quite the change. Christine Garrington  3:01  What was it for you that you wanted to look at exactly about the way in which children are grouped by ability at primary school? What was it you wanted to look at and why? Queralt Capsada-Munsech   3:10  Empirical evidence what did show us that at least for the UK suggested that there weren't many benefits of practising ability grouping. Mainly at the secondary level was most of the studies and it did little to raise the school's standards, and it was more detrimental for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. And it was through that, you know, measured ability at the early ages is predictive of ability group placement. But so were also a lot of socio-economic indicators. So there were also a few mechanisms, you know, that people were looking at. So for instance, teaching practices or teaching learning environments. So the reason why this happened, that it was more detrimental for some instruments to the individual than others because teacher quality is correlated with ability grouping, meaning that mainly you know, teachers that are more qualified, more experienced tend to be a placed with a high ability grouping, while less experienced in the lower one, which maybe should be the opposite. But also because of students self-perception, so they internalise these labels of consequences for their self-esteem. We could see that there were many studies that had been undertaken at secondary level, but not that many at the primary level. So what we want to talk that was that academic enjoyment so that it would be different question like, how much have you enjoyed reading or doing number work or English or maths more, more precisely. Christine Garrington  4:45  So why was it important to look at how much children enjoyed subjects? What was it about that particular concept or idea that was was important in your research? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  4:56  Academic self-concept, the question how good you are at? It's informed by students awareness of their test scores or their ability group placement, but it's also a relational construct, you know how good you are compared to the rest of your pupils in your group or in your class. While academic enjoyment, we thought that it was a more an intrinsic motivation and is more of a personal preference, you know, you might like or dislike reading, even if you are very good at English or not. So it's more of an independent one. And it's less relational. So it's not that you enjoy reading compared to your peers, it's more they do you enjoy it more? Yes or no, or to what extent. Christine Garrington  5:39  So talk us through what you actually did. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  5:40  The question that we wanted to look at was looking okay, for instance in primary school at age seven, how much did pupils enjoy Maths or English and school in general? And then to look later on, you know, at age 11, before going to secondary school, how much they enjoy again, Maths, English and school in general. And to see to what extent it had changed from age seven to 11, depending on the ability group that they were in. So we were expecting that, okay, maybe your academic enjoyment of Maths might be different to those that are in the top or bottom ability group. But our hypothesis was that, theoretically, there is no reason for people to change how much they enjoy or not enjoy reading, for instance, from age seven to eleven, regardless of the relative group they are in. Christine Garrington  6:38  So where did you get your information from? And why was it a good source of data to help you address these questions that you were interested in? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  6:47  So we use one of the cohort studies that are called, that its the Millennium Cohort Study. But basically, it's a longitudinal survey that follows about 19,000 people born in the UK in 2000 and 2002, approximately. You have the same people, the same individuals, and they have been surveyed throughout their lifetime. What it was important for us in order to make this comparison is that we would have that data about the same individuals, but also that we would have like similar questions at two points in time. So in this case, for instance, because if we want to check if there is a change or not in academic enjoyment, from age seven to eleven, we needed to have this very same question of academic enjoyment at those two points in times. And in addition, obviously, we had some information about ability grouping. And so. Christine Garrington  7:41  And when it came to this question of whether being grouped by ability did in some way influence whether a child liked a subject or not, what did you see? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  7:50  If we start just with the descriptive statistics, we already saw, obviously, that there were some differences. So maybe it's worth starting by saying that, you know, overall, there was quite a lot of academic enjoyment among students. So the majority of them like a lot Maths, or reading or English, and most of the students so in most cases above 35%, were placed in the high ability one. And students that were placing the low ability one was usually smaller numbers like below 20%. That already gave us an idea of the distribution. But more importantly, yeah, when just looking at some bivariate descriptive statistics, we could see that those that are in high ability groups, tended to enjoy more Maths, for instance, than those that were placed in the low ability group. And that has stayed like, quiet similar when we look at it both at age seven, and eleven. So that's something that we could see just from the descriptive statistics. Christine Garrington  9:00  Now you had some very specific findings around maths didn't you? I wonder if you can talk us through what it was exactly that you saw there. Queralt Capsada-Munsech  9:07  Being placed in a lower rather than a high ability group at age seven, depress the probability of coming to enjoy continuing to enjoy or even to increasing your enjoyment of Maths by age eleven. And that stayed like this way even after controlling for you know, students measured ability in Maths, sex and social background at age seven. So we found that yeah, really being placed in ability grouping has an influence in your academic enjoyment of Maths. However, we didn't find quite the same for English and school in general. So, you know, there was this tendency, but once we control for socio-demographic and socio-economic variables, the results weren't statistically significant. So, we would say that, it's mainly for maths that we would find some differences or some effects of ability grouping. Christine Garrington  10:05  Yeah, really, really interesting, though, and I'm gonna take you right back to the beginning of our conversation when you were saying, you know, just how much policy interest there is in this area around, specifically around education policy. What do you feel that we must take away from from this piece of work? And do you think there are any key takeaways specifically for education policy and practice? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  10:25  Overall, I would say that our findings are very much in line with much of the existing research, which indicates that ability grouping is detrimental to those judged to be of lower ability. And at least we find it in relation to Math. So it's something to be worried about. And ability grouping by measured ability has a negative influence for those that label as that, as lower ability. And we can see now that it's for both for academic self concept this idea of how good I am at maths, but also for academic enjoyment is like how much do you enjoy maths? So that can be detrimental if you are put in a lower ability group. Christine Garrington  11:08  Okay, so that's the key sort of takeaway message, but what recommendations might you have in this area then? Queralt Capsada-Munsech  11:14  We are aware that it's difficult to be in a classroom and that we don't mean that because they are doing ability grouping they are bad teachers or bad educators. But yeah, I guess it's something that we'll have to continue exploring. And while some parts of ability grouping might work for some students or for some teachers overall, I wouldn't encourage the policy of ability grouping, at least in the UK. Christine Garrington  11:45  Does ability grouping affect UK primary school pupils' enjoyment of Maths and English? is research by Vikki Boliver and Queralt Capsada-Munsech, and is published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast, which was presented by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts. You can find out more about all the DIAL projects at dynamicsofinequality.org.

In Episode 15 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from Kings College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany the UK and Portugal. LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK: A quantitative comparative approach is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King and is published in the journal Current Sociology.   Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're discussing LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence. Our guests are Sait Bayrakdar from King's College London and Andrew King from the University of Surrey, who, as part of DIAL's CILIA project have been using a large cross-national survey to look at the experiences of nearly 29,000 people living in Germany, the UK and Portugal. I asked Andrew first to talk us through the background to the research.   Andrew King  0:30  This piece of research is part of the larger CILIA LGBTQI project, which has been exploring inequalities across the lives of LGBTQI people in four European countries - England, Scotland, Germany, and Portugal. We had a large research team from four different institutions on the project. And they brought expertise from different disciplines, as well as different methodologies. So the main aims of the CILIA project were to study LGBTQI inequalities from an intersectional and lifecourse perspective and bring some comparative dimensions to this. We started with a literature review and survey mapping exercise, which helped us document what had been done so far in the area, then we went on to analyse various sources of data, as well as collecting a large qualitative data set from LGBTQI individuals in the four countries. But this research article reports on the research, which was a part of our quantitative strand.   Christine Garrington  1:43  Okay, that's great. Thanks Andrew. I'm going to come back to you a little bit later in our discussion for your sort of reflections on what was was found. But Sait you were the lead author on this, and what was it specifically that you wanted to try to get to grips with and why in this particular paper?   Sait Bayrakdar  1:58  We were aware from our qualitative research that despite over 10 years of equality legislation, issue of discrimination, harassment, and violence we're still very significant to LGBT people, but we wanted to look at this both quantitatively and cross nationally. In a nutshell, we were mainly interested in understanding the patterns of discrimination, harassment and violence experienced by LGBT individuals in these countries. But this was quite tricky, because most survey studies still do not collect information about sexual orientation or gender identity. And it is even more difficult to find an international study that collects data from individuals across different countries. One exception to this was the LGBT survey conducted by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency. And this data allowed us to do a comparative analysis across the countries in the CILIA project. In fact, this really was the on the Pan-European data set that spoke to these inequalities. Also, we wanted to document the diverse experiences and patterns within LGB and T communities. Partly because of data limitations, and small numbers in surveys, these different groups are often merged in a single category as LGBT. Although their experiences differ quite a lot. And our results also come from these differences. Qualitative researchers are quite ahead in this regard. And they have done amazing studies showing the diversity in experiences and outcomes. We hope this research will help us show these differences quantitatively and highlight the need for better survey data collection that allows researchers to study LGBTQI plus lives in this way.   Andrew King  3:37  So although we, there were four countries involved, actually, the dataset just puts everybody into a UK group. So we couldn't separate out England and Scotland. And the other thing is that the dataset doesn't include specific questions relevant for intersex people either. So we weren't able to include intersex people in the quantitative analysis that we did.   Christine Garrington  4:01  Okay, yeah, understood. Now, what sorts of things were people asked about in the Fundamental Rights Agency survey then Sait? It just sounds, it sounds a really useful resource for this.   Sait Bayrakdar  4:12  Yes, absolutely. So the respondents were asked about many things, including their demographic data and social identities, their experiences of discrimination or other kinds of unfair treatment, whether they report these incidents, whether they change their behaviour in public to avoid discrimination. They are also asked about their views about equality policies and their relationships with people they interact in their daily lives. It's quite a rich study, and I believe it is terribly under used by researchers. In this research, we looked at LGBT individuals experiences of discrimination, harassment and violence, and the survey was asking whether they had experienced any of these as a result of the person's sexual orientation and gender identity. We looked at how these differences differ for LGBT individuals separately, and how their social background affects their likelihood of experiencing this incidence.   Christine Garrington  5:07  Yeah and large numbers of people took part in this survey as well. So, Sait let's dig a bit deeper now and move on to you know what everybody is interested to hear about, which is what you actually found - can you talk us through that?   Sait Bayrakdar  5:20  Sure. So earlier, I said that we were interested in bringing forward the diverse experiences within and between LGBT individuals, and between different countries. And I can confidently say that we found out that there are quite striking differences across LGB, and T individuals. First of all, in all countries, trans individuals are more at risk of experiencing negative incidents of discrimination, harassment and violence. Compared to their cisgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual counterparts. This is perhaps not surprising for many, but this wasn't explored quantitatively previously in an academic study. And another interesting finding for me was that different groups were more prone to experience different kinds of negative incidents. For example, lesbians seem more at risk of discrimination and harassment, and gay men are more at risk of violence. We do not know why this is the case. But there is definitely an observable gender pattern here. And my feeling is that this might be related to the ways these identities may be seen as a threat to masculinity. And I think we should definitely need more research to look at these intersections of sexuality, gender, and maybe also other, other social identities.   Christine Garrington  6:38  Yeah, some really, really interesting and important findings emerging here. And was the story the same across all of the three countries that you, you looked at?   Sait Bayrakdar  6:47  Not quite. In the first instance, all three countries showed similar patterns in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents across different groups. In all countries, reports of discrimination and harassment were more common than reports of violence and trans individuals were more likely to experience all three forms of negative incidents but there were some interesting differences when we dug deeper. For example, the rates of violence are higher in the UK, which begs the question why the UK is less able to protect these individuals despite being a front runner in equality legislation? Perhaps another thing is that the reports of violence are particularly high for trans individuals and gay men in the UK. These two groups in the UK are more likely to experience violence than those in Germany and Portugal. And I think this suggests that contextual factors may be shaping some part of these experiences or the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. This is something that comparative data can help us understand a bit better.   Christine Garrington  7:47  Okay, Sait so was there anything else at play? Any other factors that we should take into account or that you took into account that were important or relevant?   Sait Bayrakdar  7:55  Yeah, so we included quite a few other variables relating to social identities and individual characteristics. I think the most important but perhaps not so unexpected finding was that those who have greater socioeconomic resources are less likely to experience these negative incidents. And this implies that class based social inequalities may have a role here as well. So for example, a more economically advantaged person may be able to protect themselves a bit better, whereas other less advantaged might unfortunately, be more vulnerable to such incidents. We found this effect to varying degrees in all countries. I think this is very important because it points out that intersections of class, sexuality and gender identity are creating unique experiences. Depending on one is positioned across different social demographics, the likelihood of experiencing negative incidents change. We also find that LGBT individuals with disabilities and minority ethnic or religious backgrounds are more likely to experience discrimination. It is really very important that we create more empirical evidence on these intersections looking at different life outcomes, not only discrimination, harassment and violence, but maybe also the outcomes of education, labour markets, and other domains of life.   Christine Garrington  9:15  Yeah, no, absolutely understood. Now, what would you say then say, Sait that we take away from all of this in an era where, you know, many people assume or think, believe that discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and identity as somehow a thing of the past? I mean, your your research tells us otherwise?   Sait Bayrakdar  9:32  And this is a very interesting question, which I also find difficult to answer. I think there has been an immense advancement in the equality legislation in the UK, as well as the other countries in our research. And public attitudes have also progressed significantly in recent years. And I think maybe, possibly because of these recent changes, some people may think that the struggle has now been won, and equality has been achieved. However, having legislation is one thing and putting it in effect is another. LGBT individuals still experience discrimination in their day-to-day lives, and the things heterosexual cisgender individuals take for granted are usually not available or accessible to the same extent to LGBT people. And I think that is because the norms and cultures in workplaces, social lives, families are shaped by cis-heteronormativity. So I think those with lived experiences have a better understanding of discrimination and whether or not it is a thing of past.   Christine Garrington  10:33  And on that note, do you have any thoughts on the implications of all of this for, for policy, especially around efforts to promote greater equality, and diversity, you know, wherever we're at in the world, but particularly in these countries.   Sait Bayrakdar  10:47  In this piece we provide quantitative evidence for many issues scholars have been discussing for a while. And we do this by providing further original comparative evidence, we knew that the discrimination, harassment and violence was there. But for me, the most important take home lesson is that there are country differences in the likelihood of experiencing these incidents. And we see that violence is more likely in the UK, particularly for trans individuals. We do not test the effect of potential factors, but our study does show that trans individuals are more more vulnerable to these attacks. So I think policy should really prioritise this. Trans rights have become a very heated topic for some years now. I must say, I think the way trans rights are discussed in the UK is not helping. As a policy priority the government and other policymakers should prioritise addressing trans people's very immediate needs and ensure that everyone regardless of their gender identity is protected from discrimination, harassment and violence. And another issue. Police documents don't always take account of diversity in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, or variations in sex characteristics and intersex status. They often assume that LGBTQI plus communities are a homogeneous group, despite their characteristics and needs being quite different. I think there should be more engagement from policymakers with communities themselves, so they can see that they are working with diversity and difference. This should also take account of differences related to other social backgrounds, such as education, class, ethnicity, disability, religion, and possibly any other significant difference that people may feel or identify with.   Christine Garrington  12:30  Yeah, thank you Sait for those really interesting reflections. And Andrew, I wonder if there's anything that you'd like to add to that?   Andrew King  12:36  Yeah, an overall recommendation from the CILIA project is the need for intersectional policymaking. So policies tend to address people as single subjects and adopt a one size fits all approach, which in a way, erases differences. And as we've demonstrated in our article from an intersectional lifecourse perspective, this is really problematic. This means that we need policymaking that focuses on multiple and contextual marginalities as well as inclusions and exclusions and how privilege and oppression are created in multiple ways. So not recognising this intersectional diversity in policymaking, or perhaps only doing so in limited ways means people who embody the intersections of different and multiple marginalities get overlooked. So while some policies need to be specific, they should also recognise intersections. And we very much hope that our article and the wider CILIA project contributes to a new policy agenda in this respect.   Christine Garrington  13:46  “LGBT discrimination, harassment and violence in Germany, Portugal and the UK. A quantitative comparative approach” is research by Sait Bayrakdar and Andrew King, and is published in the journal Current Sociology. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. And don't forget to subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast which was presented and produced by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.

In Episode 3 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Bennett Institute joins Todd to discuss the dizzying digital changes over the last 25 years, how it has disrupted the economy and impacted on our lives. Transcript Todd Landman  0:01  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In Series 7, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our third episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Diane Coyle. Diane is Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and co- directs the Bennett Institute, where she leads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her most recent book- Cogs and Monsters - explores the problems and opportunities for economics today, in light of the dizzying changes in digital technology, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. And today we're asking her, why is it that digital is so very disruptive? So welcome, Diane, it's wonderful to have you here on this episode of The Rights Track. Diane Coyle  0:49  It's a pleasure, I'm flattered to be invited. Todd Landman  0:52  Well, it's great. And you know, I was reading Cogs and Monsters over the holidays and enjoy very much your dissection of you know, the state of the discipline of economics and where it's going, and some of its challenges, etc. But I was really taken by the section on digital technology and digital transformation. And you, you reference your 1997 book, The Weightless World. And of course, that was 25 years ago. So the time between the publication of The Weightless World and Cogs and Monsters. And you know, factoring in Moore's Law of technological change, a lot has happened over these 25 years. So I wonder if I could just start by asking you, what are the sort of broad brush, absolutely huge changes in this area? And what has been their impact on economics? Diane Coyle  1:34  Well, where to start, as you say, it's 25 years since I first got interested in digital technology, and was always sure, it was going to be transformative. But for a lot of economists, that was not obvious for quite a while. And I remember talking to one very senior figure in the UK profession who said, well, this digital stuff, it's going to reduce transactions costs a little bit, but we know how to handle transactions costs in our models so, so what's so special about this? And I suppose they've been inflection points where small changes or what might seem to be small changes bring about very large consequences. One of those was the switch from dial up internet, to broadband. And simply the loss of friction in the sort of *dial-up joining sound* when the modem did the handshake, for those who are old enough to remember, it made a big difference in the kind of services and opportunities that people thought they were able to put online and expanding the audience for them. And then the other was 2007, and the smartphone. Steve Jobs at that iconic Apple press conference, holding up the first smartphone first iPhone, which converged with the arrival of 3G, so that data transmission became cheaper and more possible at volume and speed. And also the kind of market design ideas in economics that enabled the creation of apps and in particular, matching apps and digital platforms. And if you look at what's happened since 2007, both in terms of individual behaviour and economic transactions, the fact that we spend a whole day a week, whole 24 hours a week, I think it's 28 now, online. And the new kinds of business models and the way that markets have restructured, it has been absolutely extraordinary. And I think in many areas, we're only just beginning to think through what the consequences are, and what the implications are for politics and policy and regulatory choices. Todd Landman  3:38  Thank you for that. And you know, that rapid expansion just in terms of volume, scale, speed has fundamentally transformed our lives. I remember Steve Jobs, the announcement and I thought what am I ever going to do with that? Why do I need a phone that takes a picture? And equally when the iPad came out, I thought, I'm not sure how I'm going to use that now of course I can't live without one. And it sort of does. It changes our workflow, it changes our productivity, people who are amenable to multitasking find that these devices do help us and of course, being able to share information at rapid speed. As we know, through the pandemic, we've been able to communicate and stay on, on track in some ways in engaging with the sorts of things that we do. And so I wanted to focus a little bit on those that haven't really experienced this incredible transformation. I was recently at an event where a representative from one of the local housing association said well, we have about you know, 10,000 houses in our portfolio, if we add up all the housing associations in our, our portfolio plus other providers that might be 100,000 houses in this region, most of whom do not have access to these digital transformations. So what could you say about the sort of the left out, the left behind or the famous word about the digital divide? How do we address some of those issues, both economically but also maybe in policy terms? Diane Coyle  4:52  In different ways it's a different level of the digital divide, and one is just the sheer network infrastructure. And the economics of these networks is such that population density really makes a difference to their financial viability. So to get universal service at high speed, there has to be public subsidy for it. In this country, we've got a government that has since Mrs. Thatcher's time being focused on you try all the market solutions possible first, and then grudgingly, you have some public intervention. And I think there should have been public intervention long ago and much more focused on minimum universal service. Ofcom does set standards and I think the standards that they have set are now outdated by the technology. So that needs revisiting, and then the investments got to happen. And we've had, you know, more or less monopoly of Openreach having the core of the network. And that problem hasn't really been fixed. So there's a set of problems about network infrastructure, and who's going to pay for it, and universal services and utility. And then there's access to devices and the payment plans. And for that, you know, obviously, smartphones are expensive, we've got plans where you can get the handset subsidised if you sign up to a reasonably expensive data plan. But lots of people can't do that. And this is a universal problem in all countries, because they're all pretty unequal. And so the people who are best off have best access. During the pandemic that's been diabolically bad, in particular for schoolchildren who've been learning online. And if you've got a limited plan, limited data, and you've only got a phone, not a tablet or a computer, you're not going to learn, you're not going to learn that learning deficit is going to scar those individuals for the rest of their working careers. So that has been a problem. And I'm not sure I've got an easy fix for this except that this is a necessity of modern life. And if people need subsidising to get necessities, if we subsidise their energy, for example, then we should be subsidising their connectivity as well. And then there's this sort of whole digital literacy bit, which is a whole other kettle of fish. And how do we teach people to be properly sophisticated consumers of whatever it is, whether it's social media misinformation, or whether it's price comparison websites, and how to interpret the information that you're getting from those.  Todd Landman  7:18  When I've listened to you, you know, it feels like you're making the case for digital connectivity as almost a public good like access to health care, education, social welfare, social, you know, the social safety net, if you will, is that your view that this really is, you know, akin to the provision of education and health and welfare?  Diane Coyle  7:43  I think it is because it's about conveying information really. And this is the fundamental characteristic of information and how that drives economic growth, particularly in what we call the knowledge economy. And all of this is useful because it gives people information to do things that make their lives easier or better in some way that matters to them. A trivial example might be, you've got an app on your phone that helps you navigate around the city so that you don't waste time because your bus isn't running. So that's one kind of valuable information and the time saving that goes with that. But you know, that's, that's the fundamental point of it. It's accessing public services online is almost essential now, leading your daily life, making it more convenient, making it more enjoyable, in business, using the information that you can get to deliver better services to your customers. So it's all, it's all about information. And that is the key characteristic of information - it is a public good, it's non-rival. Todd Landman  8:38  Ah it is a non-rival public good and it's very interesting that that crosses over with a lot of discourse of the Human Rights field around rights to information, rights to be informed, etc. But also date obligations to progressive really realise that the fulfilment of social, economic and cultural rights. So there's a really interesting communication or conversation, if you will, that could take place between economists and human rights people around the provision of non-rival public goods. But the other thing that I was struck by what you said was this idea about digital literacy about not knowing in a way, how good all this can be for you, but also what some of the pitfalls are, how is one a good consumer of digital information, but also what's the unwitting phenomenon of people sharing tremendous amounts of information about themselves in the absence of that digital literacy, literacy? And I know you've done some work on you know, how much is your data worth? So how do we calculate what people's data is worth in the marketplace? Diane Coyle  9:36  Aha, how much time have you got? Actually, my colleague here in the economics department, Wei Xiong has done some work looking at Chinese data on how concerned users of one of the huge apps are about privacy. And the finding there that is really interesting. You know, there's this privacy paradox. People say they care and then they act as if they don't, and they found that people care more the more sophisticated a user they are. So people who don't go online very much or don't think about it very much don't care about their privacy, but the more people use it, and learn about the pitfalls, I suppose the more they care about, about the privacy questions. But this is this is a really interesting area. And it's an ongoing area of research for me. And, you know it operates at different levels. So one is just what's it worth to the economy? People think data is an asset, because it helps businesses tailor their services better, develop better products, serve their customers better, make more money, which is a good thing in a capitalist economy. And there's a growing gap between the most productive companies and all the rest. So the top 5% In most OECD countries are pulling further away in terms of productivity and also profitability. More and more research is suggesting that's because they are using digital tools better, they using predictive analytics, they are building their own software to use the data, growing databases. So all of those more digital firms are becoming more productive and sort of winning the competitive race, the competitive rivalry that takes place in market economies. So we would like more firms to do that, to grow the economy and grow jobs and make better products and services. But then there's also the individual point that you alluded to. And being an economist, I think about this in terms of externalities. And as the negative externality that you pointed to that your behaviour online, or the data that people accumulate about you online, can reveal things about you that you don't want to be known. Or you can do the same about other people, you can reveal things about people who are like you, or people who are connected with you that they don't want, want known. And there are also positive externalities that come from joining up data, because a lot of the value, a lot of the information value depends on putting data in context. And even something that seems very personal. Like, do I have a temperature right now? Obviously, has positive information value for the people around me. And so to make use of this, to give people, you know, better quality lives better information, we need to think about how do we get data shared in good ways that creates value for people and doesn't invade their privacy? So this debate, I think is in in a pretty terrible state. And I'd be interested to know what you think about this, I think part of problem is that it's always thought about in terms of individual rights, and actually, it's a data captures relationships and context. Todd Landman  12:38  Yes, and you know, so a lot of the human rights discourse is around the right of the individual. But of course, there are group rights and collective rights that are equally as important. So one can look at minority rights, for example, and other collective rights. So there is that tension in human rights discourse in human rights law between the absolute fundamental rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state then vis-à-vis non-state actors, including businesses, but also non, non, not for profit organisations. And then collective rights - does a group of people have a right to maintain a certain set of practices, or certain linguistic tendencies or textbooks in mother tongue language? Which is a it's a whole another podcast about that I'm sure. So yeah, I think you put your finger on a very interesting tension between these things. And I, I guess, I want to pivot to this idea of capitalism without capital. So you, you mentioned the idea about productivity, growing the economy, jobs, and which is good for capitalism, as you say, but a lot of people have observed that actually, you know, companies like an Uber or any other kind of online car provider, or Airbnb, these are property companies without property. These are taxi companies without taxis. So they're actually wiping out any of the kind of overheads by having to run a big fleet of cars. And yet, the markup on that is, is very high. I mean, I went to one of these data centres in London, where they command all of the data needed to run a successful taxi company. And they get 26,000 bookings a day, I think, at the time, and they were optimising to the point that even if one of their drivers was on the way home, they made sure that there was a fair in the car on the way home because that meant that that car was earning money on the way home. So this phenomenon of the capitalism without capital, I mean, it's it's a bit of a misnomer, because it still requires infrastructure. It still requires devices and cars, but it shifts, you know, who owns what, who does what and where the margins sits. So, what can you say about this changing nature of capitalism in the face of this new phenomenon of digital technologies? Diane Coyle 14:39 It's a big question. I think the relationship between the material and the immaterial is really interesting. And the scale of the physical investment needed in data centres, or the energy use is often overlooked, although people are starting to talk about that more. And as you say, some platform companies operate by pushing the need to invest both in whether it's cars, physical capital, but also their own human capital, they're pushing that out to individuals. And what that means is that we're getting under investment, including in human capital, if you're a gig worker, your incentive to invest in your own training, when you're bearing all of the risk of fluctuations in the business is diminished. So that's quite interesting, too. And then we've got this construct of intellectual property or non-material property, hugely valuable, the stock market value put on companies that hold a lot of data or have a certain kind of brand or reputation is absolutely immense. And yet, it doesn't act like normal, old fashioned physical kinds of capital. It's got very different depreciation characteristics, you can, it can lose its value overnight, if there's a hit to reputation, or if a secret gets gets out and get shared. And I think the construct of property, intellectual property, intangible property is just as an individual right to own the property or corporate right to own the property is just highly problematic. And I would much rather we start to think in terms of rights to access - who has rights to access what? And, you know, particularly going back to data, what can, what can who know about somebody? Because part of the privacy issue is that whether it's big tech firms or governments, they're in a position to start joining up all kinds of data about people. And that's the problem. You don't mind your doctor, knowing very intimate details about you and having that data. You don't mind your bank manager, knowing what your bank balances, but you wouldn't want the government to join up all of those different bits of information about you and get that synoptic view, the Stasi, the East Germans had this term glesano which meant transparent people. And that I think, is is a real problem. So I came across this concept that you probably know more about the idea of privacy in public that comes from other parts of social science literature. It operates offline, it doesn't operate online. So can we start to think about those sorts of access rights or permissions rather than absolute property rights? Does that make sense? Todd Landman  17:21 Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I was thinking about one of the extreme examples of the the intangibles, which is this non-fungible trading regime. So people are creating digital assets, if you will, that are then trading and you know, a digital asset by a famous artists can can sell on the market for for millions of pounds. And it it again, it gets back to some of the fundamental questions you ask in your book Cogs and Monsters about faith in the economy, you know, we think about coins and currency. Why do I accept the fact that you hand me a £10 note, and I say, that's a £10 note, which is worth something, when actually, it's just a piece of paper. So a lot of the economy is based on that transactional faith that has built up over centuries of people trading. And now of course, during the pandemic, cash and coins weren't used as much, we're going to electronic payment. Apple Pay has lifted its its cap on, you know, pounds per transaction. You know, there's a whole new world of financial transaction that feels even more ephemeral than economics has felt like in the past, and what can you say about sort of where are we going with all of this? What What's the new non-fungible that suddenly is going to have value in the market?  Diane Coyle 18:27 I don't really know. I mean, for NFT's, I can't help but believe that there's a bubble element to that. And that people, you know the art market is a pretty rigged market, if I can put it that way. So I think there are people in the market who are trying to create artificial value, if you like around NFT's. But I don't know the answer to your question and it sometimes seems that value has become so untethered, that surely it's unreal. And yet at the same time, there are people who haven't got enough cash to go and buy food, they're going to food banks, and how has that come about? Yet equally, there are intangible things that are really valuable. Trust is an intangible, and we wouldn't have an economy without it. Cultural or heritage assets, which I'm thinking about at the moment. You know, it's not that we assign value to the stones in Stonehenge in some normal economic sense, but, but there is an additional cultural value to that, and how should we start to think about that, and, you know, more and more of the economy is intangible. So we have to get our heads around this. Todd Landman  19:27 More and more, the economy's intangible. I'm gonna have to quote you on that. That's wonderful. I, I think then what the next thing I'm really interested in exploring with you is, is the role of the state and the way I want to enter this really is that you've already hinted at the idea that provision of no-rival public goods where there's clearly you know, a role for the state in that there is also a role for the state in the regulatory environment. And you know, of course, I was very sort of worried about your observation that the state can combine banking information with health information and know something about you in a connected way that re-identification but also that very private revelation about someone's individual circumstance. So what's that balance between the state helping, the state regulating and the state staying away? Because that's a big concern in human rights, we, we often say the state has a has a, you know, an obligation not to interfere in our rights, it has an obligation to protect us from violations of rights by third parties. And it has an obligation to fulfil its right commitments up to available economic capability and, you know, sort of state institutional capability. But boy, there's a tough balance here between how much we want the state to be involved and how much we really say, just stay away. What's your take on that? Diane Coyle 20:38 It's particularly difficult, isn't it when trust in government has declined, and when democracies seem to be becoming rather fragile? So you worry much more about these trade-offs with an authoritarian state, whose politicians you don't trust very much, I think these issues have become more acute than they might have been 25 years ago, I suppose. And at the same time, we need the state more than ever, because of the characteristics of the way the economy is changing. We've had this period since Thatcher and Reagan, when the pendulum in public discourse about economic policy has swung very firmly towards markets first state fills in the gaps corrects the market failure. And yet, we're in a period of technical innovation when we need standards. Just going back to data, we need somebody who will set the standards for interoperability and metadata so that we can enforce competition in digital markets, or technical standards for the next generation of mobile telephony. So we need the standard setting. And because of the non-rivalry, and because of the returns to scale, I think we're all much more interconnected economically than used to be the case. And those phenomena have always existed. They've always been, you know, big economies of scale, and autos and aerospace, but they are now so pervasive across the economy, that almost everything we do is going to affect other people, I think it's becoming a much more collective economy than it used to be. Or just think about the way that the productive companies are combining all of our data to use predictive analytics to do better things for us. So, I, my strong senses is that it's a more collective economy, because it's intangible because it's got this these elements of non-rivalry and scale. And so we're going to have to have a rethink of what kind of policy discourse do we have around that, and it's not markets first government then fixes a few problems. Todd Landman  22:40 Yeah and that idea of the collective economy really moves away from you know, the discipline of economics has often been characterised as residing in methodological individualism. And as long as you understand the individual rationality of people, you just aggregate that rationality and then you get market force, and you get supply and demand curves, you get equilibrium prices, and quantities, etc. But you're actually making a slightly different argument here that the interconnectivity of human behaviour is the interrelationships of one person's choices and the consequences or the as you say, the predictive analytics in a way talking about, well, we expect you to like these sets of products, and therefore you will go buy them, or we expect crime in this region, and therefore we put more resources there. That's a different enterprise. That's a much more holistic enterprise of looking at the, as you say, data in context, and it changes our way of thinking about modelling the economy, but also thinking about remodelling our relationship with the state. Diane Coyle 23:34 I think you're right, you know, we're in a world then of disequilibrium of non-linear, linear dynamics where things can tip one way or another very quickly, where decisions by state agencies will shape outcomes. And give a simple example in my kind of territory, if you've got digital markets that that tip so that there's generally one dominant company because of the underlying economic characteristics, then any decision that a competition authority takes about a merger, or dominant position is going to shape which company dominates the market. You know, if the merger goes ahead, it's one and if it doesn't, go ahead, it may be another one. So they become market shapers. And I think this is why there's more interest now in self-fulfilling outcomes and narratives which started to take off a little bit in economics more in some other disciplines. Because the narrative affects the outcome, it aligns people's ideas and incentives and points them all in the same in the same direction. So I often think about the Victorians and I think they, they had this kind of narrative of greatness, and legacy long-term prosperity, and so they built these huge town halls that you see in cities around the country. Joseph Bazalgette gave us 150 years' worth of capacity in the London sewers. So they had something going on in their heads. That was not the economics that we've had from 1979 up, up until just recently, they weren't doing cost benefit analysis or thinking about equilibrium supply and demand curves. Todd Landman  25:07 Yeah, it's a much bigger vision, isn't it? And you know, there's an observation now that data is the new oil. It's the oil of the future. And I wonder if, in closing, whether you could just say a few remarks about a) do you think it is the oil of the future? And what's that flow of oil going to look like? Is it just more and more data and more and more confusion? Or is there going to be some sort of consolidation, rationalisation and, and deeper understanding of the limits of the data enterprise and the digital enterprise? Or is it just too hard to say at this stage? Diane Coyle 25:36 Economists don't like that analogy at all because oil is a rival good and data is a non-rival good. So we in a very anoraky way say no, no, that's a very imperfect analogy. And I mean of course, the point is that it's going to be ubiquitous and essential. And people still talk about the digital economy. But before long, that will be like talking about the electricity economy. It'll just all be digital and data. But I think there's so much that we don't know. And so much of what will happen will be shaped by decisions taken in the near term, with, you know, the consequences for governance, really, we've talked a lot about the economics of it. But all of this has implications for governance and democracy and rights, which is where you come in. Todd Landman  26:18 Yes, absolutely and that's what we're exploring in this series of, of The Rights Track. So this has been a fascinating discussion, as ever, I really enjoy your insights and precision your use of language and correcting me about the, the rival nature of data that but that's an important correction and one that I absolutely accept. But you've also raised so many questions for us to think about in terms of governance, democracy, rights, individual rights versus collective rights. And this idea of the non-rival public good that will absolutely, our listeners will want to chew over that one for a long time. So for now, can I just thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Rights Track. Chris Garrington 26:55 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.rightstrack.org and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

In Episode 14 of Series 3 of our podcast, we talk with Professor Andrés Rodríguez-Pose from the London School of Economics about his research looking at who propelled Donald Trump to power and what the future holds for populist politicians, politics and policies?     Transcript  Christine Garrington  0:01  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this episode, we're discussing the rise of populism in the US with Andres Rodriguez-Pose at the London School of Economics. He has been asking the intriguing question of who exactly propelled Donald Trump to power and what the future holds for populist politicians, politics and policies?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  0:25  I've always been interested in populism and the rise of populism. And I do it feel that many of the explanations of why people vote for, let's say, anti-system parties and anti-system options, were probably not the most adequate. Of many voters of populism have been considered to be uneducated, poor, rural and white men. And very often, it has been said that we just have to wait for these people to die and then the problem will sort itself out. I think that's first macabre and not a joke. And second, I do feel that that is also wrong. Because the people that are voting for anti-system parties, both in the US and in Europe, probably have got and certainly have got you know grievances that are related very often, to the long-term economic, social, cultural, and surface decline of the places where they live. But urban elites have tended and political elites have had a tendency to tell them that they are rednecks, that they are despicable, that they live in flyover states and in places where there's no opportunity, and the best solution for them is just to get on their bikes and move to a place where there's opportunity, which mainly means the big cities in from that perspective,   Christine Garrington  1:48  Indeed, and so what was it about Trump's election and obviously near re-election, that you wanted to sort of hone in on and look at specifically and why?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  1:57  Trump, in my view, represented from his arrival, a threat to democracy and to American democracy that traditionally was the beacon of democracy across the world. It also represented the radicalization of the Republican Party that had been traditionally mainstream. And for me, that was really interesting trying to understand what had driven voters in certain parts of the US to vote for Trump, especially in the light of what Robert Putnam, probably the best known political scientist in the world from Harvard University, had written 20 years ago, well in 2000, about the potential threats. to threats to American democracy, which was where coming from, on the one hand, the rise of inequality in the US a country that is far more polarised interpersonally than Europe, but where territorial disparities are significantly lower. And the other challenge, which was the parallel declines since the 1970s, and 1980s of what is he called social capital, which is the sense of interaction, community, and cohesion within localities and within American cities, towns and rural areas.   Christine Garrington  3:15  Now you went about this by carrying out an econometric analysis. For those of us who might not sort of immediately understand what that looks like, in reality, I wonder if you can tell us what you actually did?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  3:25  Well, I wanted to explain what is known as the Trump margin. So the additional votes that Donald Trump received in 2016, and then in 2020, relative to the votes that a perfectly mainstream Republican candidate in the 2012 election, like Mitt Romney had received. So trying to explain the additional extra percentages of votes in specific counties in the US on the basis of a series of factors I thought, and my co-authors thought that the additional vote for Trump was very much related to economic and demographic decline in particular parts of the US, but also I introduce, we introduced a number of what we call controls, which are the factors that either from political science or economics, or sociology have been regarded as the main drivers of the swing and the vote for Trump. And these are mainly related to individual characteristics, what I said before - levels of education, age and ethnicity of the voters in the case of the US, but also related to the places where they live. And there has been a lot of work that has highlighted the divide in the vote in the vote between big cities in the United States and small towns and rural communities.   Christine Garrington  4:49  So what did you find then when you looked at the types of communities that it was thought propelled Donald Trump into into the presidency? What did you find there?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  4:57  Well we started with a hypothesis launch by Robert Putnam in 2000, about the idea that the threat to American democracy and therefore the vote for an extreme outsider like Donald Trump was coming from, on the one hand interpersonal inequality and the decline of social communities. What we thought is that just by looking anecdotally, at what had happened in the US that it was not the poorest of the poor, or the richest of the rich that were voting or voted in 2016 for Donald Trump. In fact, they voted together for Hillary Clinton, whereas it was mainly people living in declining communities, in places that had been seeing that people leave, jobs go, that their salaries were being depressed, etc. Those were the ones that were casting the vote. So our hypothesis was clear. It was not interpersonal inequality, and declining social capital, it was probably long-term economic decline in places that were still relatively cohesive. And this is what we found that on the whole, a country with strong interpersonal inequalities, the vote for anti-system candidates in this case, Donald Trump was not related to huge salary polarisation, although this might explode in the future. It was mainly related to long-term economic decline, in the form of loss of employment, but also to long-term demographic decline in the form of loss of population. By contrast, we saw no connection between declining wages and declining salaries and vote for Donald Trump.   Christine Garrington  6:41  Really interesting. And now, it's also been said that the global financial crisis of 2008 was was a key driver. Did your research support that or not?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  6:52  Yes, we've done the research for every decade. So economic decline since the 1970s, until 2016 and 2020. The dates of the elections that we look at. 1980 to those years 1990, 2000 and 2010. Until then, and the 2008 financial crisis is the fuse, it's probably the last drop that actually made the glass on the water overflow, in places where that were very hard hit by the crisis in places where they have seen the loss of jobs accelerated to, for example, competition by trade, mainly coming from China. Those are the places where the switch from Mitt Romney to Donald Donald Trump, where the Trump margin increase the most those are the places that actually led to Trump winning the vote. But having said that, this is a far, far longer decline. That is there, we find evidence that for every single decade that we control all the way back to 1970, that in all cases, the decline in local population and decline in local employment is positively and significantly correlated, to more votes for Donald Trump.   Christine Garrington  8:05  Okay, and what other key things emerge that you think, you know, really might be important in these years where we're looking back on we're living through still this incredibly intense period of American politics and European politics, global politics, and what what is played out?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  8:22  We saw the events of the 6th of January 2021 and the risk it has represented to democracy. But we have seen in the case of the UK, that something that is, probably hasn't happened for centuries, like proroguing Parliament took place without virtually everyone batting an eyelid. We're seeing how countries like Hungary, and Poland are moving away or drifting away from democracy. So what we have is a really, really serious threat to a system that with all its problems, and it's needed of reform has generated greater prosperity, greater equality. And I would say in the last 70 years in the developed world, the longest period of peace we have ever experienced. So with all its flaws, is probably by far the best system that we have. That what these anti-system let's call them populist politicians are offering might be apparently simple solutions, but in reality are far more dangerous and likely to just exacerbate polarisation and lead to conflict because these people feed on external enemies, whether real or imaginary. So there was a need for me to try to find potential solutions to this problem. And what has emerged from the research is that lack of opportunities, long-term economic decline, long-term demographic decline, long-term decline in service provisions to many communities in the US but also across most of Europe are at the root of the problem, we have a territorial problem. This is the situation we have, for example, in the UK where there, the need to level up is not just to reduce disparities, but mainly to tap on the potential of places that whether in America or in the north of the UK, for the past, where the motives of the US and the British economy and now are languishing mainly because of lack of political attention, but not just a lack of political attention, lack of belief, from political elites, and often from the population in big cities, but also from themselves, that they have got significant potential, and that this potential can be mobilised in order to lift their economies or lift their quality of life.   Christine Garrington  10:46  Some really important insights there, Andres, thank you. But I just wonder if we might finish by asking you whether you feel that the research tells us anything about what the future might hold in respect of continuing support for Trumpism and more populism and populist policies?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  11:02  This is a deeply rooted problem, that it has been brewing for a very long time. And it requires sustained and serious policy solutions. We have seen in the situation in recent days in the UK with the publication of the levelling up white paper, that this has become centre stage of UK politics. But I do still feel that whether it is in the case of the UK, or in the case of the US or elsewhere in Europe, what we're finding is that many decision makers are paying lip service to the idea that there's a need to mobilise resources that there's a need to invest in areas that have been declining that there's a need on to tap on those resources. But in reality, there's a strong lack of belief that place based, place sensitive policies that respond to local challenges, but also mobilise local needs local potential, they think they're not going to work.   Christine Garrington  12:01  And what from your point of view, would you say are the ramifications of continuing down that road?   Andres Rodriguez-Pose  12:06  If we keep on doing this, we are in a situation where many people in our countries have said enough is enough, we have had enough of a system which seems to benefit someone else. And not us. That if we are asked to do let's say, an environmental transition? Well, we have. And this is the situation in France, what has happened is that diesel fuel taxes have increased, and we were told 15 years ago that diesel was the future. And now our ageing diesel cars, we have to pay for it. Whereas the people living in Paris, for example, they have alternative transport, they're richer so they can very often afford electrical cars. And we are paying for a transition that is driven by an urban elite that is aloof to our needs. If this is not addressed, these people have now have decided that they want to shake the tree and they want to shake it hard and they are doing it and they have found their champions. So if this is not done seriously I'm afraid, we might see that the prospect of a 2024 re-election of Donald Trump and it would be the first US president since Grover Cleveland to when non-successive terms, or someone of that ilk, either in the US or in many across parts of Europe and other parts of the world is likely to become something that is common. And in my view, that would be very dangerous for the reasons I said before. We have a system that is flawed, but a system that with all its flaws is far better than any of the alternative we have at the table.   Christine Garrington  13:45  "Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US" is research by Andres Rodriguez-Pose, Neil Lee and Cornelius Lipp. It's been produced as part of DIAL's project Populism, Inequality and Institutions. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of the DIAL podcast, which was presented and produced by me Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts.  

In Episode 6 of Series 2 of our podcast, we talk with Professor Anette Fasang from Humboldt University and Professor Silke Aisenbrey from Yeshiva University about their research looking at how inequality plays out in the parallel work and lives of black men and women in the United States. Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In this series, we discuss findings from DIAL's Equal Lives project, which looks at how inequality impacts the lives of young adults. Our guests are Anette Fasang and Silke Aisenbrey, they've been looking at the parallel work and family lives of black and white men and women aged 22 to 44 in the United States. I started by asking Anette to explain the background to their work. Anette Fasang  0:27  So recently, or for a longer while actually there has been quite a bit of talk about intersectional inequalities, so overlapping categories of inequality, very prominently, gender and race that we also look at in our paper. And here the ideas that black women, for example, face specific disadvantages that white women don't, but that are also different from the challenges that, for example, black men face. And this is a type of our field of research that often works with qualitative data, for example, or is quite theoretical also activism oriented. And that's actually not at all where Silke and I come from, we are more sort of quantitative statistics oriented people do inequality research in this area. But we found this new intersectionality approach extremely important, and tried to get sort of a quantitative what we call life course, perspective on intersectional inequalities. And for us, the life course perspective here is really important. Because when you think about differences between social groups, if you measure them at one point in time, for example, their incomes at age 30, you will, of course, find differences, and you'll find inequality. But what we try to do is follow people really from age 20, to age 40, to see how different types of advantages and disadvantages accumulate, because what accumulates over the life course, tends to be much larger than disparities measured at any specific time point. And we think that's particularly important when you're trying to assess differences between social groups, to not understate the actual extent of disadvantages and advantages that people accumulate over time, Silke Aisenbrey  2:17 Where we are coming from, it's really to look at at the life of a person in terms of a movie, like understand it really, as this bigger concept and understand every step of the way, as a result of what happened before. Anette and I did like a big project where we did something similar, where we addressed similar questions about the intersection of careers and family careers, so to speak, where we compare Germany and the US. And in that research, we found that there's a lot happening within the US that we actually can't get a grip on. So that was the start off point for this project, where we're like, there's so much race segregation in these life courses happening in the US that we actually want to kind of look deeper into that. Christine Garrington  3:07 Anette then just take us a little bit more deeply then into what it was you were looking specifically in this paper to get to grips with and why? Anette Fasang  3:15  Yes, we used a great data source, the so called National Longitudinal Study of youth for the United States, which has followed individuals for many years, re-interviewing them every year. And here we could for men and women born in the 60s, we could reconstruct their entire life courses from age 20 to 40. So their educational and work careers, when they were in school, when they finish, whether they were unemployed, whether they were on family leave, and which types of jobs they were in, where we could also distinguish was this sort of a low level low paying lower skilled job or a higher level highest high skilled job? So that's how we could reconstruct their careers and for their family lives we also know exactly - were they living with a co-residential partner? When did they have children? Did they separate? Did they re-partner? And so we were able to reconstruct these entire life courses for black and white men and women to assess what kind of advantages and disadvantages accumulate over time for these different social groups. Silke Aisenbrey  4:24  We're talking about comparing black individuals to white individuals in this paper, and that, of course, leads to this question - so why is that our focus? There are more groups than that in the US. And for us, it was that we really wanted to clearly focus on the on the white privilege and not kind of on the underprivileged group, and compare those to the group that we had the most data on and that were black women and black men. So we excluded Hispanics and other minorities in this specific research, so that's why you're having the comparison of black and white individuals here. Anette Fasang  5:00    What is often done, especially in this quantitative inequality research is that you have one point of reference and that's typically white men. And then you interpret differences of white women, black women, black men, all referring to the white male experience and this in a way normalises it that the intersectionality approach or intersectionality theory criticises and we kind of jump on this paradigm by comparing all four groups visa vie as each other. So we compare black men to black women, to white women, to white men, and so on, and have all these pairwise comparisons to contextualise each group situation much more than only using this one reference point, as is often done. Christine Garrington  5:44  You talked about the normalising there Anette - what are the advantages? What makes it better if you like by taking this approach? Perhaps Silke you want to pick up? Silke Aisenbrey  5:52  Anette has said this beautifully. And I think your question is exactly on point so that the idea is that it normalises the privilege by not talking about the privilege. So in a way, if you compare every group to white men, the privilege that white male careers inhabits it basically gets unseen. So our commitment here and also the commitment of intersectionality research is really to say like, point out the privilege also describe the privilege and don't only focus on those who are underprivileged. And we were very committed to that approach throughout the paper. Christine Garrington  6:29  That's so interesting. Now, let's dig right in now and look at the comparison that you made between white and black men, what were the key things to emerge there? Silke Aisenbrey  6:38  I think that the one thing that comes over and over is really when we look at the group of white men is really, basically they can have it all in the sense that they can have the high prestige career. And they can combine this high prestige career with any kind of family formation, they can be like single, they can have three kids, they can have one kid. So all of that is possible for white men, whereas for all the other groups, I know you just asked about black men, all of these variations are not open in the same way. Anette Fasang  7:12  A core focus of our paper was that we wanted to have these both aspects of the life course - work and family - and also look at the interplay between the two. And the idea here was that if events for example, in the family life strongly constrained economic opportunities. For example, if typically women but also men have children very early, that really limits their career prospects later on, especially if this is single parenthood. So this would be one way how an event in the family life course can constrain opportunities in the work life course. And the other way around, for example, for men, and we see this especially for black men holding a stable job, at least a stable job, even if it's not a high stakes high earning job at at least a stable job is almost a precondition for then forming a stable partnership and having kids. So the two life course domains are interrelated in these many different ways that play out in mutually affecting each other over these entire 40, 20 years, that we observe the life course. And here our idea was is that if the connection between the two life domains work and family is very strong, that means that events in one life domain condition and constrain what is possible in the other life domain. So this is a in a sense, a sign of disadvantage, because there are more limited opportunities economically, but also for different family lives. And if they are unrelated, that means whatever happens in the work and family domain, whatever disadvantages or advantages there are, doesn't spill over into the other life domain. And there's just a wider set of possibilities for how life courses evolve. And indeed, what we found was that this interrelationship between work and family lives, was really, really low for white men. So basically non-existent, as Silke just described, it doesn't mean that everybody gets what they want. Not all white men get get what they want. But for them, everything is possible in the sense that it actually occurs empirically, you have these very many different combinations of work and family lives. And this was quite different for the three other groups. And here we found that the strongest interrelation between work and family lives where they sort of condition and constrain each other was evident for black women. Christine Garrington  9:43 Yes, on that note, I'm really interested to know because the picture was slightly different, wasn't it for for black and white women. Anette Fasang  9:49  Yes, that is also I think an important point of our paper, that there's a lot of research showing how the for example, family lives of lower educated black and white women are quite different. But we see equally large differences among highly educated black and white women. There's really a lot of evidence that initial economic resources and then economic opportunities along the life course - so education, access to high quality jobs and so on - but also resources in the parental home. Those, those all have really strong effects on family lives. And then there's also evidence showing how events and family lives like becoming a parent has repercussions for careers. So here there's this whole literature on motherhood penalties how mothers make less money than childless women. But overall, the evidence that economic starting conditions are stronger predictors for family lives, is more convincing, and just broader than for the other way around that family events restrict their opportunities and work lives. And so what we argue here is that black men and women's family options will be limited because they, on average, have worse economic starting conditions. And then for women, on the other hand, compared to men, there will be more repercussions of their family lives for their careers, which is also based on previous studies. And so if you take those two together, then of course, white men will have the most options because they are on average in economically privileged situations compared to the other groups on average. And their work events in their work lives, even unemployment have relatively modest effects on their family lives. Whereas when you go to the other end of the extreme here, black women, they're both disadvantaged because they are black and face, on average, lower economic resources that limit their family options. And then because they are women, their family lives have stronger repercussions on their work careers. So that's how the strongest interrelation in this long term interplay between the two life domains plays out according to our data, Silke Aisenbrey  12:01  I just want to go back to what I said earlier that one of the like, important things about our research is that we really also want to look at privilege. So I think it's worth kind of just looking at this high prestige group to kind of make that comparison and what you can really see when we look at black women that there is this double under privilege happening, that you can't even find empirically any black women in this high prestige group. So you you do find white women, and there mainly have no kids or have a kid later in life. And you do find some black men who also only have one kid and later in life, but you can't even find black women. And I think that's something that needs to be pointed out and needs to be underlined. Christine Garrington  12:46  No that's a really important point to make Silke thank-you. So when you were thinking about the policy intervention implications of all this, then you sort of started to consider what might work best, what was your thinking Silke? Silke Aisenbrey  12:59  It's a very complicated question because you you will see that when you look at at the medium prestige group and at the high prestige group that a lot is attached to having children or not having children and for women also, to have partners. And as we know, a lot of work in home still falls on the burden of women. So I think childcare is definitely like a very, very big thing. And especially in the US, where like most childcare for smaller children is private, it is hardly accessible for anyone who is not working in a high prestige career. So I think childcare is really one of the like main things that we need to like look at. Anette Fasang  13:37  So another thing that I found really striking was when we looked at these work, family life courses, and which ones are most prevalent for black men, but we found as Silke said, there is a smaller group of black men who have that highest earnings, one or two children, usually late or classic, successful upper middle class life course. But these are only 12% of black men. That means the remaining 88% have low, in our case really low prestige jobs with low earnings. There are no stable middle class careers among black men of these generations that we're looking at. And what I found particularly striking and this is something you can only see in this longitudinal process perspective, that 62% of them have unstable low prestige, low income careers. So that means they are frequently interrupted by periods of unemployment or being out of the labour force entirely. So that means 62% of black men in these cohorts have really precarious careers. And all of them actually have family lives that are either childless or they're single fathers. So these precarious work careers really go along with having sort of non-traditional or at least family careers that don't go along with stable co-residential partnerships. And how this bridges into the policy point is that I think one thing our findings, if you take them all together really support quite strongly is that the lack of initial economic opportunity sets, especially black men and women on a difficult path early on, and really limits their family opportunities. So what is implied and this of course, is if you want to equalise work family life courses among these four intersectional groups, then equalising economic starting conditions would be quite important early in early childhood or in early adulthood. And this is these early interventions are particularly important because then you can break cycles of increasingly cumulatively, increasing advantages or disadvantages like these vicious or virtuous cycles that we know from many different studies tend to play out over time in these life courses. Silke Aisenbrey  16:00  I also think that the access to education is just still very, very segregated for different groups in the US. So I think that's also always something that needs to be said. Anette Fasang  16:09  What also was interesting about these findings is actually how the large proportion of people who remain in similar career tracks that they entered early on, there is of course, some upward mobility there is also some downward mobility. But we see many people are kind of locked in the same precarious careers over 20 years from age 20 to 40. That never make it out. So I think many things are missed. If you only look at, for example, people's work situation at age 25. When you take into account how many of them who are in disadvantageous positions actually remained in those for very extended periods of time. Silke Aisenbrey  16:52  Parental leave also, of course comes to mind when we think about these full careers. And this is also important because when we talk about cumulative advantages, we see that in the US parental leave is often only accessible if you have careers and medium or high prestige jobs. So if you're once on this career track, the advantages just cumulate between like childcare, and parental leave, all of these things are accessible, much easier to people who are already in privileged positions. Christine Garrington  17:25  "Uncovering Social Stratification; Intersectional Inequalities in Work and Family Life Courses by Gender and Race" is research by Anette Fasang and Silke Aisenbrey and is published in the journal Social Forces. You can find out more about the Equal Lives project at www.equal-lives.org and subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Thanks for listening to this episode, which was presented and produced by Chris Garrington.

In Episode 2 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Martin Scheinin, British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford and a member of the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency joins Todd to discuss whether the grammar of human rights law can cope with multiple challenges of the digital realm.   Transcript 00:00 Todd Landman Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in the digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our second episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Martin Scheinin. Martin Scheinin is the British Academy, Global Professor at the University of Oxford, and a member of the scientific committee of the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency. He is currently exploring whether the grammar of human rights law can cope with multiple challenges of the digital realm. So Martin, welcome to this episode of The Rights Track, it's great to have you here. Well, you know, in our first episode of the series, we had a discussion with Ben Lucas, who's a data scientist. And the one thing that he said to me that has really is stuck in my mind is that the regulatory framework has not been able to keep pace with technological change. And I wanted to use that just as an opening framing that when we consider the international human rights framework, the international human rights regime as a regulatory framework of sorts, as against this rapid expanse in technological change, and in the digital space, this gap between regulation and technology is something that's pretty enduring. But I wonder what your early thoughts are about how do human rights address this question of technological change? 1:14 Martin Scheinin  Well, I think that human rights law is very much needed now. There, there may be a widely held perception that human rights law would be unable to cope, for instance, because so much is done by private actors that traditionally are not seen as bound by human rights law, or because the digital realm knows no borders between countries, and therefore it escapes the jurisdiction of any single state, often relied upon as a necessary precondition for the application of human rights law. I do believe that human rights law can cope. And I can see with, with some satisfaction, how both the United Nations and Council of Europe human rights bodies and mechanisms have understood the importance of the challenge and are trying to address it, that doesn't mean that they would already have found a way but at least there is a good faith effort, I would say. 02:13 Todd Landman And you know, human rights is often criticised as being state centric, where the primary duty bearers is the state, and then therefore private actors are not part of that frame. But what has changed since you know this early perception of state centric human rights framework in your mind that might address some of the gaps that you've, you've already raised with us? 2:31 Martin Scheinin  Well, I'm currently running a four-year research project as British Academy Global Professor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. And I framed the project as dealing with the grammar of human rights law and how it can address the challenges of the digital realm. And this, this framing signals need to go back to the foundational concepts and structures and to see how new phenomena new challenges can be spoken about in the language of human rights law. And just to take one example, one of my first journal articles in this project, still in the process of being finalised is about new EU level and national laws about taking down internet material that is seen as terrorist online content. It's a whole wave of legislation in European and other countries. And there is an EU regulation which is directly applicable EU law in all EU member states. It's a striking example of the challenges. We are speaking of something intangible, ultimately, information, images, video, text in digitalized form, which is produced by one private actor in one country, published by someone else, another private actor in another country, and perhaps using a medium of a server located in a third country and operated by a third private party. Under this EU regulation, which as I said, is valid law, national authority in a fourth country, in any EU member state, can ask the authority of the third country where the server is located to give an order to take down the material. And that national authority has one hour to act, which usually means an order for the private server operator to take down the material. And then that private actor has one hour again to implement the request or the order. What we see here is a whole chain of private actors. 04:41 Todd Landman Yes It's an incredible reach and, and also what happens if they don't comply within the hour? That's an extraordinarily short time period. 4:49 Martin Scheinin  Well, there are, of course, sanctions and enforcement mechanisms, penalties, etc. But we see here a whole chain of private actors in, in production and publishing of this information. And the challenges to human rights law are, firstly, the civil jurisdiction, the actors, the private actors are located maybe located in different countries. And the order comes from at least two different states where the server is located, and then the initiator of the actual requests. And neither one necessarily has any jurisdiction in relation to the person who actually is behind the message, who uploaded the so called terrorist online content, and is subject to a measure that constrains freedom of expression. And that relates to jurisdiction, and then we have the question of mechanism of redress, that there's a there's a vague clause saying there must be access to judicial remedies, but in what country? In what language by whom? Is the, is the question. So we risk the situation of putting people in a legal limbo. And here we need human rights law to navigate through this mess and and to provide some kind of guidance to what is permissible and where where to draw the limits both as to the substantive issue of what is terrorist online content? And also to the procedures what kinds of remedies will be required? 06:15 Todd Landman Yeah, and you know, I'm going to pick up on this freedom of expression, maybe add freedom of speech alongside it with the, you know, rather famous cases of former President Trump and now representative Marjorie Taylor Green having been banned from certain social media platforms. One was about misinformation with respect to COVID-19. The other was just about misinformation more generally, in a view to mobilising supporters. But what's your take on this ability for private organisations like a Facebook or a Twitter to ban people for life for something that they've posted on their own platforms? 6:52 Martin Scheinin  Yeah, the traditional view, of course, is that a medium, a newspaper, has no obligation to publish every opinion, they exercise their freedom of expression, by choosing what message they want to carry. And as such, that belongs to freedom of expression. But then when we have the emergence of let's say, Facebook or Twitter as something that can be called public goods, or common goods, we have to ask the question, whether access itself is a freedom of expression issue and how can the mediation of content be done so that freedom of expression of the of the of the users is reflected. I see a certain asymmetry in the sense that those holding a public office, if they have a Twitter account, they shouldn't be allowed to block other voices who may be critical of them. So that critics couldn't respond to their messages, but can then Twitter block them by banning them from using the service? I think we are in in quite a challenging situation. Here, I do believe that some kind of extension of human rights obligations to private actors is necessary. It may happen through their own regimes of redress, as Facebook is trying to build. And I'm optimistic, not of the model itself, but of the possibility of perfecting the model so that we can have genuine human rights mechanisms, also within private actors. Ultimately, there could be something like a World Human Rights Court with jurisdiction over those private actors who have accepted it as a as an appeal court, in respect of their own internal mechanisms. 08:51 Todd Landman That's fascinating Martin. You know, back in all way back in 1998, I was on my way to Venice, to teach on the European master's degree in Human Rights and democratisation. And I think I was in the air when the British authorities arrested Augusto Pinochet from Chile and put him under house arrest, which I believe was about 18 month's worth of time when British Parliament debated the legality of his arrest in his detention. And there was an appeal made and often this case is cited as one in which the application of universal jurisdiction applied, and it really advanced the argument for universal jurisdiction. I wonder to what degree what you're exploring and talking about here today is the application of the principle of universal jurisdiction for digital technologies. 9:36 Martin Scheinin  I think there's a need for a distinction in the sense that the Pinochet case was about enforcement jurisdiction, the powers of the state to do something over an individual who is is primarily subject to other country's laws. Whereas here we hold a state to account for something that happened outside its borders, because of the causal link to human rights harm elsewhere. And states have been very careful in not accepting extraterritorial jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that materialise elsewhere, when they were not there themselves and the European Court of Human Rights has been struggling, we know the bombing of Belgrade, the Bankovic case where the European Court of Human Rights threw it out, because it was outside the legal space of Council of Europe. Subsequently, it has taken the view that if you take possession of a person through arrest, then you are there with human rights obligations, which is, of course a bit paradoxical that dropping bombs is not jurisdiction, but but handcuffing is. We are we are trying to impose upon States a broader notion of jurisdiction, which is simply based on their causal links with what happens in the digital realm. For instance, in curtailing freedom of expression, by actors outside their own territory. It is necessary that we do this because the internet knows no knows no borders, and there are causal links, which create the human rights harm we are addressing. And as we see in the EU terrorist online content regulation, there are multiple countries involved. And one country asks for the takedown, another country implements it that the server can be located in a third country and the actor himself/herself in a fourth country, there's a whole chain of action, but somebody must be held accountable. And that requires the extension of the notion of jurisdiction. 11:44 Todd Landman Okay, that that distinction between the two makes, makes perfect sense to me. And you know, the complexity and complication of that is, is very salient. I wonder beyond expression and freedom of speech, etc. What other human rights are at stake in this particular agenda? 11:58 Martin Scheinen Well, I don't think people realise how broadly their human rights are actually at issue, when dealing with new developments in the digital realm. When we say expression, of course, easily what follows is freedom of assembly and association. Their exercise has largely shifted to happen online, especially in the times of the pandemic, but we also can say at elections and democracy. And public accountability have become phenomena that take place online. And this issue of democracy is especially important because of the vulnerability of electoral systems to malicious operators in cyberspace. So democracy is facilitated by moving online, but also but also subject to new kinds of risk. Our intimate sphere happens, to a large extent, online, even if the most important manifestations, of course, are still interpersonal. That brings up a whole range of privacy issues. Data protection is of course the human right which is most often referred to simply because of the passing of lots of sensitive personal data, but the mother right, right, the right to privacy is equally important. Here we go to issue such as surveillance. And if I now may mentioned another article I'm working on within my British Academy Global Professor project, I've been looking into the privacy related developments during the pandemic. And of course, there are very important and very different developments over these 22 months. We, we have totalitarian control with countries like China, which erode totally the privacy of the individual, and utilise and exploit health information for social control. It is true that digitalized control tools are in a sense rational because humans are vectors of the virus. The epidemic is not simply a question of a virus that that keeps replicating. It is human society, which transforms the virus into an epidemic in democratic countries. We see innovations such as contact tracing apps, digital contact tracing apps, and COVID passports. Both are potentially privacy intrusive, but here we see a certain kind of paradox in that in order to function, they must be human rights compatible or at least must have human rights compatible features, because they will only work if they are widely accepted. So, here the issue of legitimacy comes to the defence of human rights. Solutions, technological solutions, that would be best simplistically will not work, because they will not be widespread enough, whereas, where privacy, by design is inbuilt in the solutions, they will have much better success. We get into new paradoxes however, because for instance, when the, when the contours of the epidemic change with new variants like the Omicron variant, we are speaking on today, the scope of for instance, a COVID Passport can be rapidly overnight changed. So previously, having a COVID passport did not reveal your actual health information. It only told that this person is at this moment, carrying a valid COVID passport. But it didn't tell whether they were vaccinated, whether they had COVID, or whether they were tested in the last 24 hours, 72 hours. Now, when the, when the requirements are being made more narrow. The COVID Passport suddenly starts to reveal health information. It was sold under a different label. But now it is transforming to, let's say worse for human rights in the sense that it breaks the promise of not revealing health information. 16:09 Todd Landman Yeah, and it really does hit the question of liberty versus public health and involves this question of proportionate response, right. And so the human rights framework often talks about proportionality, as well as reasonableness as well as of a certain, you know, time bound duration. So it's possible to rescind on particular rights commitments for a particular period of time, if that rescindment of rights is or taking away rights is proportionate to the threat that one faces. And of course, massive debates here in the UK about this, there's a very strong lobby that's advocating against the passports, another lobby that's advocating for them, and it is down almost to the individual user to give consent to those passports and move about planet Earth. But those who do not give their consent and want to move around planet Earth without demonstrating whatever status they have, they may in themselves be putting others at risk. But the probability of that risk is different, you know, because I could have all the passports I like and still be a contagion. And somebody couldn't have any of the passports or not be a contagion. So it's these huge tensions throughout this whole debate. 17:16 Martin Scheinin  You mentioned, you mentioned proportionality, and I think there's an important issue that I want to address in the sense that many a human rights laws scholar is happy with proportionality. Ultimately, human rights would be a question of balancing between the competing public interest and the intrusion that results into an individual's human rights. But I belong to the, let's say, more fundamentalist school of scholars who say, there are also bright lines, there's something called the core or the inviolable ethics of every human right. So proportionality just does not justify every intrusion. And and that's an important task also in the context of COVID, that we must first define the ultimate limit up to which proportionality is taken into account. And there are applications of this approach include, including the two Max Schrems cases by the European Court of Justice, the highest EU court, where they did not conduct a proportionality assessment because they said this is mass surveillance, which is prohibited as as a bright line. I endorse that approach, that human rights are not only about balancing of competing values, they are also about protecting the inviolability of certain foundational principles and they belong to what I call the grammar. 18:39 Todd Landman I see, so this word grammar then becomes very important for you. And I suppose it almost invites you to deconstruct the grammar, and then reconstruct the grammar. So what can you tell us about the grammar of human rights? I'm very interested in this concept. 18:54 Martin Scheinin   Well, my British Academy project lists ten antinomies or challenges, which are related to human rights in the digital realm, but at the same time, go back to these foundational principles, concepts, structures of human rights law, and what I mentioned about the essence inviolability of the essence versus proportionality is one. There's the question of the private versus the public actor as agent, and also as the duty bearer. There's the question of territorial versus extraterritorial action by states. And there's also the distinction between derogation and limitation. Limitations are in normal times. And they must be proven proportionate, whereas derogations are exceptions in times of crisis. And I think COVID has provided us an opportunity, us an opportunity to look once again into the question, are there different limits, a different definition of the inviolable core, for instance, when a country is in a state of emergency? These are just examples. 20:04 Todd Landman Yeah, they're great examples. We interviewed an anti-terror expert, Tom Parker in the last series, and he made this reference very similar set of things that you just said there. And, you know, this notion of limits is really important. But also he's worried that there's a kind of state bureaucracy, a state apparatus that has been developed for this particular public emergency. And he's worried that that will become permanent, that that that it won't fade away, it won't be brought back down again, after a period of duration, and that we are in a sense, living with a new kind of surveillance that will will not go away. What do you say to that? 20:40 Martin Scheinin  I have worked on surveillance in an earlier EU funded research programme called SURVEILLE, which developed multi-dimensional and multidisciplinary methodology for assessing the utility of surveillance technologies versus their human rights harm. And we could show that the most intrusive methods of surveillance often were only marginally effective in actually producing the legitimate aim or benefit towards the legitimate aim. It was a semi-empirical, largely largely based on hypothetical or modelling situations. But nevertheless, we had the multidisciplinary teams working on it and could show that this technological hype around surveillance is unfounded, that traditional methods of policing, footwork and human intelligence deliver a much better proportionality approach to assessing the Human Rights harm in relation to the actual benefit obtained toward national security. There are many reasons why surveillance technology and other digital innovations tend to perpetuate then. And we can speak on the surveillance industrial complex. And I'm also sure that there as issues of mission creep and function creep, and many of the changes we see in the realm of treatment of sensitive health data will remain after COVID-19 is over. So something is lost. Or at least there's a risk that something is lost every time a special situation justifies resorting to exceptional measures. 22:31 Todd Landman  And just in closing, I want to ask you a final question, which is you spend your time as Global Professor, you engage with academics at Oxford and the rest of the world in this area, and you come up with a new grammar for human rights - what next? What's the goal here? Is it to then advocate to the United Nations system, the European system to change laws, regulations and practices? Do you think you could have that kind of leverage to make the changes required to address the very deep issues that you've raised with us today? 22:59 Martin Scheinin  Well, I, I did mentioned the surveillance project where I was involved. That gives a good example of what an eternal optimist who is a serious academic can achieve. So we developed this methodology for the multidisciplinary assessment of surveillance technologies. And we delivered our reports and on 29th of October 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution where they commended the methodology developed in the SURVEILLE project and recommended it for use. Two weeks later, happened Bataclan, one of the most dreadful terrorist attacks in Europe and everything was forgotten. Nothing came out of it. And that's the pendulum, especially in issues of terrorism, that there are all kinds of good efforts to develop constraints safeguards and make proposal about human rights compatibility. But when panic strikes, it goes down the drain. I am an eternal optimist, and I think that human rights law has to engage has to evolve and that it will be able to deliver outcomes that both make meaningful difference as to the facts on the ground, and at the same time, are able to correspond to the intuitions of ordinary people with a common sense, there is a certain legitimacy requirement that what we deliver must be backed by the people as acceptable. And I think we can cope with that. But we cannot cope with irrational panic. That's the big problem in this work. 24:37 Todd Landman Amazing. Yeah, I share your optimism, I'm afraid. And you know, the incremental gains you do you do face setbacks from these external threats panics, as you as you call them, and the perception of the disruption that's coming, but at the same time holding true to human rights and the philosophies that sit behind human rights, and then also this thing just about legitimacy, I think, you know, if we go back to Max Faber and his legal rational sources of authority, in where legitimacy comes from that acceptance that people think this is reasonable, proportional and something we can live with, but as you say, if there's overreach, mission, creep, panic and and other elements of state action and non-state action I might add, then the acceptability and legitimacy comes into question. So it's just been unbelievable talking to you and hearing your insights about this in the direction that you've taken our conversation today. So much to think about, you're in the middle of the project. We look forward to, you know, the results that you get at the end of the project and really seeing that that output and those conversations that will come from what you discover, but for now, I just want to thank you for appearing on this episode of The Right Track. 25:53 Chris Garrington Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.    

In Episode 5 of Series 2 of our podcast, we talk to Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez from the University of Berlin and Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol about research from the DIAL funded Equal Lives project on the gendered division of housework during lockdown and whether or not changes that happened were temporary or long-lasting. Gender division of housework during the COVID-19 pandemic: Temporary shocks or durable change?  is research published in Demographic Research by Alejandra Rodríguez-Sánchez, Anette Fasang and Susan Harkness. Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00 Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In this series, we're discussing findings from DIAL's Equal Lives Project, which looks at how inequality impacts the lives of young adults. Our guests in today's episode, are Equal Lives' Principal Investigator Susan Harkness, and Aleja Rodríguez Sánchez. They've been looking at the gender division of housework during the COVID-19 pandemic, to see whether any changes are temporary or longer lasting. I started by asking Susan to explain the backdrop to the research. Susan Harkness  0:32  So this research fits into a larger body of research looking at how inequalities evolve over the lifecourse. And so when COVID came along, we realised it revealed that there are really important changes going on and new inequalities and growing inequalities we needed to think about so a part of that we're looking at what is happening within families, and in particular, how households divide their labour because that has implications for what happens in the labour market and what happens to broader inequalities. Christine Garrington  1:01  Aleja what exactly was it that you're hoping to get a better handle on, a better understanding of in all of this? Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez  1:09 Yeah, we started with the idea that maybe the effects of the pandemic and the lockdown on the division of labour were going to affect some people more than others. We intended to look at what couples would do differently if they had children or didn't have children. We also further wanted to look at whether the age of the child would make a difference in how the pandemic impacted the division of labour. But then we realised that there were a lot of things going on at the same time and it wasn't going to be easy to sort of look at one moment in time and before and after. And so we wanted to give it a more dynamic look and see how the situation evolved over time as these further changes in the furlough scheme, childcare and school closures were put in place and then lifted.  Christine Garrington  1:55  Can you talk us through exactly what it was that you that you did? Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez  1:58  We opted for a very, first, very descriptive type of study, looking at the share of housework done by women, and here we look at the percentage or the proportion or the share that it's done by women of the total amount of number of hours spent on housework, cooking, cleaning, but does not include childcare in this case. So we want to know how that share of the work done by women changed. So we wanted to look at this quantity at different moments in the pandemic. We wanted to look at it first shock but then we also wanted to look at what happened after that first shock, whether those same things, the same effects would have stayed over time or were they, whether there would need some sort of change. And for that we use a technique called kernel density estimation, which helps us to see how the distribution of a variable in the population has shifted over time. So we wanted to first estimate pre-pandemic distribution and then we wanted to see how the distribution has shifted over time. Then secondly, we wanted to sort of further those descriptive analysis with a fixed effects type of regression, which basically we tried to compare couples to their own selves in the past to sort of get rid of some of the heterogeneity that it's unobserved.  Christine Garrington  3:13  You got your information from an especially conducted COVID survey, what sorts of things were people asked in that that made it possible to look really closely at these questions?  Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez  3:23   Yeah, the COVID survey - it's really like a special very special or very unique study, in a way even for other in comparison to other UK studies that were done during the first year of COVID. The sample is basically a sub sample of this Understanding Society study, which is this much larger study that has followed UK households for more than 10 years. And there were lots of questions on how the COVID pandemic affected sort of the general welfare of households and individuals and there were questions about socio-economic conditions, I think, unemployment stuff, and there were also things about family dynamics. So it's quite comprehensive. And I think there's a lot more to see in there. Christine Garrington  4:02  How and why do surveys like this help us gain such important insights into what is going on in people's lives and how that's changing over time? Susan Harkness  4:11  Okay, so there's two things that are really valuable about surveys like the UK household Longitudinal Survey, or Understanding Society, as we call it. First of all, it's a survey that's conducted at the household level so we can see what's going on. Not just amongst individuals, but how, how relationships within the household pan out. And then the second thing that's valuable about it of course, is the longitudinal aspect. So that really allows us to look at changes over time. And that allows us to understand much more about why we have inequalities and how they affect different people. So in the case of the COVID studies, we can see where change happened, where they relatively, families where things were relatively equal before became more unequal? Or which particular groups were most affected? So we can see these changes over time. And I suppose if we look at the COVID Understanding Society surveys, and what's also really valuable about this survey is that whilst there have been a lot of other surveys which have given us a sort of snapshot of what's happening at a particular point in time, with the COVID surveys with Understanding Society, we can see how these inequalities are emerging as we move through the pandemic so we can see who is being affected and how that is changing for them over time. Christine Garrington  5:30  Yeah, really important and Aleja so let's get down into the nitty gritty then - when you, when you looked over time at how men and women were dividing housework or sharing housework at different times during the pandemic. What did you find? Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez  5:44  Yeah, well, we found a remarkable first data set that is seen as a sort of shift in the distribution towards more equality between couples. So the original pre-pandemic distribution it's quite was quite unequal and therefore sort of skewed looking like more women, we're doing more. So visually, it really looks like a bump around like 65-70%, which means really, women do the majority of this housework. And so the first shock is that the shape of that bump to the left, so to say towards more equality, so it's close to 50/50 but it's not quite there yet. And then after, after that first shock with the data for further and further waves revealed was a gradual, but a clear return to previous levels, that we're seeing pre-pandemic where women started to do again a higher percentage of the total housework over time. And this sort of return to normal was especially clear for couples with children, whereas couples without children, we saw that this higher equality achieve after their lockdown or during the lockdown was more sustained. And these results were also confirmed with the fixed effects regression that I mentioned. So we think that the results basically show us that there were different trends, depending on the lifecourse stage in which the family was. Christine Garrington  7:07  Yeah, so it looks to be fairly robust doesn't it? And Susan, is that what you expected to see? Or were you surprised that having children made a difference to whether couples continue to share housework more equally, or revert to their pre-pandemic habits as it were in this, this area? Susan Harkness  7:23  Right, well of course, I mean, COVID has been an enormous shock, I think. Especially in the early months where we had people's work was affected, and for those who had children schools were closed. And I think that shock meant that couples changed their behaviour, whether they had children or not. And of course, there was a lot of early optimism that, that those changes would mean a bit more gender equality. But what we've seen is I think that as people have adapted, we've seen the sort of patterns emerge in a way that's quite similar to what happens for example, when children, children are born. And we have this specialisation, where women tend to revert back to taking on more of the roles involved in sort of looking after the house whereas men tend to specialise more in work. So sadly, and I think for those with children, I think we see these greater specialisation - so children are often a trigger for more specialisation within households with, with men doing more paid work and women doing more of the housework. And I think to some extent, what we're finding reflects these, these old patterns that we've seen previously in the data before COVID. So perhaps early optimism was, was not as well placed as it might have been. Christine Garrington  8:31  Hmmm I will ask you a bit more about the implications of that in a moment, but Aleja what would you say that we've learned from this piece of research that you've done and I wonder if you have plans to look further at this particular area, this particular aspect of people's lives? Alejandra Rodríguez Sánchez  8:45  I think one key message besides what Susan has already said is that before and after comparisons, sort of they can be informative, but they're only showing us like a snapshot of what actually happened. And longitudinal data is really key because for us, we gained a lot of information by actually looking at how things evolved over time, which gives a different take on this, on how, when we claimed, those early claims on how the pandemic would change at all for the better or worse we are definitely looking at working already further on the COVID-19 effects. But this time, we're going to, we're shifting the perspective from the couple to the children in particular to teenagers. We're interested in understanding what factors may explain some preliminary findings on what was found as the serious deterioration of mental health among teenagers, especially teenage girls. We want to see what factors about their families but particularly about mothers who were also having, were having a hard time during the pandemic may explain what happened to teenagers. And so we're working with Susan and Annette on this. Christine Garrington  9:52  Yeah, no really interesting, more really important work to come by the sounds of things. So Susan, just to wrap up really a lot has been said about how COVID-19 has negatively affected the lives of women more than men. Fears have been expressed around the reversal of any sort of pre-pandemic trends towards a greater gender equality. Would you say that this piece of research and, and other work that you're doing tells us anything about that, do you think? Susan Harkness  10:17  Well, I think certainly other studies have, have shown that women's mental health has been particularly adversely affected by the pandemic and particularly by the lockdown measures, so we know that some of the responses to the COVID crisis have really negatively affected women more than they have affected men. We've also, I think seeing some trends in the labour market where particularly mother's employment is perhaps recovering a bit more slowly than that, that of men to pre-pandemic levels of employment and hours of work. So I think there are some indications that there are implications for gender equality, and that those are not necessarily going to be reversed in the short term. I think the longer-term consequences are much harder to tell of course. You know, what effect this, these, these closures has on women and their careers is, it's something that we don't yet know, but it's, it's not hard to imagine reasons that parents may feel that they're going to fall, fall behind in the labour market because of the extra roles they've had to take on over this crisis. And I suppose the question remains about whether in the longer term, they'll be able to catch up with where they may have been otherwise. Christine Garrington  11:31  “Gender Division of Housework Furing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Temporary Shocks or Durable Change” is research by Alejandro Rodriguez Sanchez, Annette Fasang and Susan Harkness and is published in Demographic Research. You can find out more about the Equal Lives project at www.equal-lives.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington. Don't forget to subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes.

In Episode 1 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Ben Lucas, Managing Director of the University of Nottingham's Data-Driven Discovery Initiative (3DI).  Together they discuss the threat to human rights posed by aspects of a digital world and the opportunities it can create for positive change.  Transcript Todd Landman  0:00  Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our first episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Ben Lucas. Ben is Managing Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham. A hub for world class data science research, and a funder for this series of The Rights Track. To kick off the series, we're talking about some of the challenges and opportunities created in a data driven society, and particularly what all that means for our human rights. So welcome on this episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas  0:37 Thank you so much for having me.  Todd Landman  0:38  It's great to have you here, Ben. And I guess I want to start with just to kind of broad open question. We've been living with the internet for a number of years now. When I first came to United Kingdom, we barely had the internet and suddenly the web exploded, and it is a wonderful thing. It's transformed our lives in so many different ways. But it's also created major challenges for human rights, law and practice around the world. So my first question really is, what are the key concerns? Ben Lucas  1:04 I think that the internet is perhaps not bad in and of itself, and in that regard, it's very similar to any other new and emerging technology. We look at something like the automobile there's obviously dangers that having cars on roads introduced into society, but there's also a lot of good as far as a boost in quality of life and economic productivity and so forth. I think the central challenge and one that's perhaps getting exponentially more challenging is the fact that often more now than ever, digital technologies are moving a lot faster than what the regulatory environment can keep up with. And also very importantly, humankind's ability to fully understand the potential consequences of misuse or what happens when things go wrong. Todd Landman  1:50  So in some ways, it is interesting, you could look at Moore's Law for example, technology increases exponentially and this point you're making about the inability for the regulatory environment to keep up with that. I think that's a crucial insight you've given us because human rights in a way is a regulatory environment. We have international standards; we have domestic standards. Ben Lucas  2:08  Correct. Todd Landman  2:09  We have de jure protection of rights, de facto enjoyment of rights, but oftentimes, there's a great tension or gap between those two things. And when new issues emerge, we either need a new standard, or we need a new interpretation of those standards to be able to apply to that new thing. So, we're going to call the Internet a new thing for now and it actually, this dual use of technology is also interesting to me. When barbed wire was invented it's a great thing because you can suddenly close off bits of land and keep animals in one place. And it's wonderful for agriculture, but it's also a way to control property. And as we know, the enclosure laws in this country led to quite a lot of political conflict. But if we get back to the questions then about, you know, positive and negative aspects of the Internet, what else can you share with us? Ben Lucas  2:50 There are examples such as work that colleagues in the Rights Lab are doing, for example, on the use of the Internet and in particular social media, for exploitation. So, child exploitation, for example. There's also terrible examples of migrant exploitation. People who join groups thinking it's going to be a community to help them to get a job in another place. And that turns out to be quite dodgy, so that there's examples that are just blatantly you know, bad and terrible and terrible things that happen on the internet. But then there are other examples that are, I think, much more complicated, especially around the transmission of information and new emergent keywords we're seeing around misinformation and disinformation. The power that user generated content can have to help mobilise activists and protests for good for example, to get information out when journalists can't get in. Then the flip side of that is the potential exploitation by nefarious actors who are obviously spreading information that potentially damages democracies and otherwise stable and important institutions around the world. The other thing I would sort of cite here would be work by our colleague, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick with his book, The Good Drone. That's a really interesting contrast here. So, a book about the use of UAVs and where on the one hand, if we think about a UAV that's armed. Todd Landman  4:12  That's an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for our listeners. Ben Lucas  4:14 Yeah, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. And if we think about one of those drones that's armed and also potentially autonomous moving forward to some that's potentially you know, very, very scary. On the other hand, this same basic sort of technology platform could provide cheap and accessible technology to help mobilise social movements to help journalists for example. And so I think any debate around the good and bad of technology, that there's some really interesting and very complicated contrast involved. Todd Landman  4:43   And you know, you see drones being used for beautiful visual displays over you know, presidential inaugurations, for example. Ben Lucas  4:48 Exactly. Todd Landman  4:49  You see this big, colourful display, but that same swarm technology of UAVs can actually be used for combat for warfare, etc. And we know from the work on human rights, modern slavery and human trafficking that, you know, taking pictures of the Earth using satellites with swarms of satellites is very good, but then that can also be used for for ill as well and I think that challenge of the dual use of technology will always be with us. I wonder now if we could just turn to another set of questions, which is, is the difference between life online and life offline. Do we think that human rights rules are different for online and offline life or roughly the same? Ben Lucas  5:25  A lot of people argue that online is a mirror of offline, although there are those potentially really negative amplification effects involved in the bad stuff that happens in the real world so to speak, when you move it online because you can take something that's very small and suddenly make it very big. I think there's a degree of it really just being a mirror and potentially an amplifier for the offline. Again, I think the central problem when we talk about human rights and the general protection of users of the Internet, is again really this fact that the technology is just moving so fast. That regulation both it's you know, how it's developed, initiated, interpreted going forward, the tech just moves so much faster. And then I think what we're seeing now is really kind of a shock that internet users get after the fact but it's maybe the sort of Newton's third law effect. You know, tech moved so fast was so aggressive and so free in the way it kind of there was sort of a wild west of how we, you know, captured and used data. And now we're just sort of experiencing the backlash that you would expect. One other sort of complicated dimension here is that we really need regulation to protect users of the internet but of course, that's then balanced against examples we see around the world of the way the internet's regulated being used to oppress and suppress populations. There's a really important balance that we need to achieve there. We need to protect everybody online. We need to preserve freedom of access to information, freedom of speech. We don't want people to get hurt online, but we also don't want to do that in an oppressive way. Maybe one thing that's really different as far as human rights online and offline, will emerge in the future around artificial intelligence. The big question I think that researchers in artificial intelligence are dealing with be they folks who are working on the algorithmics or be they the colleagues in law who are working on the ethics and the legal side of it. The really big question is around sort of transparency and tractability what's actually happening in this magic algorithmic box? Can we make sure that people can have appropriate checks and balances on what these you know this this new class of machines is doing? Todd Landman  7:32  Well, it's interesting because there is this observation about people who, who who use AI and design those algorithms that the AI solution and the algorithm that's been designed reflects many of the biases of the coder in the first place. Ben Lucas  7:44 Exactly. Todd Landman  7:425 And who are these coders? Well, they come from a particular social demographic and therefore you're replicating their positionality through AI, yet AI is presented as this neutral machine that simply calculates things and gives you the best deals on whatever platform you might be shopping. Ben Lucas  7:58  Precisely. And a lot of these you know, if we think about machine learning in general, where we're training an algorithm, essentially a type of machine to do something it involves a training set that involves a training data set. Where is that coming from? Who's putting it together? Exactly what biases are present in that? And now, and this is probably one of the most pronounced differences when we think about sort of human rights offline and online. I think a really big issue going forward is going to be that of AI discrimination, basically, and we're seeing that in everything from financial services - you know a machine is making a decision about does somebody get a loan, does somebody get a good credit score, applications and facial recognition technology. Who are they trying to find? What are they trying to do with that tech? And this AI discrimination issue is going to be one of the, one of the key things about that online/offline contrast. Todd Landman  8:50  Yeah, you know running right through all of our human rights law discourses, one about you know no discrimination, right that there should not be discrimination by type of person. Ben Lucas  8:59  Correct. Todd Landman  9:00  And yet, we know in practice, there's law discrimination already. And in a way AI can only amplify or maybe accelerate some of that discrimination. So it's a good cautionary tale about you know, the, the, shall we say, the naive embrace of AI as a as a solution to our problems. I wonder if I might just move forward a little bit about the cross-border nature of the internet, one of the promises of the internet is that nation state boundaries disappear, that people can share information across space and time we've just lived through a pandemic, but we're able to talk to each other in meetings all around the world without having to get in any kind of form of transport. But what sort of things should we thinking about in terms of the cross-border nature of the internet? Ben Lucas  9:38  I think that I would encourage all listeners today to go back to Alain de Botton's book, The News; a User's Manual, and also some of the talks he gave around that period, I think around 2014. We can have a totally new interpretation of some of those very relevant ideas, where we are now in the present and I'm talking about what some people are calling the threat of the post truth era. We've seen a completely unprecedented explosion in the information that we have access to the ability to suddenly take somebody's very small idea, good or bad, and project to a massive audience. But with that comes, you know, the vulnerabilities around misinformation and disinformation campaigns and the threat that that leads to, you know, potentially threatening democracies threatening, you know, various populations around the world. And another important branch of work that we're doing is studying campaigns and user generated content, and actually studying what's being said, at scale within these large audiences. We've done quite some work, Todd and I are with the Rights Lab for example, looking at analysing campaigns on Twitter. And this really comes down to trying to get into, exactly as you would study any other marketing campaign, looking at how do you cut through clutter? How do you achieve salience? But then also through to more practical functional matters of campaigns such as you know, driving guaranteed region awareness, policy influence donations, but we're just doing that at a much larger scale, which is facilitated, obviously, by the fact that we have access to social media data. Todd Landman  11:16  It's unmediated supply of information that connects the person who generates the content to the person who consumes it. Ben Lucas  11:23  Yeah. Todd Landman  11:24  Earlier you were talking about the media you're talking about academia and others, you know, there's always some sort of accountability peer review element to that before something goes into the public domain. Whereas here you're talking about a massive democratisation of technology, a massive democratisation of content generation, but actually a collapse in the mediated form of that so that anybody can say anything, and if it gains traction, and in many ways, if it's repeated enough, and enough enough people believe it's actually true. And of course, we've seen that during the pandemic, but we see it across many other elements of politics, society, economy, etc, and culture. And yet, you know, there we are in this emerging post truth era, not really sure what to do about that. We see the proliferation of media organisations, the collapse of some more traditional media organisations, like broadsheet newspapers and others have had to change the way they do things and catch up. But that peer review element, that kind of sense check on the content that's being developed is gone in a way. Ben Lucas  12:18  Yep and it's potentially very scary because there's no editor in chief for, you know, someone's social media posts. On top of that, they probably have or could potentially have a far greater reach than a traditional media outlet. And I think the other thing is, I mean, we were kind of for warned on many of these issues. The NATO Review published quite some interesting work on Disinformation and Propaganda in the context of hybrid warfare, I think around sort of starting in 2016, or ramping up in 2016, which is, you know, also very fascinating read. And then the flip side again of this connectivity that we have now, I guess the good side, you know, is when user generated content is used in a good way. And again, that's examples like, you know, examples we've seen around the world with the mobilisation of protests for good causes or fighting for democracy, grassroots activism, and in particular, that ability to get information out when journalists can't get in. Todd Landman  13:15  You know it's interesting we did a study years ago, colleagues and I, on the the mobilisation against the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and we were particularly interested in the role of social media and Facebook platform for doing that. And it turned out that a. there was a diaspora living outside the country interested in the developments within the country but within the country, those who were more socially active on these platforms more likely to turn up to an event precisely because they could work out how many other people were going to go so it solves that collective action problem of you know, my personal risk and cost associated protesting is suddenly reduced because I know 100 other people are going to go. And you know, we did a systematic study of the motivations and mobilisation of those folks, you know, try, trying to oust the Ben Ali regime, but it gets to the heart of what you're saying that this this you know, user generated content can have a tech for good or a social good element to it. Ben Lucas  14:08  Exactly. And I think another important note here, that's maybe some sort of upside is that, you know, there are a lot of academics in a lot of different fields working on understanding this massive proliferation of connectivity as well. In a kind of, I guess, strange silver lining to many of the new problems that this technology may or may not have caused is that it's also given rise to the emergence of new fields like so we're talking about Infodemiology, now we've got some amazing studies happening on the subjects of echo chambers and confirmation bias and these types of type of themes and I think it's really given rise to some really interesting science and research and I have some some confidence that we've got, even if we don't have those, again, editors in chief on social media, I have confidence because we certainly have some, you know, wonderful scientists coming at this scenario from a lot of different angles, which I think also helps to sort of moderate and bring some of the downsides to the public attention. Todd Landman  15:04  Yeah, and let me jump to research now, because I'm really interested in the type of research that people are doing in 3DI here at the university. Can you just tell us a little bit about some of the projects and how they're utilising this new infodemiology as you call it, or new grasp and harnessing of these technologies? Ben Lucas  15:23  Yeah, so 3DI as the data driven discovery initiative, we're basically interested in all things applied data science. We have, I think, quite a broad and really wonderful portfolio of activity that we represent here at the University of Nottingham, in our Faculty of Social Science. Faculty of Social Sciences. This is everything from economics, to law, to business, to geography, and everything in between. We take a very broad exploratory approach to the kinds of questions that we're interested in solving, I would say. But we do tend to focus a lot on what we call local competitive advantage. So we're very interested in the region that we operate - Nottinghamshire - sectors and industry clusters where they have questions that can be answered via data science. Todd Landman  16:08  What sort of questions? What sort of things are they interested in? Ben Lucas  16:11  This is everything from the development of new financial services to really driving world class, new practice in digital marketing, developing and sort of advancing professions like law, where there is a very big appetite to bring in new sort of tech and data driven solutions into that space but a need to achieve those new sort of fusions and synergies. So that, that side is obviously very, you know, commercially focused, but very importantly, a big part of our portfolio is SDG focus. So Sustainable Development Goal focused, and we've got, I think, some really fascinating examples in that space. My colleagues in our N-Lab, which is a new demographic laboratory, based in the business school, are working on food poverty, for example. And they're doing this in what I think is really exciting way. They've teamed up with a food sharing app. So, this is very much driven by the start-up world. It's very much a marketplace offering. The platform is set up to combat, hopefully both hunger, but also food waste. So, we're talking SDG 2, and we're talking SDG 12, sustainable production and consumption. And they've then been able to expand this work not just from understanding the platform - how it works, not just helping the platform, how it can work and function better. But they've been able to take that data from the private sector and apply it to questions in the public sector. So, they are doing a lot of wonderful work. Todd Landman  17:37  So, people have a bit of surplus food, and they go on to the app and they say I've got an extra six eggs, and someone else goes on the app and says I need six eggs and then there's some sort of exchange, almost like an eBay for food. Ben Lucas  17:47  Exactly. Todd Landman  17:48  But as you say, people who are hungry get access to food for much less than going to the shop and buying it and. Ben Lucas  17:55  Or free. Todd Landman  17:56  And people with the extra six eggs don't chuck them out at the end of the week. They've actually given them to somebody right? Ben Lucas 18:01  Exactly. Todd Landman 18:02  And then from that you generate really interesting data that can be geo-located and filled into Maps, because then you can work out where the areas of deprivation then where people have, say, a higher probability of seeking less expensive food. Ben Lucas  18:15  Precisely. Yeah. And I think that's also a good segue into you know, so one of the other flagship projects we have is 3DI, which is tracktheeconomy.ac.uk where we've been looking at, again, taking data from the private sector, but also government data and looking at how economic deprivation might have been exacerbated or not or how it changed. In particular focused on COVID and what sort of shocks that brought about, but with the intention of taking that forward. And the biggest sort of revelations that we've had working on that project have been really around the need for better geographical granularity. The fact that a lot of our national statistics or you know, marketing research assessments that are made by companies are based on you know, bigger geographical chunks. Actually, if we can get more granular and get into some of that heterogeneity that might exist at smaller geographical levels, you know, that's that's really, really important. That really, really changes a lot of policy formulation, sort of scenarios and questions that policy makers have.  Todd Landman  19:19 One of the big problems when when you aggregate stuff, you lose that specificity and precisely the areas that are in most need. So I wonder in this research that your your colleagues been doing and that you've been doing, you know, what's the end game? What are we working towards here? And how is that going to help us in terms of it from a human rights perspective? Ben Lucas  19:41  I think speaking from a personal perspective, when I was a student when I was first taught economics, I was taught in a way that really highlighted that this is you know, economics was was just something that everyone as a citizen should know even if you don't want to become an economist or an econometrician, you need to know it as a citizen. The same now very much applies when we talk about technologies that might not be familiar to all folks like AI data science. I think there's a lot to be said, as far as what I would say is a big sort of mission for 3DI is to really boost the accessibility of technical skills to really benefit people in terms of prosperity, but also just in terms of understanding as citizens what's actually going on. You know, if machines are going to be making decisions for us in the future, that we have a right to understand how those decisions are made. Also, if we think about other challenges, in the sort of AI and automation space around, you know, potentially people losing jobs because it's become automated. I think we have a right to know how and why that is. I think another big sort of an extension of that point is really in learning and getting technical skills out there to people for you know, potentially benefiting prosperity and the labour market. We really need to keep that very tightly paired with critical thinking skills. You know, we're very good as academics, thinking about things and breaking them down and analysing them especially you know, we as social scientists, you know, coding is probably going to be language of the future to borrow your quote Todd, but who's going to use that coding and what for? So I think we need to keep people in a good mindset and be using this this this technology and this power for good. And then the last point would be as something that's been done very well on this podcast in the past, is getting people to think both researchers and again, definitely citizens to think about the inextricably intertwined nature of the Sustainable Development Goals. You know, so for us at 3DI we're looking for those problems at scale, where we have measurements at scale, where we can do data science and crack big challenges, but I think whether you're doing you know, much more focused work or work with the SDGs at scale, it's all really interconnected. An obvious example, what is climate change going to do for you know, potentially displacing populations and the flow on, the horrible flow on effects that's going to have? So I really, I think that's yes, sort of our our mission, I would say, moving forward. Todd Landman  22:07  That's fantastic. So you've covered a lot of ground, Ben, it's been fascinating discussion, you know, from the dual use of technology and this age old question of the good and the bad of any kind of new technological advance. You've covered all things around the, you know, the mobilizational potential problems with post truth era. The expanse and proliferation of multiple sources of information in a sense in the absence of of that mediated or peer reviewed element. And this amazing gap between the speed of technology and the slowness of our regulatory frameworks, all of which have running right through them major challenges for the human rights community. So we're really excited about this series because we're going to be talking to a lot of people around precisely the issues you set out for us and many more. In the coming months we've got Martin Sheinin who is a great human rights expert, former UN Special Rapporteur, but now a global, British Academy global professor at the Bonavero Institute at the University of Oxford working on precisely these challenges for human rights law, and this new digital world. And that's going to be followed by a podcast with Diane Coyle, who's the Bennett Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge. It's interesting because she wrote a book in 1997 called The Weightless World, which is about this emerging digital transformation coming to the economy, and has now written a new book called Cogs and Monsters. It's a great take on the modern study of economics and the role of digital transformation. But for now, I just want to thank you, Ben, for joining us. It's exciting to hear about the work of 3DI. We appreciate the support of 3DI for this series of The Rights Track. We look forward to the guests and I think by the end of the series we would like to have you back on for some reflections about what we've learned over this series of the Rights Track. Ben Lucas  23:50  Happy to. Thank-you for having me. Christine Garrington  23:53  Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.      

In Episode 13 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Professor Nicky LeFeuvre from the University of Lausanne discusses findings from DIAL's DAISIE project (Dynamics of Accumulated Inequalities for Seniors in Employment, which has been exploring the gendered impacts of policies aimed at extending working life.  Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series three we're discussing emerging findings from DIAL research. For this episode, we're talking to Nicky LeFeuvre from the University of Lausanne about findings from DIAL's DAISIE project, which has been exploring the gendered impacts of policies aimed at extending working life. I started by asking her to talk about the policy backdrop to the research Nicky LeFeuvre  0:25   Over the last 10 or 12 years there has been this quite widespread consensus about the need to extend working lives and this consensus has existed at national levels, you know, government initiatives, also across international organisations like the OECD, and the dominant narrative has been based on kind of two or three basic assumptions this inevitability of increasing full pension age, to keep pace with life expectancy. Questions about the sustainability of our existing welfare systems, pension systems, and also a discourse around personal individual choice and personal responsibility. You know, this idea fielded by the OECD that people are increasingly free to construct their own biographies and so there has been this sort of focus on rewardingly later retirement or penalising early retirement in actual fact, and relatively little concern for the inherent, I would say dynamics of accumulated inequality that lie behind this policy objective. And so this was very much something that we wanted to address in the in the DAISIE project and of course, it was completely in line with the overall aims of the DIAL programme. And our sort of particular focus was to say okay, individuals are receiving this policy discourse which is relatively homogenous across the board, and what are they doing with it? Okay, how is this really impacting on their lives? And notably, how is this being interpreted and acted upon by their employers, by the occupations that they're in? And to what extent their past life experiences, particularly their employment histories, and the way that their past employment has been articulated with their care duties if they happen to be women? How is all this coming together to produce a, what we presume would be quite a varied experience of what extended working life actually means for individuals and for organisations, to be honest. Christine Garrington  2:28   Yeah, now that brings me very nicely on to my next question, actually, because in recent years, policymakers have really recognised the need, the importance of taking, you know what we talked about as a life course approach to this issue, something you've just hinted at, and, and this is something that really resonates with your research. Tell us why this is so important. Nicky LeFeuvre  2:45   I think there has been it's been slow to come, but it is there, I would say, perhaps emerging recognition that rather than full-fledged recognition at the moment of the need to avoid the accumulation of individual disadvantages over the life course in terms of extended working life and this is related to health issues. You know, we do not age equally, people are not as equally able to envisage extending their working lives and they're also not as equally motivated to do so. So that this recognition has come or is coming slowly. And in the most recent OECD document, for example, which is entitled working better with age, there is this idea that perhaps there has been too, too much of focus on these financial incentives. So making it you know, financially penalising people for leaving the labour market too early with the too being in speech marks and the need to address what is often termed demand side barriers to extended working life. And I really do like this this quote from the OECD that now recognises the fact that we need workers who want to work longer and also employers who want to employ them, and I think this is really the crux of the issue here. You know, there's there is this emerging shift towards the recognition that this is not just about individual choice that these extended work, working life issues are related to a whole host of structural constraints and opportunities. And this is really what we were wanting to do in the DAISIE project. It does really resonate with us because we were arguing that it is important to look beyond macro level policies and to study exactly how they are being interpreted how they're being applied by employers and by individuals according to the you know, particular histories and their particular circumstances. So yes, this this really was very exciting for us, because we did see this policy shift on the horizon, as we were, you know, preparing to to address those issues in the project. Christine Garrington  4:58   Yeah, that's great. That's a really neat summary of the backdrop to this work. So let's move on then. And if you could give us an outline an overview of what the DAISIE project has actually been doing? Nicky LeFeuvre  5:12   We set out to adopt what we called a multi-level research design, because we wanted to integrate as I just said, the policy background obviously you can't completely abstract this out of your reasoning. So we did want to look at the similarities or the variations in these extended working life policies across countries and see whether there were some best practices or some policy recommendations that were being really adopted across the board and others that were perhaps, you know, more localised in certain contexts or certain countries. So we wanted this macro level analysis of working life practices, but also the objectives that were that were being defined by by different policymakers, either at the EU level or in particular countries. We also wanted to sort of micro socio sort of individual analysis. So we wanted to explore particularly the well-being, the health and the work life balance issues that older workers were facing. So we knew we wanted to use biographical accounts we wanted life history interviews, we wanted really to be able to get at the experiences of older workers, which are kind of slightly invisiblised in the policy documents. And in order to integrate those two levels or those two scales of analysis, we needed the mezzo level which is the sort of intermediate level the occupational and the organisational level, as I said previously, often sort of left out of existing analyses in order to look at what was happening in different employment sectors. And therefore, we adopted this case study method where we selected three different occupations or three different sectors: finance, health and transport. And with our sort of cross-national comparative perspective, we then looked at these three sectors that we could compare both within with other sectors within the same country and across countries to see whether these extended working-like issues were being addressed and implemented to the same extent and in the same ways in different sectors and in different countries. Christine Garrington  7:20   Such an ambitious programme of research and also at a very challenging time with everything going on with COVID. Nicky LeFeuvre  7:27   Carrying out empirical fieldwork during the COVID pandemic was a little bit challenging for us. But what we've actually done is cross country and cross sector comparative analysis using case studies that we carried out in the five countries and in three different sectors as I said, health sector, health sector, finance and transport. We have collected a huge amounts of empirical data, qualitative data to a large extent. We've used biographical interviews with older workers, male and female workers, and we have about 500 of these interviews across the board. We have of course prepared English language summaries of these interviews because we have to now compare them comparatively and they were not carried out all in the same language. So as you can imagine, this is slightly challenging. And we've also done about 60 expert interviews and we met up in each country and each company we went into we met with the human resource managers, we we talked to line managers, trade union representatives, and so on, to get a feel of how ageing at work was being framed in these different institutions. And we have a collection of about 500 life course grids, which enable us to kind of visualise the life course events that led up to people ageing at work, if you like. So the family events, the residential ability events and of course, their employment histories that frame the ways in which they are now thinking about whether they're going to retire at what age they want to retire, whether they could envisage extending their working lives and under what circumstances. So quite quite a wealth of data. We're starting to get to grips with along with a secondary statistical analysis that we did previous to the to the case studies. Christine Garrington  9:12   So what are the sort of the first things, most the things that you did early on Nicky I think was to map older workers employment trends, what were the key things to emerge there? Nicky LeFeuvre  9:22   We were really interested in looking at cross national differences here. And of course, we do see and that's not you know, that's unsurprising given given the convergence in the policy measures that I mentioned earlier. We do see a convergence of the employment rates, basically in the 55 to 64 year age group, I would say. So if we look at the data over the past 10 years, the differences between countries have been reduced. We still have about, you know, up to 20% difference in employment rates at 55 to 64. So this is not negligible at all, but the differences across countries are becoming smaller. So there's there's this idea of a kind of norm of extended working life, but remember, I'm talking about 55 to 64 here so what we're really looking at is actually encouraging people to work up to full retirement age and very little actually about encouraging people to work beyond full retirement age. I think that's a you know, quite an important point to remember when we're talking about ageing at work. In actual fact, we're looking at 55 to 64. And that's where you know that the changes have been over recent years. The other important thing to remember is that there has been a slight reduction in the gender gap in retirement timing. Over the same period, women do continue to retire earlier than than their male counterparts in in almost all of the countries we've looked at. And of course, that's why they they are to a certain extent the prime targets of many extended working life policies in recent years. But the the gap in the retirement, the actual retirement age of men and women has been falling. And that's also very interesting because it means that the gender dimension of what it means to age at work becomes particularly important to look at in detail. Christine Garrington  11:18   So although as you said, you looked across a number of employment sectors, we're going to be focusing in on the finance sector for our interview today. So my first question is why the finance sector? Nicky LeFeuvre  11:28  We were trying to decide which sectors to focus our case studies on. Several criteria were taken into consideration. One of them was of course the gender composition so we wanted sectors that was sort of contrasting in terms of the share of male and female workers. So healthcare was our sort of highly feminised sector transport our highly masculinised and finance our sort of gender balanced sector. Then we wanted sectors where the share of older workers was quite variable. And finance actually is the sector where we have the lowest share of older workers of the three sectors we looked at we have more or less depending on countries there is some variation around 20 to 30% of over 50 year olds in the finance sector, which is let's to give an example half the rates of older workers in employment compared to the transport sector for example. So quite a low share of older workers in finance. And this is obviously related to the history of the of the sector of the occupation. Which is an occupation which has been downsizing and restructuring for the past 20 to 30 years. And where older workers have in most countries been targeted during these restructuring, downsizing operations and have often been offered various early retirement packages, or at least some older workers, mostly male managers, in fact, have been offered packages. And so the finance sector has kind of lopped off a whole generation. And this means that today, it is one of the sectors were that were older workers are relatively underrepresented. But it's a sector that is now facing a number of challenges whether these rather generous early retirement packages have become financially non-viable, and where there's also been some recognition that the accumulated experience of older workers, actually the banks actually needed that experience in order to face the new challenges. And so there is a shift in policy and this was also very interesting for us. Christine Garrington  13:39   Okay, let's move on to some numbers then. What were you able to see in terms of the share or the proportions of the numbers of older workers in the finance sector? Nicky LeFeuvre  13:47   So, the moment we have a very, very small share of older workers, if I give you just you know, some figures for example, in in the Czech Republic, only 10% of men working in the finance sector are aged over 50 in 2019, but 20% of women in the Czech finance sector are aged over 50. So this is also interesting. It's one of the rare sectors where, proportionally speaking, the share of older women, as compared to the whole female workforce is greater than the share of older men as part of the male workforce. And this is quite a rare configuration in sort of the European labour markets at the moment. So that was also something that we were very interested in exploring further. Christine Garrington  14:31   So let's dig now into some of the rather wonderful data that you've been collecting, especially that qualitative data so when you asked workers about their experiences of being older employees in this sector, what were some of those key things that come out of that? Of what they told you? Nicky LeFeuvre  14:46  Well, perhaps I can, I can start with a rather eloquent quote from one of our Swiss interviewees, and I mean you have to take this against the backdrop of this very sort of systematic offloading of older workers over the past 30 years from the banking sector, and one of our interviewees said sort of almost in a whisper “ageing is something we just don't talk about in this bank”. And this really I think, translates quite nicely how stigmatised the question of ageing is within the banking sector. We came across a lot of negative stereotypes about older workers. Older workers are systematically presented as lacking skills, being unable to keep up with the pace of organisational and technological change. And to a certain extent, this is of course the banks justifying their past age management policies which were almost entirely based on externalising ageing at work if you like, getting rid of their older workers, before they actually had to deal with ageing at work. And so in a lot of our interviews, ageing was seen as either something that could possibly enable one to leave the finance sector well before reaching retirement age. So you know showing that you were not able to adapt was seen as as a as a good reason to to leave early, or as something that was quite risky in that the bank could therefore consider you to be too old and and not flexible enough to face the challenges of this digital revolution that's going on in in banking, and therefore you could be made redundant because you were not keeping up with the pace of things. So basically, there was this idea that age is something that we don't talk about and older workers are a great pains to prove to their employers and to the themselves and to their colleagues, that they are actually not part of this terrible stigmatised group that one would call older workers. Christine Garrington  16:56   So some quite unexpected views expressed there about this whole issue of being an older worker, and what are the implications of that for any sort of age management policies that any business might want to put in place in this sector? Nicky LeFeuvre  17:10   Any kind of age management strategies that are adopted in this in this context, are destined to fail basically, because people refuse to be identified with a stigmatised group. That would be the target of you know, these age management policies, and therefore, even when there are minimal measures, I mean, we didn't have a huge range of age management measures that we came across in our case study banks but most of them were related rather to the transition to retirement. So you know, accompanying workers in the transition to retirement, which we consider not really to be age management policies at all because this is you know, this is thinking about how to get rid of your older workers still, rather than thinking about what you do with them when they stay. But even in in those cases, there was a very, very low take up rate because nobody really wanted to run the risk of being identified as an older worker, because this was such a, you know a stigmatised category, and no one wanted to be demoted, or no one wanted to be encouraged to leave because they were part of that group. Christine Garrington  18:13   So Nicky, there seems to be a real disjunct - a real mismatch here between the sort of policy top level policy narrative that you outlined earlier and what you're actually hearing on the ground from workers. You know, what, what's your take on all of that? How does this chime with that policy narrative that you were outlining? Nicky LeFeuvre  18:29   Yes, so I mean, I think these results do, really do tell us that any serious attempt at extending the duration of our working lives requires the active involvement of employers in the business sector as a whole. It's it's quite incredible I think that we should find such a small share of older workers in a non-manual sector like banking, where the physical limitations to you know working longer in terms of health and well-being should in theory be far more limited than in the health sector or in the transport sector, but actually, we find the opposite. We find that finance, in finance we have a small share of older workers. So this really does confirm that postponing retirement is not only about health, it's not only about financial incentives, and it is very much about how older workers are perceived within particular sectors, how they are treated by their employers, and particular I think in those parts of the job market that are looking to reduce staff costs that are looking to scale down their activities or who are confronted with technological change or organisational restructuring. Then, then we really do have to accompany I think companies in in looking at how they, how they frame the whole issue of, of ageing and working. Christine Garrington  19:51   Something I found quite extraordinary in in your research was that when you spoke to companies they expressed, expressed a reluctance or hesitation to introduce any age related policies for fear that this would somehow be seen as discriminatory in some way. What's your take on that? Nicky LeFeuvre  20:08   We had a number of examples where HR managers line managers went to great lengths to explain to us that they couldn't offer any positive support to their older workers because this would be seen to be discriminatory towards other groups of workers. And so we were kind of left a little bit speechless at this thinking, but what interpretation of equal opportunity is being developed here? And why is it that companies believe and they do apparently strongly believe that any accommodation of ageing in organisational structures in the way that work is shared  out or the way working time expectations or or shift work organisation - anything that would facilitate the experiences of older workers identified as a group with potentially some needs that are different to those of other age groups. This should not be seen as discrimination. This should be seen as equal opportunity policy, and it shouldn't be seen as coming into conflict, for example, with gender equality policies or with parental support policies or whatever other objectives companies are seeking to meet. So I think, really applying or emphasising the need to think equal opportunities in an intersectional way looking at how gender and age and ethnic origin and disability and so on, interact across the life course and how employers can deal with these in innovative and creative and complex ways. I think this would be really something very useful because we were struck by this, this difficulty that that organisations were facing in thinking through what they could actually do to support their, their older workers. Christine Garrington  22:05   You did make a number of quite clear recommendations for employers and policy makers in the work that you've done. Can you just talk us through those? Nicky LeFeuvre  22:12   The need for organisations I would say, you know, policymakers at the national level, international level, but also within companies to recognise that there is a potential mismatch. In fact, in the older workers we are talking about as a target group for extended working life policies. Spontaneously when we when we talk to to employers about the kind of older workers that they would be interested in keeping on that they would be interested in training or that they would be interested to target for bridge schemes or for unretirement schemes as they call it and so this possibility of employing retirees back perhaps on a on a reduced rate. Companies do have quite clear, clear image of the kind of worker that they would be interested in in involving in those kinds of schemes. Unfortunately, those images do not equate very well with the profiles of the workers who are actually motivated and interested in extending their working lives. Who tend not to be the most highly qualified or who tend not to be the workers who have continuous employment histories. Who have had haven't had any major health events during their adult life course, who haven't had any significant care commitments that have taken them out of the labour market, who have relatively comfortable financial arrangements made for their latter years and so on and so forth. Christine Garrington  23:37  So among the people you spoke to then, who was motivated to extend their working lives and why?  Nicky LeFeuvre  23:45   Workers can also be motivated because for example, they have developed their careers quite late on in life. So maybe they are just moving into a management position because they've had, if they're women, they have had some years out of employment for family reasons. We also had a number of very interesting testimonies from older women saying that continuing to work longer was actually very attractive to them, because it was one way of avoiding being swamped by care duties that they could be expected to take charge off in later life. So either you know, being on call for grandchildren or being available for elderly dependent relatives. This idea that continuing to work was actually a way of avoiding being overwhelmed by by these care expectations was something perhaps something we were not expecting to find to such a wide extent. And so quite clearly, women like that who are interested in extending their working lives as long as their working conditions are adapted to their needs are not being identified at the moment as resources that employers could call upon, and people that the employers could have in mind when they think about how they are going to manage age. You know what strategies they're going to put in place and how they're going to start, operationalizing their age management policies before people become old you know before people get to within two or three years of retiring. Christine Garrington  25:20   So is there a simple message in all of this? Nicky LeFeuvre  25:22   Making it clear that they're the kind of people that employers would spontaneously think about as their target group for extending working lives are not necessarily primarily the people who are interested in extending their working lives, but there are other groups who are highly motivated to work for longer. I think this is you know, one message that we can pull out of the research that could translate into some quite exciting and quite innovative policy decisions on the ground as it were. Christine Garrington  25:55   Dynamics of accumulated inequalities for seniors in employment is a DIAL research project, looking at the gendered impacts of policies and an extended working life. You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which was presented by me, Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.  

In the fourth episode of Series 2 of our Podcast looking at research from the Equal Lives project, we talk to Michael Grätz from the University of Lausanne and Swedish Institute for Social Research. He discusses research published in Demography involving Equal Lives team members Jani Erola and Aleksi Karhula which looks at siblings to to see whether educational opportunities are equal for all in and across 6 countries. Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series two we're discussing emerging findings from DIAL's Equal Lives project. For this episode, we're talking to Michael Grätz from the University of Lausanne and Swedish Institute for Social Research about findings from research using siblings to see whether educational opportunities are equal for all in and across six countries. I started by asking him how studying the lives of siblings helps us to understand issues around equality of opportunity.  Michael Grätz  0:30   The simple argument of the study actually, of this approach of looking at the similarity of siblings in life outcomes is that this can be used as one measure of equality of opportunity. So equality of opportunity is something we're interested in, which means that how much control people have over their chances in life. The traditional approach to measure equality of opportunity is you take some indicator of the parents like parental education and parental occupation, parental income and relate it to some indicator of the children like their educational attainment. And then you get some measure which which is which has something to do with the equality of opportunity. However, the problem of that approach is that we know that it's going to overestimate equality and it's going to underestimate inequality, because there are also factors affecting life chances, which are not observed parental characteristics. The idea of this using the similarity between between siblings and their education to measure equality of opportunity as some of these factors that are not observed are actually shared by siblings. So siblings do have the same parents, they live, they grew up in the same neighbourhood. They go to the same school often and all these factors influence their life chances and they are they are combined if we produce an estimate of the similarity of siblings and education as a measure of equality of opportunity. Now, I should also say that this is still not a perfect measure of equality of opportunity because we also know that there are factors that vary between siblings that influence their life chances, but still we know also from the empirical side, that using sibling similarity is a better measure of equality of opportunity than relating some kind of characteristic to the child characteristic, which is the most often used. Christine Garrington  2:24   Okay, understood. And so for this research then, Michael, what was it that you were looking at specifically and why? Michael Grätz  2:29   So the main thing we were interested in is the traditional question whether equality of opportunity varies across society. So we were producing estimates of sibling similarity in education for different countries. And then we were also interested in whether sibling similarity in education varies across different outcomes. So there are different educational outcomes that we were interested in, and we're looking at three of them. So we're looking at cognitive skills. We're looking at school grades, and we're looking at educational attainment. Of course, these three are related to each other, but still, they capture slightly different things. And it's interesting to compare the cost and, and then the third thing we were interested in is whether they are some differences in sibling similarity across different social groups in society. So the idea is do the offspring of some sort of groups in society is more similar among each other than then the offspring of others.  Christine Garrington  3:31   Okay, took us through what you actually did to try to look at these, these issues then?  Michael Grätz  3:35   We asked the people we know to give us access to data and to produce these estimates. And this is really mainly a project where we produce comparative estimates of sibling similarity in education for different countries. So in our case, we have six countries. And then it's mainly data work, where you have to put together all these datasets the different data sources we use for the different countries come up with different estimates, try to harmonise the data, which is a very challenging thing because we are talking about data which has been collected for different purposes with different strategies in different countries. And we want to have something comparable, and then you have challenges of making those data after it has been collected comparable to each other. Christine Garrington  4:28   Yeah, you talked about the data there. So where did that information come from and why were those data particularly good sources? For this type of research? Michael Grätz  4:38   There are two strategies you can have if you want to do a comparative research comparing different countries. So the one strategy is you use data sources which have been collected with the purpose of comparing them so collected in different countries. That's, for instance, the PISA data that some of the listeners may know and the other approach is to use really what we think is the best data source for each country and compare them and it's the second approach we have been taking in this paper. And one reason also we have to take these papers, because we were interested in siblings and siblings, information on siblings is not what is something that is often collected. So what we're using in the data is really what we think are the best data source for each country. And this means that we're using different data sources in different countries. So we using in Finland, Norway and Sweden using administrative data, because those countries have administrative data sets which can be used for research. In Germany, in the US and the UK we using a survey data sets - these are surveys that have been collected in those countries for a long time. And they are very large and they're very reliable, and they have information on certain things. Christine Garrington  5:48   Fantastic. So time to dip into that data and talk a little bit about what you find. Let's talk about cognitive, cognitive skills first. What were the key things to emerge in and across the countries that you looked at there?  Michael Grätz  5:59   The main finding actually is that for cognitive skills, there isn't very much variation across countries. So meaning that equality of opportunity with respect to cognitive skills, something that was sort of similar across countries. And what we also saw because for cognitive skills we had two data sets for the US which we could use and those two data that gave slightly different results. And we see that the these differences which we find between the two datasets for the same country, about the same size as differences that we find between countries, so meaning that it's not necessarily easy to tell what the differences then across countries whether they are really there, or whether they are just due to the fact that we have used different data sources. Christine Garrington  6:46   Okay, now one of the other outcomes was school grades. What did you see there? Michael Grätz  6:50   So school grades was an interesting outcome because that's actually the only outcome for which we find that sibling similarity is lower in the US than in the Scandinavian countries. Meaning that equality of opportunity and school grades is higher in the US than in Sweden and Norway, which are the other two countries for which we have taken this outcome. The differences are not really large, but still this is this is something which goes in a different direction of what you usually expect and what you also have found for educational attainment.  Christine Garrington  7:21   On that note that was going to be my next question to you, so what overall education attainment - what did you see? Michael Grätz  7:27   So I think educational attainment in some sense, it's the outcome we care more about most of all, because this is really the final educational attainment that respondents have observed. And this is this is also the outcome where we find a pattern of growth across national variation which is aligned with what we usually think in both as scientists but also in the policy discourse. So meaning is that we find that sibling similarity in education is highest in Germany and in the US, meaning that equality of opportunity is lowest in these countries. On the other hand, sibling similarity in the education is lower in Norway, Sweden and the UK. So these three countries are both on the same level in that respect was maybe a bit surprising is that in Finland, sibling similarity in education is once more again much lower. So meaning that they also within the group of Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway and Finland - there's some variation. And there's more equality of opportunity in Finland with respect to educational attainment in Finland than Norway, and in Sweden. Christine Garrington  8:36   Did the siblings' family background matter at all and if so, how does that sort of play out? Michael Grätz  8:42   So the idea was that it could be that especially socioeconomically advantaged families can invest resources in the way that they make sure that all their children are succeeding well in life and getting a high level of education. So this is why we were speculating that there could be more sibling similarity among socioeconomically advantaged families. However, our empirical results were not really in line with this finding. So we didn't we didn't find much variation in that and the variation that we found was not really very robust across the different outcomes. Christine Garrington  9:17   So when it came to the question of which countries were providing the highest level of inequality of opportunity, what did you see there? Michael Grätz  9:24   So one thing is that the finding is not totally the same if you understand education and different things. So if you're looking at the use different outcomes, but if you focus on final educational attainment, so which is really the highest decree from school that children obtain, then inequality is highest in Germany and the US, equality is highest in Finland, which is which is a result of our study, which is also I think, in line with the general perception. However, there's also still two points I think that I would like to emphasise. So the first one is there's still a lot of variation within the Scandinavian countries. So there's more equality in Finland than in Norway in Sweden, meaning that probably, we see that the way to get to high equality is not totally obvious when see these results because even within a lot of countries with similar educational systems, and similar features of society, there is still variation. And the second point is that is cross country differences are not that large, meaning that in all societies actually there is a lot of inequality of opportunity. And this is something which in the policy discourse in some countries get lost. So I'm from Germany, and I know the policy discourse in Germany quite well and I always get the impression that the ideas are that in Finland, there would be perfect equality, but that's certainly not the case. So there's still a very high level of sibling similarity in education also in Finland. So we're talking about differences between countries - Yes, they are, they are there, but compared to the overall level how much similarity across siblings is there? In a society these cross-country differences are not that large. Christine Garrington  11:07   It is complex research. You know, you talked earlier about the harmonising of the data sets, etc. Really, really complex work with some complex results. But would you say for policymakers, particularly there are any clear messages or takeaways here around that policy discourse that you were alluding to? Michael Grätz  11:24   I think, probably the clearest message coming out from that results is that these simple ideas. And there are some simple ideas about around so for instance, this idea that inequality in education is largely related to income inequality in a country. The findings of our, our research, they are basically saying that these simple ideas don't work in the sense that they may explain, they may be explaining something but they're not going to explain everything. So there's probably so there's more inequality in education opportunity in countries where there is income inequality, but still, this doesn't explain all the cross country variation. That's what I wanted to say. The second point, I think, for policymakers is also to be aware of that in all countries, there is inequality in education. And that probably has to do with the fact that this is has also to do two processes happening outside of the school system. So this is why reforms of the educational system, they will never fully address equality of opportunity because there are processes occurring within families. They are also contributing to inequality of educational opportunity. And I think this is something that policymakers should be at least aware of. Christine Garrington  12:37   Sibling Similarity in Education Across and Within Societies is research published in Demography by Michael Grätz and colleagues as part of DIAL's Equal Lives project. You can find out more on the project website at equal-lives.org and about the wider DIAL programme at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by me Chris Garrington.  

In Episode 12 of Series 3 of our podcast, Jamie Hentall MacCuish from University College London and the Institute for Fiscal Studies discusses findings from DIAL's TRISP project on the intergenerational elasticity of earnings or why rich parents have rich children.  The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms is a DIAL Working Paper.  Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series three we're discussing emerging findings from DIAL research. For this episode, we're talking to Jamie Hentall MacCuish from University College London and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He's been investigating why rich parents have rich children. I started by asking him to explain the background to the research. Jamie Hentall MacCuish  0:26   If you will permit me I think it's a bit hard to answer that question without very quickly saying what the paper is about. So in it, we decompose the intergenerational elasticity of earnings or the IGE, which is the correlation between parents and children's earnings. And we do this to try and understand what mechanisms transmit privilege from one generation to the next. We were using this dataset - the national cohort data study or NCDS - for another paper with a slightly different focus, and we realised the data set offered a unique window into the mechanisms affecting the IGE. Now the NCDS follows a single cohort of people born in a particular week in 1958. From the moment of their birth, up until now as they approach retirement. And it really is a globally unrivalled resource for social scientists due to its combination of information about family background, parental effort and time investment in their children and children's ability, educational outcomes and later life earnings. Having this information allows us to disentangle the relative importance of family background parental investments in children, further education and ability in explaining the correlation between parents' and children's earnings. Now, I mean, I've said it's a globally unrivalled data set what really makes it globally unrivalled is how forward looking this policy was in 1958. I mean, other countries have since introduced similar datasets, but much later meaning that now we don't have data that covers really most of the working life of these group of individuals, which really makes it a fascinating window into what explains that intergenerational correlation in earnings or IGE. Christine Garrington  2:10   What exactly was it about having wealthy or poor parents that you wanted to  get to grips with specifically in this piece of research? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  2:19   Why wealthy parents have wealthy children and vice versa? So the children of rich families tend to differ from the poorer peers in multiple ways. They have fewer siblings and a more and more educated parents, their parents spend more time with them and send them to better quality schools. Their cognitive skills are higher at the end of compulsory education, and they complete more years of total education. All these channels have been found to affect an individual's earnings. But in order to design policies to improve intergenerational mobility, we need to understand the relative importance of these channels and how they interact with each other to generate correlations in lifetime earnings. Christine Garrington  3:00   Okay, so what did you actually do then once you know, once you sort of started digging into the data, what did you actually do? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  3:06   A multi-level mediation analysis. Basically, that means we work backwards to see how much of the IGE is explained by each mechanism. So that's probably pretty cryptic. But in the first level, that we started at we only allow for direct effects on a child's earnings of the years in education, their cognitive ability, the quality of the school they attended, and the parental investment they received and their family background. So in this first level, for example, we find that education accounts for 43% of the IGE amongst females. However, in the next level, we account for the fact that other channels refer to events earlier in the child's life, than total years of education because really, total years of education is determined by further education decisions. And so other events plausibly impact on the years of education. Once we account for both the direct effects as well as these indirect effects through years of education, the fraction of the IGE explained for females by education collapses to just 2% to continue with the example given earlier, and cognitive abilities at the end of compulsory schooling really explained most of this difference. Christine Garrington  4:22   Can you help us unpack that a little bit Jamie? What does that actually imply? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  4:25   Once you account for cognitive ability at the end of compulsory schooling, the fact that children of richer parents spend longer in education doesn't account for much of the persistence in earnings between generations. And then we then extend the analysis back to more levels to account for the fact that parental investments and stalling might, like school quality, might impact cognitive ability at 16. And that family background might impact parental investment decisions, or the parents' choice of school. Christine Garrington  4:52   You mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, the amazing data resource that the NCDS is. Are we able to sort of tease out a little bit more about the sorts of things that people are asked in that study that would help you with, with this research? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  5:07   There are multiple things asked and multiple tests. So it's not just survey questions. There were tests; reading tests, math tests administered to these children in schools. They measure their weight at birth, the researchers went into the children's school and ask the teacher their impressions of how interested the mother and father are in the child's education. With, it was asked how many outings the parents took their children on, and these are I mean, we combine all of these measures about parental investments into sort of using a latent factor analysis to tease out a measure of how much the parents invest in their children. And similarly, with the child's ability, we have measures of reading scores, math scores, and then teacher ratings of these children on maths and reading ability. So I mean, it's it's a very, I could go on. It's a very, very rich data set. And it's yeah, it's not just survey data. It's tests administered medical information. Yes, it's really quite detailed. Christine Garrington  6:11   You've touched on this a little bit already. But when you looked at the data what were the key differences? Tell us more about the key differences that emerged between the children of wealthier and poorer parents. Jamie Hentall MacCuish  6:23   The children of richer families tend to differ in multiple ways from their poorer counterparts: fewer siblings, more educated parents, better parental time investments and school quality investments, higher cognitive skills, and more years of total education. But for us, that was really just the jumping off point to then analyse which of these differences matter most to explain this correlation of earnings between parents and generations from this persistence of inequality from one generation to the next. Christine Garrington  6:51   And you took into account obviously a range of other factors as well what factors mattered most in all of this and how did they play out? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  6:59   So once we accounted for all the levels of analysis, so the for the effect of a family background and early investment on cognition and years of education, what we found is that family background and investment in early childhood mattered the most, the relative importance being different for men and women. For women, the most important was family background followed by school quality. And for men, parental time investment mattered most followed by family background. Christine Garrington  7:24   So this is all very interesting, but I'm wondering now you know what are the important takeaways from the research about this relationship between how well off a parent is and their child's life lifetime income prospects, for example? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  7:38   It simply what factors we found mattered most? It seems that to explain the persistence of inequality in earnings across generations, early childhood investments and family background really matter the most. And higher educational choices, for example, aren't one of the mechanisms generating persistence in inequality in earnings across generations. Christine Garrington  8:02   Right, I wonder if there's any more to say there about from a policy perspective, if you like for those committed to want to seek and create a more equitable, a fairer playing field for all children, regardless of their background and how rich their parents are, what sorts of things are most relevant? Are they the things that you've outlined already? Or is there anything more that they can take away from this? Jamie Hentall MacCuish  8:21   Obviously, you want to be careful making too many policy suggestions off one piece of research, but that said, I think our research really is in alignment with a large and growing literature that says early childhood investments are one of the best levers available to reduce intergenerational inequality. I think anything the government, our research would say and so I think with a large growing body of research say, that anything government could do to reduce the inequality in investments in early childhood would be one of the most powerful mechanisms to reduce intergenerational inequality. Christine Garrington  8:56   The Intergenerational Elasticity of Earnings: Exploring the Mechanisms is a DIAL Working Paper by Uta Bolt, Eric French, Jamie Hentall MacCuish and Cormac O'Dea from the Trends in Inequality: Sources and Policy or TRISP project . You can find out more on the DIAL website at dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which was presented by me, Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.        

In episode 11 of the DIAL podcast, Professor Gabriella Conti from University College London discusses two pieces of research part-funded through DIAL's Growing up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities project.  The first investigates socio-emotional inequalities in children born in the UK in the 1970s and the Millennium and the second investigates the long term health benefits of the UK Government's high profile Sure Start programme.  Transcript Christine Garrington  0:00   Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series three we're discussing emerging findings from DIAL research. For this episode, we're talking to Professor Gabriella Conti from University College London, about two pieces of research. The first compares the behaviour of children born in the 1970s with those born in the millennium, the other looks at the long-term health benefits of the UK government's Sure Start programme. Gabriella Conti  0:26   So we know that early human capital is a key determinant of lifecycle outcomes. And by now we also know that if there are early life inequalities that can perpetuate and amplify a person's life cycle. And so it's really important to document existence of early inequalities if they're present, thinking about what we can do about them. So there was one starting point we ha. Another one was that we know that inequality has been increasing throughout the developed world and in particular in the US and the UK in the recent years. And there is likely less evidence for inequalities in child development. In particular, we were interested in the dimension of child development whose importance is being increasingly recognised which is child social emotional development. And so this is why then we started looking into data and see what we could do to document the evolution of inequalities in the social emotional development of children as early as we could. Christine Garrington  1:26   So how did you go about the research tell us what you actually, what you actually did? Gabriella Conti  1:30   You know, the documenting evolution inequalities for a long period of time requires that you have data which can be compared across time. And in the UK we're fortunate enough to have British Cohort Studies, which essentially follow the life cycle of cohorts since birth. And in particular, we use the data from two of these cohorts. The British Cohort Study, which has followed the cohort born in one week in 1970. And the Millennium Cohort Study which has followed a cohort born throughout 2000. So these were like, a thirty years apart. And we had pretty big sample sizes more than nine thousand for the 70 Cohort, more than five thousand for the 2000, so called Millennium Cohort. So we were able to extract from these two data sets, relatively similar questions on child behaviour as to the mothers in the two cohorts. At age five so relatively early in life, and mothers were asked questions about whether for example, the child is restless? The child is solitary? Child is screaming or fidgety? And we construct the comparable skill so for two important dimensional social emotional skills, which have been used widely in an interdisciplinary literature on child development, namely, externalising and internalising. Christine Garrington  2:51   Can you explain in simple terms, a little bit about what we mean by those types of things? Gabriella Conti  2:55  Such emotional skills internalising refer to the child ability to focus their drive and determination and externalising relates to interpersonal skills. So a child with better externalising skills is likely less restless, hyperactive, less antisocial and a child with better internalising skills in less solitary, neurotic and worried. And one important thing that it's good to notice at this point is that while you know the same questions have been asked to the mothers across the two cohorts, and we were super careful and just used the questions which were worded in a similar way of course it could be that what is perceived as a hyperactive child has changed in thirty years. And so we use reasoned methodological advances to take this into account to make sure that we're effectively comparing the same constructs that showing the development of children and this methodology can be used in other settings. And we'll show that it's really important to use as we show in our application. Christine Garrington  4:01   Just talk us through then the key things that sort of emerged once you'd gone through all of this, once you'd look so closely at that data, once you'd put those methods in place and once you'd used those really robust approaches. Gabriella Conti  4:12   Yeah, so actually, we find that inequalities in social emotional development - this externalising internalising behaviour of these very young children of five years did increase in this 30 years between 1970 and 2000. So this kid we're measured in 1975 and 2005. And it's important to notice that we're not able to say whether one cohort was better or worse than another because we weren't able to compare the levels. Because thanks to our methodology, we were able to compare the difference so the inequality between these two cohorts but no whether one was better or worse than the other. But we saw very clearly that the inequality in the cohort born more recently, so the one born in 2000 was greater than one born in the seventies. So in particular, we see increasingly this early gap between the children with the highest and the lowest social emotional skills. So for example, no matter which measure we used we saw that for example, if you looked at the difference between the 19th and 13th percentile, this has widened substantially in 30 years. And this increase was particularly pronounced for boys. For example, for boys, the gap is increased by 19% for externalising skills and even more 30% for internalising skills. So inequality in the social emotional skills so very young children are five years of age was much lower among the children born in the 70s than among those born in the 2000. Christine Garrington  5:50   I will ask you what you make of all of that in a moment, but you also took a number of sort of different factors into consideration, didn't you including the mother's level of education, what did you see there? That was important? Gabriella Conti  6:00   Yeah, indeed, because as we know there have been several changes in the composition or the population composition or the workforce but also changes in women's experience, especially in the labour market. And so we wanted to look not only what happens in these gaps across the groups but also zooming in on particular groups. And so in particular, we found that even when we compare children or mothers with different characteristics, we found increases inequalities and in particular, while having more educated mothers or mothers with healthier behaviour was an important determinant to the skills in both cohorts. We found that the benefit of having the mother we higher levels of education or a mother in employment was significantly larger for both boys and girls in the most recent cohort than in the cohort born in 1970. So in other words, the difference between the children are more or less educated mother was greater among those born in 2000, as compared to those born in the seventies. And we found this for children's mothers with respect to mothers education, with respect to mothers employment, but those inequalities increase between children and mothers who smoked and not during pregnancy. Christine Garrington  7:19   Okay, so some really interesting findings. I'm interested to know whether you were surprised by what you found? And if so, how you explain what you found? Gabriella Conti  7:26   I might sound a bit cynical but I am going to say I wasn't actually surprised about the findings per se, because we do know that there have been many increases inequality across different dimensions. What I found really surprising was the extent of the increase and the fact we could see that so early across such an important measure of development. So we did spend a lot of time in trying to tease out the various determinants of this increase in inequality and as I mentioned before, there being significant societal changes in these thirty years so for example, it's also documented in the paper across the two cohorts. The average age of women have children has increased by approximately three years from 26 to 29. The proportion of women in employment has increased in our data we see from 42% to 62%. And especially the proportion of unmarried mothers is increased dramatically from 5% in the 70 cohort to 36% among mothers in the 2000 cohort. So mothers are having children on one hand at an older age and when they're more engaged in the labour market, which is good for social emotional skills. But on the other hand, mothers are also more likely to be unmarried at birth, which is more stressful, and so it's less good for social emotional development. And we have used the methodology to decompose these factors. And we found the changes in these factors explain about half of the cross cohort increasing inequality when it comes to externalising skills.  Christine Garrington  9:02   Okay, so let's consider them the, the implications of these widening inequalities that you're hinting at here and talking about here, especially in the you know, recent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. What would you say overall Gabriella that we learn from this work? Gabriella Conti  9:17   So first of all, let me remark that we've seen during the pandemic because there's been increases in inequalities in learning experiences at all level by the children in the home environment. So the children would have been better able to have learning for example, at home or will have had the parents will be better able to cope. They certainly been affected less severely than children in a more disadvantaged situation. And so now it's starting to be documented that in particular, children's social emotional skills have been affected by the pandemic. And on the other hand, as have documented those in other work, support especially for the more disavantaged is also diminished during the pandemic. So for example, done work on the Universal Health Visiting therapist showing that they're in addition to the cuts of course for many years, they've been an unequal in widespread deployment across local authorities. And so the pandemic there has been a double hit on the one hand families that have been unequally affected depending on individual circumstances. On the other hand, also, you know, public services so which are supposed to help families and to help preventing inequalities have been also unequally affected. And so it's really crucial that the government takes stock of this and hopefully, in the upcoming annual review, it provides more support for the earliest and prevent at least the widening of these inequalities. Christine Garrington  10:47   Yeah, on this whole idea of the importance of early intervention being key to reducing inequalities. We're really fortunate to be able to talk to you today about another piece of research that you've been doing, and looking at one of the best known really policy innovation interventions in this era, particularly here in England, which is called Sure Start. Now, I think many people are familiar with it, but for those who are not I wonder if you can just talk us through what Sure Start is? Gabriella Conti  11:11   Yes, thanks so much for this question. Indeed, with colleagues at the Centre for Fiscal Studies we have been working for a few years now on Sure Start and Sure Start is really a major early education initiative in UK, which was originally area based. And for those who don't know, it has quite a long history. It was indeed first introduced by the Labour government in 1999, so called Sure Start local programmes, and the idea was to give quality services for under fives only in disadvantaged areas then it was so popular and so well accepted by families that the government gave it the major change in 2003 and changing it to Sure Start Children's Centre which were gradually rolled out across England and at the peak they reached more than 3500 of these centres. And what was really nice about the centres was first they provided a physical place for parents to go to bring their children to interact with other parents and it has a wide variety of services which the parents can use. Ranging from early education services, parenting support, childcare, there were health visitors providing the visits there in the Sure Start centre. There were signposts for job search assistance. So think of it really, as a one stop shop for families with children under five. If you had a child and you needed help for health, for other reasons - so you wanted a childcare place, then you could just go to Sure Start centre. And it's also to be said that at its peak in 2010 Sure Start also received a third overall earlier spending as much as £1.8 billion a year. But then unfortunately after 2010 spending has fallen by more than two thirds, many centres have been closed, they've been scaled back or they've been renamed children's centres. Now you don't even hear Sure Start  or they have been integrated into family hubs. Christine Garrington  13:10   Yeah, so big changes over, over the piece there and your research on Sure Start has looked quite specifically at its effects on children's health which is, you know, really important and you started by looking at hospitalizations and links with that. What did you, What did you find there? Gabriella Conti  13:26  So we have a data set which contains the exact address and opening date of each Sure Start both local programs and children's centres so we were able to look at the origin of the programme and its expansion up to 2010. And then in England, we have a very good dataset called Hospital Episode Statistics where there is collected data on the universal patients using English public hospitals. So this is important because we can really have a very comprehensive look at the effects across all Sure Start centres for all England the local authority so it wasn't like a selected or a small sample. It was quite good administrative data. And so what we did - we essentially will be focused on the expansion period of Sure Start so as I say, 1999 up to 2010. So where there were all these centres opening up. And then we're looking at what happened essentially when you have access to Sure Start since they're in your area. And what we find, that we find very interesting effects which changed across the life cycle of the child. So first of all, greater access to Sure Start in your area initially increases hospitalization at age one and this shouldn't be really surprising, given that it's common in other studies as well and my reflect the fact that the programme would help referring the parents to proper health care in the case of childhood illness, but also brings their exposure to infectious illnesses from other kids being all in the same setting. However, what is really remarkable is that these early increases are more than outweighed by longer term effects. So as we look throughout childhood adolescence, we find that there is a reduction in hospitalizations. Christine Garrington  15:18   And there were even longer term benefits for these children as they got older weren't, weren't there? Talk us through, talk us through what those benefits were. Gabriella Conti  15:25   So we found is that exposure to an additional centre per 1,000 children at ages 0-4 average around 7% of hospital admissions at each file. Which goes up to 8% by the end of primary school, so age 11 and 8.5% by age 15, which is the final age of this study. Now this represents approximately 2800 fewer earlier hospitalizations at age five and over 13,000 hospitalizations prevented of 11 to 15 year olds each year. So that's quite a substantial number. It's pretty much an 8% reduction on the pre-Sure Start hospitalizations rate and this is all completely looking essentially at the peak level of Sure Start provision where there was one centre per 1000 children available throughout England. And what is really interesting, while Sure Start was for children under fives, we're able to detect impacts which are increasing over time and are able to detect them essentially 10 years after the children have aged out of eligibility. And if we look at the drivers of these reductions hospitalizations, we see that it's important conditions such as external causes, so things like injuries and also mental health related admissions in addition to infectious illnesses. Christine Garrington  17:00   Those are just really striking findings Gabriella and I know that you also tried to get a feel for the potential cost savings that Sure Start would have generated. What were you, what were you able to say about that? Gabriella Conti  17:11   Yeah, I think it's quite important is this not only to provide evidence so that a programme is effective, but that it also provides enough bang for the buck. And with Sure Start it is particularly important given as I said before all the money, which was spent at the peak of the expansion. So what we did in this case, essentially, we had on the one hand, the money that the government had provided, and so we computed in this way a cost per child which is really more like the amount of money that the government spent on Sure Start per child, and we computed this amount to be approximately £415 per eligible child which is lower by the way than the cost of other programmes. And then what we did we looked at our estimates, and we considered first of all, we costed only the results, which for which we found significant impact. So as I said, subset of external conditions in particular injuries and also poisoning, then infections. So respiratory, parasitic and then mental health as you can imagine, you know, those have huge cost. And we considered three different types of costs. So on the one hand, the reduction in hospitalization has a direct cost saving in terms of the healthcare sector, so you will have less money essentially spent because fewer kids are going to be in the hospital. And this is more like a short-term cost, the cost at the time at which we estimate the impacts. Then there are assorted indirect costs, so if parents don't have to spend time taking care of the sick child, they are not going to be absent for work. So it's all savings in terms of averted the loss of productivity, and also in case the parents need, for example, to buy additional drugs. And on the other hand, we also included the long-term cost. So, for example, injuries experienced by a child can have a serious long-term consequence. Mental health conditions, especially experience in adolescence, which is the time at which you will find that Sure Start significant to reduce hospitalizations also have very costly long-term consequences. And so when we add up all this benefits together - all this averted cost, we come up with number which is around £330 million. Now of these, approximately a little bit over 10% like £3.9 million is attributed to the direct cost saving to the NHS and the rest is from the longer-term averted cost. And given that we've computed the cohort, this is going to be a total cost of a little bit over £1 billion then these represent approximately a third of the spending on the programme. So taken together, the savings from reduced hospitalization offset around 31% of spending on the programme. And importantly, this is only considering health benefits. Our calculations haven't included yet any potential benefits in other domains such as for example education, social care or crime. Christine Garrington  20:34   Goodness me so just looking at health benefits alone some, some really important good things that would change and, and help children grow up to live better, healthier, happier lives, but also an incredibly cost-effective programme. One which really doesn't sort of exist in the same way anymore. So what are the key takeaways for policymakers here would you say?  Gabriella Conti  20:56   Yeah, unfortunately it's not been good in my opinion, that Sure Start has been dismantled so quickly. So first of all, I think a key takeaway. So one key message for policymaker and not that this is a hard one to deliver. Because there are policy cycles and usually policymakers work based on these policy cycles but good programmes might take time to deliver their benefits, but it's crucial that when a policy is decided, it has to be looked at the evidence and also it has to consider the long term benefits not only the upfront cost. Another important lesson I think, is that what probably made Sure Start so successful. Well, there are different components. I think one key component is to have everything in one place and to make it easier for the parents to access it. So having this suite of possible interventions and providing a place for parents to congregate and have access to resources. I do believe it's key and it's also the case that if you provide a variety of services, they are you know, their combined effects is not only the sum of the different ones, there are interactions and there are synergies. Among them. So now, you know unfortunately, Sure Start does not exist anymore. So there is this family hubs which are being shaped up and at least my hope is given that Sure Start no longer exists all these lessons will be considered into the shaping on the family hubs. And a particular part in this regard, there is a lot of talking about proportion at universities. Now one key finding that we have is that all the benefits that we find, for Sure Start are concentrated in the poorer neighbourhoods. So we don't find the particular benefit in the richer ones. And so this is important why? Because on one hand Sure Start did help to reduce inequalities but also because going forward an important lesson for the new services such as family hubs is that the model combining universal services with a narrow base focus of disadvantaged neighbourhoods can be a successful approach to earliest interventions. Christine Garrington  23:10   Inequality of socio-emotional skills: a cross-cohorts comparison and The health effects of Sure Start are research part funded by DIAL's Growing-up Unequal? The Origins, Dynamics and Lifecycle Consequences of Childhood Inequalities (GUODLCCI). More information is available on the DIAL website. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which was presented by me, Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.  

In episode 10 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Professor Steffen Schindler from the University of Bamberg discusses findings from DIAL's LIFETRACK project which is looking at how different education pathways impact the type of job young people go on to secure.  Further information Educational differentiation in secondary education and labour-market outcomes Transcript  Christine Garrington  0:00 Welcome to DIAL a podcast where we tune in to evidence on inequality over the life course. In series three of the podcast we're discussing emerging findings from DIAL research. For this episode I caught up with Professor Steffen Schindler from the University of Bamberg, at DIAL's final conference to talk about the LIFETRACK project, which has been looking at how the type of Secondary Education experienced by young people in seven different countries affects the type of job they go on to do. Steffen Schindler  0:28 This is the period when education systems start to sort their pupils or students into different paths, different tracks, different streams. And we were interested in how much the sorting that takes place in secondary education already predicts inequality in later life outcomes when the students are in the labour market when they're grown up. Christine Garrington  0:53 Although you were looking at a number of different countries, you weren't looking to compare across them but within them, weren't you? So tell us about the thinking behind that. Steffen Schindler  1:01 There's already some research out and we know that countries that are considered as having comprehensive education systems such as the UK for example. They tend to have lower levels of education inequalities than countries that track their students such as Germany for example, that have different schools where they go to. The new thing that we wanted to look at in our project was even though the level of inequality might be different between countries, we were interested does the differentiation in secondary education within a country still predict inequality in that country - is it important for the formation of inequality? So in the end, we have some sort of idea whether it contributes a lot or not so much to inequality. Christine Garrington  1:50 So working across seven countries must have posed some challenges - how did you go about organising all of that? Steffen Schindler  1:57 Yeah well we had a very structured approach. So we had project meetings two times a year, and where we made a plan what we wanted to achieve till the next meeting. So basically, we started off with making a plan how we measure certain things such as social origin, or the labour market outcomes such as income or social class and we want to observe when people are grown up or in their 30s or 40s even So that we standardised across all the teams and then we made a plan for what we want to analyse. And we were very standardised in the beginning and the more the project was progressing the less standardised we were - the more freedom we gave to the project teams for their analysis. Christine Garrington  2:44 Yeah, that makes sense. So at first look all of the research teams in the countries that you were looking at, identify this differentiation between academic and vocational routes. Can you talk us through, through that? Steffen Schindler  2:58 Basically, each education system has this distinction between academic tracks or streams that eventually lead into higher education on the one hand, and more vocational tracks that don't lead into higher education. But the systems differ, how that looks like. So we have separate schools, for example, in Germany and Germany starts very early with that separation. We have separate schools in other countries such as Finland, for example, in Denmark, were the separations a bit later. Then we have England, which is a comprehensive system, but we also have some sort of academic stream, which is defined by taking a certain number of A Levels at the end. So the systems differ a bit - what the academic stream actually is, but each of them has one academic stream. And it turned out in our analysis that it's always the separation between the academics and the non-academic stream, and that students that on academic stream always end up with better labour market outcomes in the end. Christine Garrington  4:08 Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. So when it came to those labour market outcomes for the young people concerned, what was the main implications of the differences? Steffen Schindler  4:18 Well, first of all, the people from the academic streams end up let's say higher social classes with a better higher income, a better paid job with a more prestigious job in the end. So this is one result, which was pretty obvious. But another implication is that it's also related to social inequality or social reproduction. Because if we consider who enters those academic tracks and who doesn't, and then this is again, a question which is related to social origin. So the selection into the tracks is heavily based on social origin in all of the countries. Christine Garrington  4:56 And I'm interested to know if there were any advantages to being on the vocational path compared with being on the academic path. Steffen Schindler  5:03 I think the distinction is not so much between the academic and the vocational path but between being in upper secondary education or completing upper secondary education. So we have many countries which have an upper secondary stream, which is a vocational stream. And if we compare those students to students who haven't been in upper secondary education, they might even have done vocational training, but the distinction is between upper secondary vocational training and lower secondary careers. And there we see advantages where people in the vocational stream in upper secondary education, indeed have labour market advantages. Christine Garrington  5:45 So some of the studies also look back over people's life courses to their social backgrounds. That's really interesting. What were the key things to emerge around that? Steffen Schindler  5:53 What we saw in all of the countries is that differentiation in secondary education is a mediator of social reproduction, as we call it. That means that on the one hand, the selection into the academic secondary tracks is highly based on social backgrounds, family background. So this is the one part and the other part as I already said, since academic tracks lead into the better labour market outcomes, and this produces social inequality in the end. Christine Garrington  6:25 Yeah, indeed. And it really is a fascinating and important body of work that's been carried out. What would you like those who are interested in reducing social inequalities to take away from all of this? Steffen Schindler  6:38 I guess the core message of our project is that we have to look at differentiation in a broader sense. So usually, we were distinguishing educational systems based on very formal criteria, whether it's a formally comprehensive system, or whether it's a track school system. But what we've seen is that even in comprehensive systems there is some sort of internal differentiation, such as ability grouping, or other things that we call the hidden differentiation. That's not very obvious. So another example would be the distinction between private education or state funded schools which is another dimension of differentiation. And I guess the core message would be to look at more carefully, those more hidden things, the more hidden differentiation in school systems Christine Garrington  7:32 Yeah and where do things need to go from here then? So more work to be done as always, presumably? Steffen Schindler  7:37 Yes, it is always more work. Our project was heavily based on longitudinal data where we could observe students from the day the entered the school system into adulthood and this is quite complex data. And what we saw is that when we are interested in those hidden forms of differentiation, we need better measures. So I think if we want to follow up on this path, we should think about how we could incorporate those measures in in those data so that would be a message also evolving from our projects that is more directed to our research. Christine Garrington  8:15 Educational differentiation in secondary education and labour-market outcomes is a special issue of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies by Steffen Schindler at the LIFETRACK project team. Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast, which is presented and produced by me, Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.    

Heavy drinking and smoking, poor diet and a lack of physical activity have been shown to go hand in hand in adults from more disadvantaged backgrounds. But research from ICLS PhD student, Claire Mawditt, hints that, contrary to previous evidence, being disadvantaged as a pre-adolescent child is not in itself a predictor of those sorts of negative health behaviours later in life. In this episode of the Lifecourse Podcast she talks to Chris Garrington about the research and its implications for policy.

How we spend our time has long been of interest to researchers around the world. How we can most accurately capture that information is key and of particular interest to survey methodologists. A popular research method since the early 1960s has been the use of Time Use diaries, which have been used to provide new answers to pressing questions about changes in our work and home lives. It's a topic that Professor Jonathan Gershuny, Director of the Centre for Time Use Research at the University of Oxford knows a great deal about, having established the Multinational Time Use Study in the mid-1980s and worked with time use data for many years. Following a presentation by him and some of his research team at the ESRC Research Methods Festival 2016, he spoke to Chris Garrington for the Methods Podcast about Time Use diaries, how they work, what they tell us and how new technology is providing exciting new ways to clock how we spend our days.

The use of visual methods in research on ageing has become increasingly popular. Not a great deal of it, however, has looked at people in mid to later life. A team at Brunel University, London, however, has been doing just that, using photography to document every day lives. The research, presented at the ESRC Research Methods Festival, 2016, has also resulted in some innovative engagement in the form of a hugely successful photographic exhibition. Project Principal Investigator, Dr Wendy Martin explains more to Chris Garrington in this episode of the Methods Podcast.

It is typically assumed that social science students are anxious, confused or intimidated by numbers. However this is far more 'common wisdom' than anything that any robust empirical research has demonstrated. Professor John MacInnes from the University of Edinburgh has been reviewing the evidence and carrying out some preliminary research to see whether so-called 'stats anxiety' is something of a myth. After presenting early findings at the Research Methods Festival 2016, he recorded this interview with Chris Garrington for our Methods Podcast.

Chris Garrington talks about creating podcasts for research studies, podcasting, using new media, and the future of new media in the UK. The post NMEU 31 – Christine Garrington – Podcasts for Research appeared first on New Media Europe.

The appropriate place for Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) in modern healthcare continues to be a hot topic in policy circles as well as amongst health practitioners. In this NCRM podcast Patrick Sturgis talks to Chris Garrington about new research funded by the Wellcome Trust, which appears to show widespread public belief that homeopathic remedies are effective.

From the arguments for and against undercover research to an explosion in interest in online research, these are exciting but challenging time for researchers undertaking qualitative research. Increasing ethical regulation of social research also means it is crucial that researchers understand and engage with ethical issues as they emerge throughout the process of their work. In a new book, What are Qualitative Research Ethics? Dr Rose Wiles from NCRM offers an accessible overview of the field, identifying the key issues that researchers are likely to face, and the everyday ethical dilemmas that researchers encounter. In our latest NCRM podcast Dr Wiles talks to Chris Garrington about ethics and discusses the framework proposed in her book to help researchers deal with those dilemmas.

Small area estimation methodologies are widely used across a variety of disciplines and there is growing interest and demand from policy makers in making more effective use of them. Adam Whitworth from the University of Sheffield talks to Chris Garrington about the NCRM-funded network set up to try to improve consensus and increase understanding in this important area.

This introductory podcast features an interview with the man behind the podcast project, Paul Thompson. A Research Professor in the Department of Sociology, Paul Thompson talks of Essex as “one of the places where oral history in Britain originated”. When he moved to Wivenhoe in the 1990s, Professor Thompson initiated an oral history project based in the town, which grew to involve many enthusiastic local residents. There are now over 60 interviews with Wivenhoe residents in the archive, many of whom worked at the University. The oral history archive is held at the Colchester Museum Resources Centre, as well as at our Albert Sloman Library. The interview was carried out by Chris Garrington, herself a former University employee, who edited together this series of podcasts based on the archive interviews.

Should social science researchers embrace social media and, if they do, what are the implications for our methods and practice? Gareth Morrell from NatCen Social Research talks to Chris Garrington about the NCRM-funded network exploring this question.