“Research can’t be simply turned on and off like a tap; it requires investment in the long term”
Andrew W. Wyckoff (New York, 1958) is an expert on innovation, business dynamics, and regulations in fields such as scientific research, the digital economy, and information and communication technologies. With a degree in Economics from the University of Vermont and a Master’s degree in Public Policies from Harvard, he has held different positions within the OECD. He is currently its director of Science, Technology and Innovation.
We are living through decisive times, with a variety of climate, pandemic, and demographic threats facing us, but also with more technological capacity than ever before to try to fight them. Are there reasons to be optimistic?
I think we should be. Reasons for optimism abound. If we look at what has happened during the covid-19 pandemic, we can see that our science and technology system has been mobilised and invigorated, and it has offered answers for the difficulties posed, despite working under very tough circumstances. Governments have also worked hand in hand with businesses, devoting large amounts of resources and increasing their efforts in R&D. It has been demonstrated that continued and long-term investment in research makes sense. This is what the public sector needs to ensure. Research can’t be simply turned on and off like a tap.
Is the speed with which an anti-covid vaccine was obtained the best proof of R&D’s importance?
It is true that obtaining a vaccine within such a short space of time was a striking accomplishment. Covid-19 has shown us how these global problems can become a tangible reality, and vaccines have helped us adapt to the situation and keep the economy, and society, up and running. Without vaccines, everything would have been much more difficult. And it has been an instructive exercise, as we are faced with the challenge that lies ahead in relation to the environment. Innovation in the pandemic is also marking out the path that needs to be followed to tackle climate change: invest enormous sums and make use of all the innovation capacity we have within our reach to correct the situation. And I am not just talking about environmental science, or science and technology; it is also a question of industrial, fiscal, and education or other policies. We need to realign all our policies in this direction, and that is no easy task for governments. But I believe that it can be done, and for that reason I am optimistic.
What will the main challenges for public policies be in the coming years?
The list is headed by a dual —green and digital— transformation, and covid-19 has clearly affected both of these. We have seen a momentary decline in carbon emissions and there has been a renewed sense of urgency with respect to climate change. In the digital sphere, a boom has also been observed in the use of social networks and apps. The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation: use of the internet has increased by 60% with the outbreak of this public health crisis.
How should governments act with regard to the high speed of technological changes that we are experiencing?
This is a truly important question, especially in our field, which is the management of the OECD. The problem has always existed: it is often said that we have technology 4.0 and policy 1.0. A certain distance between these two is inevitable, because democratic processes take their time. We need to be realistic: the gap between technology 4.0 and policy 1.0 is never going to disappear, but the aim is to narrow it as far as possible. In this sense, we want to go to the origin of the innovation process rather than wait until the end, when the technology reaches the market and it is too late to react, and it is also difficult to straighten the course. It is a good idea to be more proactive and work with the innovators, tell them what is expected of them and what is not, establishing certain boundaries along the way that will lead us to attain social and economic goals.
Are data the cornerstone of the new industrial revolution?
Data will dominate economic policies over the next two decades. As networks have become more accessible, and with the appearance, firstly, of mobile phones and then of the Internet of Things, there has been a radical change in the nature of data and the increase in their volume. We have to consider this phenomenon as a new economic resource, as an asset. And I don’t know to what point yet we have discovered how to manage it, because it is very different to other tangible economic assets, upon which current economic policy is based.
The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation: use of the internet has increased by 60%
Given this preponderance of data, what is most important? Generating, controlling, or interpreting them?
For me, the most important aspect, although not receiving the attention it deserves, is data analysis. Data, per se, are not very helpful. Everything depends on how you use them, on how you integrate them or link them to other data, and on your skill in interpreting them almost in real time in order to obtain information and make better decisions. However, beware: we often treat data as a homogeneous and monolithic entity, when in reality they are incredibly heterogeneous and flexible. Data relating to our health are not comparable to the engineering data collected by an aircraft as it crosses the Atlantic.
The rise of China is a reality on many levels. Is it also so in data usage?
China is not a member country of the OECD, but it is a key partner, and we have been struck by the major effort it has made in the last decade. It has emerged as a global player that is a force to be reckoned with in the scientific sphere, and the pandemic has reaffirmed this. For example, when it shared genomic material to be able to produce vaccines and develop its own vaccines. When we talk about technological giants, we always refer to Google, Apple, Facebook [now Meta], Amazon, Netflix or Microsoft, and we do not talk enough about Baidu, Alibaba or Tencent, other giants that are even more sophisticated because they integrate, in one platform, a broader spectrum of applications. In Paris you can buy a Metro ticket using the payment system of WeChat [the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp], and this represents a data source that the other platforms are lacking. They are also clearly doing very well in artificial intelligence. Despite the difficulties in obtaining some data, we believe that China is in the first line in this sphere, at the level of the United States.
In what direction should we be heading in the control of personal data, with respect to businesses, governments and citizens?
I think that we will see a hybrid model between governments, imposing certain limits and restrictions on what companies can do with personal data. In fact, the European General Data Protection Regulation already does this, but without actually restricting them, because thanks to these data we benefit from major innovations and commodities.
In recent years, in Spain and Portugal, investment in R&D has remained stable in the business sphere, but it has fallen at governmental level. What is your opinion of this?
We have seen the process of consolidation that took place after the economic crisis of the years 2007 and 2008 and that has represented the assignment of greater resources to R&D, but in different ways. Spain started off from a level of support higher than that of Portugal, and it was not until recently that it recovered the levels prior to the crisis, with significant budget assignments for the year 2020. In the case of Portugal, we are observing sustained growth in public support for research by businesses thanks to fiscal credit, a common mechanism in several OECD countries, although sometimes it is compensated by a reduction in direct support. In fact, Spain also presents a very generous fiscal credit for R&D, but we believe that it is relatively underused.
Spain presents a very generous fiscal credit for R&D, but we believe that it is relatively underused
The digital economy is changing the nature of jobs and, therefore, the skills required. How should the education system be preparing for this?
We have warned that some jobs with repetitive tasks are very easy to automate and that we will have to be cautious in this respect. It is not necessarily a case of mechanical questions; the interpretation of x-rays can also be automated if there are sufficient data available. In contrast, other jobs present a more emotional, creative or cognitive component that makes them more difficult to automate. And this includes innovation. In any case, all young people should have, at least at a basic level, a certain computational education. Furthermore, knowing how to encode or analyse, knowing how to approach a problem so that a machine can resolve it, or knowing how to interpret a set of results and understand whether they can be accepted or it is necessary to continue working on them, are also key skills at this moment in time.
Another challenge with regard to the future is how to bring about the transfer of workers from mature sectors to the new professions of the 21st century.
Managing behaviours, attitudes, and expertise is absolutely a challenge. We must accept that people will not remain in the same job for their whole life with the skills they had learned at age 25. They will need to change and be flexible as structural changes take place. And we know that in some cases these will be significant. It is also true that tackling these challenges when you are over 55 is not the same as when you are 25, often without the responsibility of a family or of a mortgage. The transition towards new professions will require social policies that can be adjusted to different populational scenarios. It is necessary to help people to move and think about new jobs, and to enable them to train for them. The education system will play a very important role in this sense, and it needs to be prepared.
The transition towards new professions will require social policies that can be adjusted to different populational scenarios
The convergence of 5G, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are bringing us to a present with increasingly intelligent machines. Shouldn’t we be talking more about the ethics that must exist behind their decisions?
Yes, and I am concerned about automatic decision-making and the principles of artificial intelligence. We do not use the word ethical because it is difficult to transfer it to legal terms and its meaning varies according to each individual. We use the concept human-centric, because it is very important to situate human beings at the centre of the process, making decisions and authorising processes, not just automating them. Very often, however, regulation takes place without knowing exactly what is happening. Therefore, what we have to do is demystify concepts such as artificial intelligence, 5G, or the Internet of Things and understand them better. It is instrumental to developing new policies. I am a little worried that we act before we know what is happening, because we do not want to waste an opportunity for innovation. I believe in techno-optimism, but I also understand that a certain level of concern exists in this regard.
The European Union set a target for the business sector to invest 2% of GDP
in R&D. How is the convergence of Spain and Portugal towards this goal
progressing?
What are the most decisive factors in a country’s research and innovation
systems? You can see the video of the discussion we organised to debate
this issue here.
What is society’s opinion regarding the possible impacts of science and
technology? Establishing citizen participation mechanisms is necessary to
generate confidence and detect points for improvement.
In Spain and Portugal, the proportion of innovative companies, and the
degree to which these collaborate with other companies and organisations,
is below the EU-27 average.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.
“To reduce inequality, we have to do more in early childhood”
Jane Waldfogel, Chair Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs, Columbia University School
Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work and public affairs at the Columbia University School of Social Work, sat down in New York City recently to talk about her new book ‘Too Many Children Left Behind’, which examines the question: Is the American Dream actually a reality? The authors analyzed educational data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia in attempting to answer three questions: How large is the achievement gap among children in the United States? When does this gap emerge as children move through the school system? And what can the United States learn from other nations? Below are excerpts from a conversation on the book:
What led you and your co-authors to examine these questions?
We had been looking at the gaps in early childhood. We had been looking at gaps in school readiness and we also knew from published literature, from studies like PISA, that there is also tremendous inequality among children, in say adolescence, and also tremendous inequality among adults. What we didn’t know was how inequality in early childhood relates to the inequality in adolescence and in adulthood. Are children starting out somewhat unequal before school, and are those gaps widening as they move through school? That might be reasonable to expect. Or is much of the inequality already present before they even start school? There really had not been an answer to that question before and we felt we were in a good position to work on that.
Can you start out our discussion by talking about the methodology used for this book?
We wanted to try to trace inequalities from early childhood through the school years, and we needed to follow the same sample of children over time.
We decided to use parental education because it was measured in the most comparable way across countries and also because a parent’s level of education is a pretty good marker for their position in society and the kind of resources they are going to have.
We chose the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia. We learned subsequently that this is called a ‘most similar cases’ design, so we are really comparing like to like. We thought they are a good comparison because they have similar welfare states, similar labor markets, and similar cultural norms.
One of the most surprising findings in this book was that the majority -60 to 70 percent- of the SES (socio-economic status) gap in achievement for children at age fourteen in the United States can already be attributed to differences present when students enter the school system. Can you talk about these findings?
If you would have asked me before we started the project, I would have said that I would have expected about half of the gap to be present already at school entry and another half would develop during the school years. But as you said, that was not the case; about 60 to 70 percent of the gap is already present at school entry. This has huge implications in terms of policy remedies.
We absolutely want to hold schools accountable, and we expect schools to reduce inequalities and to do their job, but if we are going to give schools a fighting chance, we have to do more in early childhood. However, because the bulk of the gap is already there at school entry, you can't lay all of the blame on schools in the United States.
Can you talk a bit about the policy solutions that are necessary to lessen the skills gaps when children enter schools?
There is one set of policies around supporting early learning and that would be evidence-based parenting programs and universal pre-school programs. These things are relevant in the U.S. context because we don’t yet have universal pre-school –we are working on universal pre-kindergarten, which now serves about 25-28 percent of children, but we are in the minority of advanced countries that don’t yet have universal pre-school, so this is still a pending issue for us. There is also a role for income supports. Income supports are not just a problem for early childhood, but right through the school years.
Policies supporting early learning (evidence-based parenting and universal pre-school programs) are relevant.
If families are worrying about money almost all the time, it’s going to affect children’s ability to concentrate and do well when they get to school.
Even if most of the achievement gap can be traced back to differences prior to school entry, a substantial proportion -30 to 40 percent- of the gap emerges during the school years. Can the school be said to produce inequalities?
The same kind of family factors that are leading to inequality in early childhood could also be leading to more inequality during the school years.
But you have to look at the role of the schools as well. We learned that in most countries the children with the greatest needs are assigned the most capable, the most experienced teachers. That’s not the case in the United States. We also learned that on average we have a pretty poorly-qualified teaching workforce.
In the UK, Canada and Australia, teachers are paid on average about 100 percent, 95 percent and 102 percent, respectively, of the salary received by other university-educated professionals. In the United States it’s about two-thirds; teachers are paid about two-thirds of the salary of other similarly educated professionals.
Can you talk a bit about why there might be lower expectations for students in the U.S. than in other countries?
I think many countries separate children based on ability and then have different expectations for the children, and expect them to arrive at different end points. I think all countries have a history of that, but I think many countries are now moving towards a more comprehensive or more integrated model. Finland is really the poster child in this regard. In Finland, not only are the teachers highly qualified and highly trained, but all the children are expected to learn the same material, regardless of their starting ability, and it’s understood that some children will need more help than others.
In the United States, I think we are more in the sorting business, sorting children based on which ones may be capable of the higher level math and which ones should be learning the lower levels of math. Once you do that, you are consigning some children to a lower level of achievement.
In the book, you discuss the idea of an ‘arms race’ in out-of-school spending on extracurricular activities. Can you explain what you mean by this?
It’s another thing I hadn’t realized before we started the book, how much this is a U.S. phenomenon. What we have seen in the U.S. is that economic inequality has grown, and social inequality has grown; parents have become more concerned about the future outcomes for their children, and also their ability to invest in their children has become more unequal. You put those two things together, and the result is this ‘arms race’ of investments in children. It used to be the case that how much parents spent on pre-school or how much they spent on books and toys or enrichment activities didn’t differ a lot by SES, but there is now this widening gap in those kinds of investments. This is a big part of why children are arriving at school so much more unequal.
Can you talk about the policy solutions that are important to lessen achievement gaps?
A significant portion of inequality arises during schooling, so we also look at certain policies for the school years. Some of those would be having a more consistent curriculum, which would help support more uniform expectations for all children.
The pay-off is potentially huge in addressing inequalities in children; it’s not just helping those children, it’s going to help all of society
We’ve talked about raising the standards of the teaching workforce, recruiting and retaining a high quality teaching workforce, as well as more individualized attention, higher expectations for individual children. There is a lot to do.
In your comparisons, Canada stands out in terms of devoting more resources to children, having less inequality among students, and also more educated parents. What is it about Canada?
Canada was a big surprise in this study. We knew that Canada had high levels of educational achievement and relatively high levels of equity, but I don’t think we were aware of how culturally different Canada is compared to the other countries. It has the most educated parents. Even within education groups, they seem to have the most educationally-oriented parents. There is a stunning graph in the book that shows that the lowest educated parents in Canada – those who’ve only completed high school or less – read as much to their children as college-educated parents in the United States.
The book notes that low-SES children in the U.S. are not achieving their full potential and that the talent of these children is being partially wasted. Can you talk about the broader economic implications that result from these inefficiencies in learning?
It’s a major concern that not only are these children leaving school with fewer skills and lower levels of achievement, but this is also going to have lifelong consequences in terms of both their economic well-being and their contribution to society. We are really dooming ourselves to continuing inequality and continuing low achievement because these are going to be the parents of the next generation of children.
That’s why the pay-off is potentially so huge in addressing inequalities in the current generation of children; because it's not just helping those children, it’s going to help all of us in society by having more productive, more highly-skilled workers. But also a more highly-skilled and better prepared next generation of parents.
What lessons should political leaders learn from this book?
In the United States, and also in other countries, too many children are being left behind. And this does not have to be so; measures can be taken that encourage more equal performance: support policies for pre-school education, to complement the income of families of a lower socioeconomic level and to improve the quality of teaching and of learning at schools.
What impact has the economic crisis caused by covid-19 had on wage
inequality? Have public subsidies been sufficient? We analyse which groups
have been most affected.
While women continue to opt for more socially-oriented courses, this report
points out that the occupations most necessary in 2030 will be those linked
to the digital economy.
The difference in unemployment rates between men and women in our country
is larger than the European average. How has it evolved during the recent
years of economic crisis?
In Spain, 20% of workers are overeducated for the job functions that they
perform. This study analyses how this situation reduces satisfaction in the
employment sphere.
“The profile of the Spanish cultural consumer is similar to its European counterpart”
Victor Fernández Blanco, Associate Professor of Foundations of Economic Analysis at the Department of Economics of the University of Oviedo, and specialist in the field of the economics of culture
In this interview, Víctor Fernández Blanco highlights the fact that, in contrast with what the majority of people may think, the digitalisation of certain cultural products does not reduce socialisation capacity, but rather the channels of this participation are mutating towards different pathways. This means, according to Fernández Blanco, it is necessary to adapt to the changes of a culture that no longer exists as it was understood some years ago and to face up to the fact that its consumption changes from day to day.
Researcher Fernández Blanco explains that no clear differences can be distinguished between Spanish people’s participation in culture and that of citizens of other European countries. The same can be said of cinema, a sector in which Fernández Blanco is a specialist. In his opinion, access to cinema has become democratised, among other reasons, due to the arrival of new technologies. The film industry, he affirms, no longer entrusts its entire turnover to the screening of films at cinemas but also seeks new channels for the release of its products, adapting to the growing changes that are taking place in viewing platforms.
What do you believe are the individual and social benefits consumption and cultural participation provide?
There are various individual and social benefits of consumption and cultural participation. They are traditional, because they meet one of the basic needs of human beings, that is: to communicate, have contact with others, establish channels of relationships, offer your experiences, discover new experiences in others... Thus, from that point of view, that goes beyond even the economic point of view, culture offers personal and relationship benefits that are clearly essential nowadays, as they have always been throughout the history of mankind.
But we must also add some clearly economic benefits to that. It meets a basic need of human beings; generates economic activity for cities, for regions; allows for the defence and maintenance of certain values that would be at risk of disappearing; stimulates education, training, the creation of human capital both individually as well as socially in each person; it facilitates social relationships; creates channels of socialisation and, therefore, enriches societies. Moreover, culture is always an open field and, thus, not only enriches endogenously the society itself in which we are living, but as it is always a field open to new sensations and new experiences it also serves to enrich the relationship of a society with both the closest and also the most distant neighbouring societies.
Do you believe investment in culture in times of economic crisis is justified?
Of course. I believe that public investment in culture is justifiable at all times, and also in times of crisis. As is known, culture generates a series of external values that private supply and the autonomous functioning of markets would not be able to grasp and appreciate. Therefore, the State intervention to protect and stimulate these external values, the external effects which we mentioned in economic terms, which are highly valuable for society as a whole and particularly for individuals, is necessary. Both from the point of view of creation and conservation of heritage, as well as the creation of networks between citizens and the social, cultural and not just cultural participation, by citizens... These are effects that deserve attention by the public authorities. And this attention is coupled with strictly economic values such as investment, but also with a firm policy of action for the benefit of culture. It’s not just a budgetary problem, it is also a problem of cultural policy decided in favour of culture and the participation of citizens in it.
Which factors most affect cultural consumption in Spain?
The factors that most affect cultural consumption in Spain are basically factors that have to do, firstly, with education. The higher the level of education, the greater cultural consumption there will be in all kinds of products. From the products, let’s say of higher or classical culture, such as classical music, opera or participation in art markets, even to the most current type of culture, dynamic, or if we use old profiles, popular culture. Also in classical music or pop concerts, increased education fuels the consumption of culture. Another factor is age: consumers of culture are young. In general, young people predominate in most goods of cultural consumption. At the same time, family responsibilities act as an obstacle, as an impediment to participating in cultural events and facilitating cultural consumption, especially when you're away from home. People with family responsibilities increasingly focus on domestic consumption in the world of culture. There is also some influence of regional and local character. There are two regions in Spain that are large aggregators of cultural events. Madrid and Barcelona facilitate the consumption by citizens. However, medium-sized cities such as Valladolid or Bilbao, have a sufficiently abundant offer and some facilities, in terms of cost of time, that greatly facilitate cultural consumption. Perhaps it’s in locations with a lower volume of population where one finds greater difficulties to accessing culture not so much in terms of cost of time as in terms of supply. The supply is lower and, once again, we return to what we were saying before: public action is absolutely necessary in those smaller-sized locations. Public investment is needed that doesn’t concentrate so much on having a market size that makes investment in culture profitable, but concentrates on providing basic services to citizens.
Are there significant differences with respect to other countries in Europe?
One cannot see clear differences in the participation of Spanish citizens compared to citizens of other European countries. The profile of consumers of culture, in general, and of each of the products in particular is very similar. There may be small differences in certain kinds of cultural products, which are authentic or more widespread in one area than another. For example, although it is one of the gaps, consumption of zarzuela or operetta is much more frequent in Spain and Austria, for example, than in the UK. But, in general, thinking about large constructs of cultural consumption, the Spanish consumer profile is similar to that of any European consumer.
Are there different profiles of cultural consumers in Spain? Have those profiles changed in the past few years?
Changes have been observed in the profiles of citizens in some types of cultural products. We’ve especially seen a gradual aging process in the performing arts and, particularly, in opera and zarzuela. They’re areas that are scarcely permeating the younger generations; therefore, a phenomenon of aging is occurring. However, in other cultural products, the importance of young people has taken root. We are talking, for example, about the world of film. Films are one of the most consumed products by citizens of all ages, but especially by younger people. Individuals between the ages of 15 and 30 are really the biggest consumers of cinema. In the last four or five years, this difference tilting towards younger people has grown even more.
How has Digitization impacted consumption of cinema in Spain?
Digitization in cinema has caused significant changes in recent years both in the sphere of consumption as well as in the sphere of production. But I think that, rather than simply referring to movies, we should talk about the audio-visual world. Because now it’s not just movies being watched on the big screen, but increasingly we are seeing audio-visual products through other channels, through other windows, the media offered by new technologies. And now not just traditional cinema is being viewed, but we are seeing more and more serie, more and more products made directly to be exploited by all audio-visual channels. The same thing happens from a production point of view. What used to be two separate worlds - the world of television and the world of the big screen - are, nowadays, two converging worlds. These days a film is made thinking of all possible display windows. It begins with the big screen, because that’s the large showcase. From there, it goes to pay TV, to syndicated and local TV, to DVD sales, the increasingly important consumption by streaming, or downloading of movies… Therefore, it is a completely different world; as mentioned, it goes beyond being just films to being part of the entire audio-visual world.
Do you think that it has benefitted film consumption and, therefore, its democratisation to broader layers of society?
It can undoubtedly be said that the arrival of new technologies and, in particular, Digitization, has facilitated access of all citizens to the audio-visual world and the world of cinema. Cinema was born with an ambition to be classless, intergenerational, and to reach all individuals. But when we put cheap media within people’s reach, ones that consume little time and are easily accessible, we’re simply allowing more people to enjoy more products and under different conditions, which are much better suited to their personal or family needs.
Have cinema consumption habits varied?
Cinema consumption habits vary nearly every day. There is a common denominator that has remained constant virtually since cinema was invented in the early twentieth century. That is the appeal of a dark room and the ability to socialise. But new technologies, i.e., Digitization, have opened new avenues for doing this, for a consumption one might think that, theoretically, is less socialising because you consume the movies with your own computer, in your own home, and not with the mystique of the big screen. That's true, but today consumption of film through digital platforms, tablets, computers, also becomes a mechanism of socialisation, because, increasingly, consumption of cinema is associated with communication through social networks. What we are changing is the way of socialisation; it’s no longer the darkened cinema, now it’s the Internet that allows individuals to socialise and even comment over time how a movie is going or generate discussion forums for products like series, that generate their own discussion forums where individuals participate.
Has consumption of cinema on the internet (by way of downloads and/or streaming) substituted or supplemented traditional consumption in cinemas?
Evidently, cinema consumption over the internet has a certain effect of substituting traditional consumption of films. Above all, people who have higher transaction costs, who have higher opportunity costs (family problems, commuting problems, distance from cinemas...), have greater facilities for consumption. But again, we’re not talking about substituting films for another product, but a means of seeing audio-visual productions for another means of seeing audio-visual productions. In fact, in recent years, even some rebound in attendance at cinemas can be seen. Cinemas underwent a very significant crisis starting in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, associated with an overabundance of cinemas in shopping malls. That put citizens off a bit, but they’re slowly coming back to cinemas. Therefore, they’re different means for seeing the same audiovisual product.
Do you think consumption of films on the internet brings about a change in consumer habits and practices, shifting it from the social sphere to the private sphere?
Film consumption on the internet obviously has an individual component. It dispenses, in some way, with the traditional method of socialisation that was involved with going to a cinema where you took in a story side by side with others. Therefore, it had a clear, obvious and traditional socialisation process that has been told from multiple fields: scientific, journalistic, even from the common logic of citizens. What consumption through new digital windows does is change the socialisation channels. Socialisation is done through social networks. Forums about movies or web pages where you can vote, where you can become a film critic, where someone like you, your peers, other movie fans can share experiences, discuss them with you... They offer different means of socialisation, it’s a different kind of socialisation. It offers the possibility of watching a series, an audio-visual product, while you keep in touch through networks with your friends or with your acquaintances. So, I think it's a different way of socialising, because the world is changing and we face a different world than the traditional one.
What subjects do you deem as significant for understanding the economic dimension of culture?
It’s highly important to understand the economic dimension of culture to understand that culture is a mechanism to meet a basic need of human beings, which is the need for communication. Hence, the first thing we must understand is the economic and not just the economic value culture has, especially for citizens but also for societies as a whole. Once we appreciate that value, the basic argument is how to provide citizens with cultural products. What part of cultural products can be provided by way of the market and what part needs the participation of the public sector, the provision of cultural assets via state, local and municipal mechanisms in short, public mechanisms? Once those two routes have been understood, which are not opposed but complementary, it is very important to know what is the efficiency in the delivery of these two mechanisms of provision of public goods. The market itself generates the need to be efficient, but provision through institutions and public agencies is not subject to market logic. Therefore, one must generate efficiency control mechanisms; not sacrificing principles such as equal access to culture, but providing equality in the best possible way, in the most efficient manner.
What subjects do you think might be of interest to future investigators?
The new research topics in the world of culture that may be relevant to new investigators have much to do with the change being observed in our society with the emergence of social networks. You have to research on networks. You have to research the connection between production and consumption, among the creators of cultural value themselves (from the authors to producers and distributors) on the one hand and, on the other hand, the networks established between the citizens themselves who consume cultural products and how you can connect that type of product with suppliers. In that field, everything that has to do with the digital economy, with big data, are extremely promising routes for the world of culture. Similarly, in a current situation exacerbated by the economic crisis we have been suffering, efficiency in the use of public resources: we cannot spend a single euro without knowing what it is intended for and we should know that we are making the best use of it. Once we have decided where to invest, we must try to do it in the most efficient manner possible. Thus, efficiency analysis is another extremely valuable field and with a great future in the world of culture.
How can the cultural consumption of the new generations, particularly that
of families with lower educational levels, be increased? Françoise Benhamou
provides some key points in this interview.
How many people work in the cultural sector? In 2015, the cultural sector
employed 2.5% of the population of Spain. This figure is lower than the
European average.
How many people participate in complementary training courses linked to
culture? In 2015, 5.9% of the Spanish population underwent some training of
this type.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
Chemical pollution does not just have an impact on human health; it also has an impact on our econom
Leonardo Trasande, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Environmental Medicine and Population Health School of Medicine, New York University
Leonardo Trasande is an expert on the environmental origins of certain diseases and their economic impact. For example, in a recent study he quantified that the cost of exposure to endocrine disruptors in the EU amounts to at least 163 billion euros a year, which represents 1.2 percent of Europe’s GDP. We had the opportunity to talk to him about his research during his recent visit to Barcelona, where he was invited to participate in a lecture organized by “La Caixa” Fellows Association.
Let’s start at the beginning. What kind of toxins can we find in the environment that may cause health issues?
Regarding children, for instance, and going back 50 or even 100 years, lead was the first chemical whose effects were understood. With time, we found that lower and lower levels of childhood lead exposure were associated not just with increases in blood pressure, but also with subtle effects on the developing brain. At first, we thought that there were no chemicals as problematic as lead was for the developing brain. But as we continued to study, we realized that a broader array of chemicals can also affect it.
How?
One of the major pathways is through disruption of the function of a key hormone called thyroid hormone. When I trained in pediatrics, I was taught to always check a newborn baby’s blood spot test to make sure they weren’t positive for congenital hypothyroidism, but now we realize that it’s not just gross effects on the thyroid hormone that are important. We now know that there are subtle decreases in the thyroid hormone that you might not even detect in a pregnant woman through routine blood screening. And babies born with this thyroid hormone decrease are more likely to suffer from subtle effects on their cognitive function, and they’re also more likely to be affected by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism.
What is the basic definition of an endocrine-disrupting chemical or EDC?
EDCs are synthetic chemicals that interfere with hormone function and thereby contribute to disease. And they do this in a variety of ways: mostly they mimic the structure of, let’s say, testosterone, or estrogens, or some other key signaling molecule, but there are many ways in which chemicals can also disrupt the hormones in our body and thereby contribute to disease. It might be the case that they disrupt the function of hormones but don’t contribute to a disease; then you don’t have a definitive endocrine disruptor. However, many hormonal functions exist for the sole purpose of maintaining a healthy body, so by disrupting a hormonal function you’re likely to induce some disability or disease.
And reproductive systems can be especially affected by chemical disruptors, correct?
Most recently, we found evidence that chemicals can also affect male reproductive functions, and also potentially contribute to the development of certain cancers or adverse birth outcomes. Particularly, there is an entire syndrome that is now understood to arise when the testosterone function is disrupted during a boy’s development. This leads to a misplacement of the opening of the urethra — called hypospadias — that requires surgery. In addition, the story of Lance Armstrong successfully fighting off testicular cancer shows that we’ve come a long way in treating this disease, but now we know that there’s actually been a 30 to 40 percent increase in the incidence of testicular cancer, when it’s a highly preventable disease as much as it is a treatable one.
What about women?
We’ve found that some effects can also show up in the female reproductive tract. They don’t have to manifest directly as clinically observable disorders, but they can show up as subtle hormonal dysfunctions. The increase in polycystic ovarian syndrome, for example, may be a by-product of synthetic chemical exposures interacting with genetic susceptibility. We also know that endometriosis and fibroids are all too common. Studies in humans and laboratory studies have suggested that certain chemical exposures, in particular to plasticizing chemicals and certain pesticides, can induce and be associated with these conditions. They are painful problems and sometimes require surgery, in both young and older women.
Your research is also focused on two modern epidemics: obesity and diabetes.
Yes. Research now is suggesting that the obesity and diabetes epidemic is not simply a by-product of an unhealthy diet and poor physical activity: chemicals may represent a preventable third factor in this epidemic. Although perhaps they only explain a modest proportion, they may be a preventable factor. The key difference is that, whereas diet and physical activity can be exceedingly hard to change — or at least, the change can only be done one person at a time — chemicals can be regulated. So the resources that have to be invested in preventing obesity and diabetes might actually be more efficient if they are focused on preventing chemical exposures that may contribute to these diseases.
Where do EDCs come from?
EDCs are a diverse array of chemicals. One of the first times they were identified was in 1971, when a research study conducted at the Massachusetts General Hospital linked prenatal intake of diethylstilbestrol (DES) — a synthetic form of estrogen — to a rare vaginal cancer in girls. DES had been prescribed to pregnant women since the 1940s to prevent miscarriage and premature births, but as a consequence of this finding, the US Food and Drug Administration asked physicians to stop prescribing it. But it’s not just about pharmaceuticals that may not have had full safety screening. There are all sorts of synthetic chemicals that can act as EDCs used as pesticides, to prevent fires in electronics and furniture, to make plastic soft and bendable, to make certain types of plastic cards, or to prevent corrosion in the lining of aluminum cans.
So how do you gain knowledge about their relationship with disease?
The best way is to conduct studies in humans that associate an exposure with an outcome. But it can take decades to really study diseases that take that long to develop. Endometriosis, for instance, does not occur in infancy but it can develop in older women. The same is true for fibroids and breast cancer. Those studies can be extremely hard to design, because you often need biospecimens — blood, urine, etc. — ideally at multiple time points, and then you have to observe and wait to see who develops disease and who doesn’t.
That means it takes a long time to get scientific evidence.
And with that problem comes a challenge: many people assume that absence of evidence means absence of harm. And unfortunately, what we know from the laboratory, and from the limited human studies that have been done, is that diseases of chemical origin that involve hormone disruption do not just have a substantial impact on human health, they also have a substantial impact on our economy.
Let’s talk about that.
Toxic chemical exposure has an economic impact because it has a human health impact. Often, when policymakers are trying to decide whether or not to limit a particular chemical exposure, they compare the cost of safer alternatives with the benefits of prevention. And if you have limited human studies, the fact is that there are very few data on which to base credible estimates of disease or disability in order to help guide prevention. Fortunately, that evidence is increasingly available and growing at a faster pace.
In fact, you conducted a study on the costs associated with EDCs in Europe.
Yes, we looked at 15 conditions that had the greatest evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship, and we used a number of conservative assumptions which included reducing cost estimates for these diseases based upon the uncertainty of scientific evidence. And even after placing those limits, we found that the cost of EDCs in Europe was around 163 billion euros per year.
That’s rather a lot of money!
It’s actually 1.2 percent of Europe’s GDP. But this estimate is also extremely low, for three reasons: we looked at less than 5% of EDCs; we looked only at a subset of diseases that can be traced to these chemicals; and then we only looked at a subset of economic costs that were published in peer-reviewed journals that provided us with reliable data on which to base cost estimates. So this figure is an underestimate of an underestimate of an underestimate. But it says a lot about the considerable economic benefits of preventing the chemicals of greatest concern, recognizing that there still may even be greater economic benefits as we increase our understanding of the effects of many more chemicals on human health.
What was the reaction of European authorities to that figure?
The studies clearly attracted a lot of attention. I suspect we changed the dialog in a way that means that the best endocrine science will from now on inform regulatory policy, but our work is clearly not done. Europe is finalizing its criteria regarding EDCs and one of the concepts that we succeeded in pushing aside was this whole notion of potency. There is this 500-year-old concept stemming from the Dutch philosopher Paracelsus which states that the dose makes the poison, in the sense that a toxin is harmless in small doses. But chemicals don’t follow straight lines. The more we look, the more we realize that the effects of chemicals can actually be greater at the lowest levels of exposure. Yet, time and again, we see European policymakers debating this old notion.
And I imagine they’re asking for human data on exposure risk.
Yes, and that’s one of the concerns I have about the European policy as it has been drafted, since as I said, it could take decades before we prove that a chemical is having an effect on human health. We are needlessly and dangerously delaying protection when we know that, for example, some chemicals can disrupt thyroid function, and this can be very problematic for children’s brain development. By not taking action, we may inadvertently condemn the next generation of children to develop preventable diseases and disabilities that are costly to society.
What do you propose then?
I firmly believe we should look at all available evidence on the probability of cause and effect. And we should act when there’s evidence that a chemical is a probable cause of harm to human health. If the harm is significant, we should proactively act, even though the evidence might not be certain. We can always change our policy framework to accommodate a chemical exposure if it is ultimately found to be safe in current use. The whole concept underlying our economic work was to show policymakers that the cost of inaction, even under the less extreme scenarios, is likely to be large.
Some action has been taken though, and we as consumers can also play our part. For instance, now we can get plastic free of bisphenol A, which is known to act as an EDC.
The power of the purse or the wallet can be quite substantial. One of the reasons behind the shift to bisphenol A-free materials is that consumers demanded that companies change their ways. Now my concern is that we often replace one chemical with another untested alternative that may be as problematic. For example, bisphenol A has been increasingly replaced with bisphenol S, bisphenol F and bisphenol P, all chemicals that are structurally similar to the initial bisphenol A compound. And studies have already identified bisphenol S to be just as estrogenic and just as persistent in the environment, so it may have a similar profile of toxicity for human health.
But getting back to the example of lead toxicity you mentioned before, we are now driving cars with unleaded gasoline.
Globally, we got lead out of gasoline just a couple of years ago in low- and middle-income countries. The economic benefit of doing that is 2.4 trillion dollars a year. That’s a 4 percent economic stimulus to GDP alone, and that is a gift that keeps on giving. As long as we continue to use unleaded gasoline, children will have much lower lead levels and therefore be more able to contribute productively to society, and that is a huge economic benefit, not to mention other health effects that could be prevented. We still have a long way to go, but yes, we’ve taken away the biggest cost of childhood lead exposure, and that is giving a huge economic reward.
As a pediatrician you usually refer to children. Are they more vulnerable?
Yes, they are uniquely vulnerable. Pound for pound, they breathe more air; they drink more water and eat more food, and their organs are exquisitely vulnerable to injury. When a child has an exposure to a chemical that is toxic to the developing brain, critical connections between nerve cells are not made, and then that child is less likely to perform at school. Also, when children inhale air pollutants, their lung development is sometimes affected. They don’t develop as many air sacs that are used to exchange oxygen, and so they have a reduced ability to run and play and do vigorous activity.
And it’s a bigger problem when their hormones are affected.
When children's hormones are disrupted, in particular for metabolic functions, there might be some misalignments. For a certain caloric intake, for instance, instead of adapting appropriately and storing calories as protein, they shift their calorie storage to fat, which may lead to obesity in later life. They might also have a disruption of the insulin function, and they might become insulin resistant, and potentially they can develop diabetes later on. So children are exquisitely vulnerable to the effects of synthetic chemicals, so much so that they can develop chronic diseases earlier and with more intensity than adults.
For instance, you are carrying out analysis on children exposed to the World Trade Center collapse in New York City.
The WTC disaster is known to have produced a very large cloud of smoke that many children inhaled simply because they lived or played or attended school near the site. Not to mention the psychological trauma associated with the exposure. My greatest concerns are the more chronic exposures that occurred because children continued to live, work and play near the site despite the fires burning for many months after the disaster. And there were many chemical residues, especially persistent organic pollutants from the furniture, electronics and other materials that were burnt or collapsed in the disaster.
And what are you looking at?
I’m looking at the effects of those early-life chemical exposures together with psycho-social trauma to see if children are suffering from metabolic disorders, or if there has been any damage to their developing blood vessel systems and hearts. Adolescence is typically the time when these conditions emerge, and the children exposed to the accident 15 years ago are now aged between 15 and 22 years old. So they’re more likely to show these diseases. If we don’t find any effects from those exposures, I’ll be very relieved. That may actually suggest a better outcome for children who are already known to have a higher rate of asthma than others who were not exposed to the disaster.
It seems there was little people could do to avoid the exposure, but is it possible to prevent health effects after such a disaster?
Well, insofar as doctors can potentially work with these children to modify their diets and perhaps do more physical activity, there are ways to prevent the diseases from becoming more prominent. However, you can’t undo that exposure. The other reason to study disaster-related exposures is so that for future disasters we can figure out what program or follow-up or prevention, if any, we need to implement. Because, unfortunately, we live in a society where I hope there’s never a disaster of quite that magnitude again but, preventable or not, there might be.
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“We have undervalued the importance of personal interrelations in education”
Alan Daly, Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Education Studies, University of California, San Diego.
UC Chair Professor of Education Alan Daly answers questions relating to the role of the social networks in the world of education. He is not referring to networks such as Facebook or Twitter, but to those found in schools and used by teaching staff, with the aim of investigating the relationships that are established at centres.
In his answers, Daly highlights the concept of social capital, which refers to the knowledge that unites two individuals or the possible knowledge that may unite them. For years education has focused solely on human capital: which is the capital found in our own experiences, in training or in knowledge, leaving this social capital aside. Daly emphasises the idea of establishing a relationship with another person who has different knowledge, with the aim of understanding the value of social relationships in schools.
Can you tell us what is a social network in education, and give us an example?
I think the first thing we have to do is understand what we mean by social network. Because I think when people hear that, they imagine Facebook or Twitter or something like this and this is a kind of social network. But the kinds of social networks that I work with are primarily in schools, with teachers, and really what I’m interested in understanding is their sets of relationships in between and amongst themselves, right? And so, in education we have spent a lot of our time thinking about human capital. So human capital is our own experiences and our training and our knowledge and all that resides inside of ourselves. And we haven’t spent as much time thinking about social capital. Social capital is the knowledge that exists between two individuals, or the potential for that knowledge to exist between two individuals. So, I have some knowledge and experiences inside of myself and you have knowledge and experiences inside of yourself. If we can make a relationship together in some way, then we can exchange that knowledge. And that knowledge or those ideas or information, those all have real potential: They are capital, they have value to them. So the first thing we have to understand is that the reason that I’m interested in networks is that I’m interested in the value that comes from social relationships. And so, a network, if you can imagine in your mind’s eye is a set of these little dots. Each one of these dots typically represents a person, and then you can imagine lines between these dots, which represent the relationships. And those are the kinds of networks that we look at. And we can look at a variety of different ones and different types of relationships that people may have.
Why are social networks important in processes of educational reform and change efforts?
For a long time in education we have approached change as just a knowledge problem. Meaning, if only we could get people more knowledge, training and skills there would be this increase in change and performance. And I think that’s given us incremental improvements but not transformative improvements. And I think the reason behind that is that we have undervalued the interactions and the relationships that people have in systems. So if we think about change in the school or any kind of organisation, change happens between and among people. When you and I are together trying to make sense of something, we’re in effect changing, and my understanding of what’s happening is changing because of my interaction with you. So, in my work, I’m foregrounding the importance of the social interaction and backgrounding the knowledge piece, whereas in most educational change, they foreground the knowledge piece and background the relational piece. Now, I’m not saying that knowledge and information and training aren't important, I work at a university so obviously I believe that they are, but I believe that we have probably undervalued the importance of our human connectedness and the quality of our relationships.
Why is only involving principals in educational reforms not enough to achieve success?
The idea about who is involved in the change effort is, I think, a really important question. One of the things that we see in our work is that we have to think about taking a systems perspective, meaning that we can’t be thinking about the small, discrete parts of an organisation to really effect big transformative change. We’ve got to be thinking in terms of a system. And so if we’re only thinking about people that are in the formal leadership positions like principals or other people that are in these formal leadership positions, I think we miss a great deal of what’s happening in the system itself, right? So let me give you an example: Sometimes we can go into a school and we can look at these social interactions that we were talking about earlier and it turns out that there’s a teacher who a lot of people turn to for advice or knowledge or information, and in a way that person is a kind of a leader in the system although they don’t hold a formal leadership position in the same way a principal might hold that leadership position. So in my work, I’m trying to surface these kind of informal leaders. So if we only targeted the principals, those with the formal authority and leadership, we might very well miss out on really important leaders in the system. So in effect, what I’m trying to say is that leadership is more than just a title or a formal position; it has to do with the set of relationships we have between and amongst ourselves because those can be consequential.
Is this the idea behind the transformative leadership that you have written about?
In a way, I think, when you’re asking me about transformative leadership. Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about this idea about the importance of trust. And I think trust is a really important element in any kind of leadership role. Trust is a very interesting construct. So, the way that trust gets formed is that it’s an assessment of risk, right? I’m going to interact with you and I’m going to take a risk with you when I share something that you won’t make fun of me or you won’t laugh at me or you won’t think that I’m ridiculous. I mean you may think those things but hopefully you won’t. And so I take a risk when I interact with you. And in turn you take a risk when you interact with me. And that exchange with one another, that helps build trust between us. And I think this idea about trust is a key element of transformative leadership. If we really want to move systems, it’s really about the quality of the relationships that we have between people. And transformative leaders have the ability to take those relationships and help move them to another level. I think the other part that goes along with transformative leadership is I think, it’s this idea about vulnerability. And, a leader’s ability to be vulnerable with somebody else, to open themselves up, to indicate that they’re not sure or they’re maybe not clear about the next step to take, I think can actually be a really freeing thing to those people that are following that leader. For far too long we’ve believed that the leader should have all of the answers. I’m sort of pushing on this idea that maybe this vulnerability is the new capacity for leaders of the 21st century.
What helps to promote trust in the system? Is it something that leaders can do?
I think certainly the leaders really have to take an important first step on that, right? Because if they create the conditions for people to be able to interact and be vulnerable with one another, then they’re more likely to do so. If a leader creates the conditions that it’s not safe to take a risk, or to be vulnerable, or to seek one another for advice, then people are unlikely to do that. But it’s also more than that, right? That colleagues have to develop this sense of trust. And so there’s been some really interesting work that’s been done by Bryk and colleagues in Chicago and we’ve done some work on trust too, and one of the big interesting findings that they find is that in those schools that have higher levels of trust between and among staff and between staff and students, those schools have higher academic productivity than schools in which there are lower levels of trust. So, this isn’t about some magical program that is in place in the school; it’s about the quality of the relationships. And leaders have an important role in setting the tenor and the conditions for those interactions to take place. But that’s not everything, right? You have to create the conditions for colleagues to share with one another.
Why are ever-popular technical plans, performance incentives and punishment schemes not enough for a successful educational policy?
It’s a really insightful question. So, when we think about policy and when we think about the work of educational change, the sort of simple answers are these kind of technical fixes, right? If only we had more of this, if only teachers had more training, if only we had more money, then everything would be perfect. But we know that isn’t necessarily the case. So let’s think about this from a leadership standpoint and think about what some of the issues might be. So we can think about two kinds of leaders. We can think about technical leaders and they have the ability to sort of execute these technical plans and blueprints and we can think about adaptive leaders. Those are the ones that are going to question the assumptions and try to embrace the context and try to think about the human relational capacity that’s going on within the system, right? And most often, we think about the technical things because they’re easy to measure and easy to take care of, right? But in fact they don’t necessarily move us very far. So, let me give you an example. Here in Europe, which is wonderful, a lot of people drive stick-shift cars, manual cars right? In the US we’re far too lazy for this, so we just drive automatic cars, right? But let’s pretend I’m here and I don’t know how to drive a manual car very well and so eventually I burn out the clutch on this manual car. Now, I can bring it to a mechanic and the mechanic can replace the clutch and I can go and drive off, but a few months later I will be back again to have that car repaired. So that mechanic effectively has taken care of the technical problem, the broken car, but that person is not addressing the adaptive issue which is the driver inside the car. So unless we undertake the long-term deep work that is necessary for educational change to happen at the adaptive level, it’s unlikely we’ll move forward very far. And as long as our policies remain at this technical level, we will never be able to push to that next level. Nor do I think, if we’re punishing and shaming people, will we move very far into the future.
What is the role of social networks in teachers’ professional development, in dissemination and in leadership?
I think something else that is happening in education is that we have become addicted to outside expertise. We have come to believe that the only way that change can happen is that some expert from the outside can help show us the light and lead us to the Promised Land. And sometimes that’s really important, right? We need external expertise and partners and folks to help move us forward. But I also wonder and believe that if we set up the systems and the structures that are necessary for people to access the knowledge that already resides within their own system, amazing things could happen. You know, if you went into a school and you asked most teachers: “Who is the expert on language?” Or: “Who is the expert on maths?” or: “Who is the expert on science?” Or: “Mrs. Jones, a couple of doors down, what’s her expertise?” Some teachers may know, others might not know. We don’t often do an audit of the expertise within schools to celebrate the knowledge that resides within teachers and leaders within schools. We often, our first starting point, is to look outside. And what happens when we look outside is it decreases a person’s sense of efficacy. It’s a belief that somebody else outside of me has to tell me what to do and that erodes my efficacy. And a sense of efficacy is incredibly important. Bandura and other researchers have shown quite clearly that a teacher’s sense of efficacy, his or her own ability and belief to reach and teach a child is a better predictor of that kid’s academic success than socio-economic factors. That’s an incredibly powerful idea: That my belief about my ability to reach and teach a child is as important or even more important than what that kid walks in the door with. And then we take that individual efficacy and we think about that across the school or across the system and we build the collective efficacy of systems to move forward. That’s the kind of professional development that’s rooted in the profession and honouring of teachers and educators that work across this world, that are trying to do the good work of improving outcomes for the kids and for the families.
What is an innovative climate in schools and why do you think work should be done to promote it?
I think we have to start with this idea about innovation first. So, what sometimes people get obsessed about is they get obsessed about innovation itself, like: What’s the thing we’re going to do? And that’s a really important thing to pay attention to. But it turns out that one person’s innovative idea is someone else’s everyday practice. So by labelling something or some approach as an innovation we might not be really looking at something that is innovative at all, it just could be somebody else’s regular practice. So what we’ve tried to do in our work is to move off innovation itself and to look at the climate and conditions that surround an organisation or a school or a district’s ability to create a climate that allows innovation to happen. So what do we know about climates in which innovation takes place? Well, number one, they’re about risk-taking, which means it’s got to be ok to fail. And most systems are not okay with people failing. But our argument has always been “Fail, fail fast and fail forward”. So that you can redesign, retool, reinvent and continue moving forward. But if systems don’t create the kinds of conditions so that people feel safe to do that, innovation won’t happen. The second thing, is that we’ve got to create an opportunity to create diversity of perspectives. So, oftentimes what happens, we surround ourselves with people who think like us in some way and that doesn’t allow us to have a diversity of perspective and opinion. And that’s what so wonderful about doing international work, is that it opens up your eyes and it opens up your perspectives and allows you to see the world from a new and different way. So first, we have to have risk-tolerant climates; second, we have to look at a variety of perspectives. And then thirdly, we have to be able to question the assumptions that underlie our work. We have to be willing to take a hard look at what we’re doing and ask ourselves the important question: Why are we doing this? Where is our work really rooted? What’s the why of what we’re doing? Because sometimes we forget that. And those systems that can be innovative understand those three things and more at a much deeper level.
What can policymakers do to help support ideas to promote an innovative climate?
Let me just move the question a little bit off of innovative climate and to say how can policymakers help to create the conditions across education for educators to work together and share practices and to develop their profession, right?. Which is really at the heart of innovative climate. So there are several things I can think of: Number one is we have to stop shaming and blaming educators. It’s this belief that if we have a big enough stick or we shame them enough, they will somehow improve. I think this is a pretty misguided way of thinking about things. So it turns out that if you do this, you’ll get incremental improvement but never to the next level of improvement. Let me give you an example: When systems or people feel under threat, what happens to your body is, you kind of close down, right? Your fingers and your hands get clammy, and you’re sort of: are you going to fight or are you going to run? And so, when systems feel like they’re under threat because they’re being shamed or they’re being humiliated or they’re being punished in some way, it turns out that they respond in very similar ways. They tend to circle the wagons. They tend to act in various stereotypic ways, they don’t innovate, they close off communication, decisions only get made by a few people. So, organisations in themselves often act just like people do when they’re under threat, which is what I think is happening here. So, when you’re under threat, what happens is that you feel like you have a big stick over your head and it turns out you don’t make your best decisions, your most creative decisions, your most innovative decisions when you have a big stick over your head. You either want to run or you want to fight. So the idea that we are going to hold a big stick over school’s heads in order for them to get better and then be surprised when they don’t improve is completely crazy. So, the idea is that fear, we need to take fear out of the equation. We have to remove fear, because fear really undermines innovation, it undermines risk-taking, it undermines our ability to create meaningful and deep relationships and its’s going to be those meaningful and deep relationships that are authentic, that are genuine, that are imbued with trust. That’s what’s going to make the difference. So, number one, take away the shame and the blame. Number two, focus on culture and climate within organisations. Actually make that something that we are intentionally thinking about, and measuring and trying to make progress towards. Because we know that the climate that exists and how people feel when they’re in a climate, that’s really important for their own productivity. You know within minutes, when you walk into a school as an educator, as a researcher or as a parent, the feeling tone of that school. You just sense this, right? Human beings sense this, we’re social creatures, we sense this. So how does one pay better and closer attention to the climate and the culture? And if that becomes something that we’re measuring, because what gets measured gets done, then that has people pay attention to these important, what we’ve often called soft skills around climate and culture and trust. In fact, what’s interesting is that when you go and you ask employers what kind of employees they want when people graduate from college, you may think or people may have thought: “Oh, they have to have good technical skills”, and that’s part of it but actually what employers actually want is people that can collaborate, people that can communicate, people that can solve complex problems, people that can think outside the box and think in innovative and different ways, and that’s what they want. But if we have systems that reward this technical movement, we’re not going to produce those kinds of folks, and therefore this will also have major economic implications for our society.
How useful is social network data? Is it just academic or can data be used for educational reform?
I think we live in a data-rich, information-poor climate right now. I think there’s tons of data around, we’re swimming in data, but we don’t know how to make meaning of it necessarily. So I can make very pretty charts, graphs, and I can collect all this kind of data and my colleagues can do the same thing but where does the meaning-making take place? How does one sense-make around data? So part of what we’ve been doing in our work is that we’re actually feeding data back into systems and then rather than telling them they should do X, Y and Z, we’re actually leading them through a process, so that they reach conclusions that are going to be useful to them. We’re creating the opportunity for people to sense-make around data. And to try to figure out what are they going to do on Thursday morning, it isn’t enough that we just hand people data, it’s the way that they’re going to interact with it. So how do we think about creating the conditions for people to interact around data in a way that it doesn’t feel threatening, in a way that they can make meaning? And how do we also provide them data that is actually useful, not just a bunch of numbers and statistics that we’re collecting, although that can also be useful. But also about the quality of what’s happening within systems.
Who will find this data, or analysis, most useful? Teachers and actors in schools, or policymakers, or both?
I think we have to start thinking around the kinds of data that’s going to be useful to whom, and for what, and under what conditions. So, it could be that there’s some data that is really useful to you as a teacher, right, these sort of more formative approaches. A lot of places have students a full year and then they give them the big test at the end of the year and somehow, next year they should improve based on the previous year’s results. Those sort of long-cycle assessments. I’m not so clear those always help to guide instruction as much as formative assessments. So, giving you feedback on a more regular basis that’s going to have to do with the work that you’re doing every day. So, I think formative assessments are much more useful for teachers. Now, that kind of data might not be as useful for a policymaker. But the question is: How do we help policymakers see the complexity of the data? That the world isn’t just reduced to some small soundbite. That the work that we’re doing is actually quite complex, quite nuanced, and in order to make progress we have to sustain that work over time. So I’m not advocating for a certain kind of data or a certain kind of approach. What I’m advocating for is creating and opening up a space for dialogue to take place. And in that dialogue, amazing things can happen, as long as we don’t rush to decisions about something or misread what the data says.
Do you think that social networks can help to improve student achievement or performance?
I do. There has been some work that has been done in this space and we have done some work in this space also. So simply put, without going into all the models: the ability for teachers to have access to expertise, and also for teachers to be accessed for their expertise has been shown to be associated with student outcomes and student achievement, even controlling for a bunch of other things like prior attendance, and special education, etc. So, it turns out that the social networks in which a teacher resides are really consequential. I’ll give you an example. I taught sixth grade, and so this is for eleven- and twelve-year-old kids and I loved it. I loved being a teacher and I think in my heart I still want to be that teacher. And I entered a grade level so I entered a collaborative group with other sixth grade teachers. And it turned out that the group of people that I was working with were amazing. They were thoughtful, they were passionate. They were great teachers. And I learned so much from them, I gained so much. And that enriched my experience as an educator but it also enriched the experience of my students. They benefited from the social network in which I resided. Now let me contrast that to a colleague that graduated in the same year as I did, was teaching in another sixth grade class just across town. The people in that group didn’t talk to each other, well, they didn’t even like each other, they would actively ignore one another. And so therefore, he didn’t have access to the other knowledge and ideas and information that I had access to, just for the mere random chance that I ended up in this school and he ended up in that school. And so therefore, his students also didn’t have access to the knowledge and understanding and perception and passion that his colleagues had. Like I did. And so to think that teacher social networks are not influential on students, to me, it confounds not only research but it confounds what we know intuitively about the ways in which people work.
Do you think that social networks are important for supporting students who are marginalised or living in poverty?
I think they’re incredibly important. I’m going to put a little caveat there for a second though. Because, when we think about a social network, meaning the connections between and among people, it can also be that bad stuff moves through social networks too. They’re not all shiny and puppies and rainbows, because sometimes bad ideas can move through networks, or beliefs about the potential of students can move through networks. So I’ve been in places before where people don’t believe that kids that come from poverty can actually achieve at the same level of their colleagues that are of higher socio-economic standards. That kind of belief or knowledge also moves through social networks. So the network in and of itself is not good or bad. What I’m arguing for, is building deep, high-quality relationships and then watching what is moving through those and also allowing pro-social interactions to take place that are going to help students. So I think this is a nuanced description. But in general, when we think about teachers having the ability to access one another, then I think this is a really important and powerful idea, because beliefs can also be shaped by our interaction. Especially if I have an emotional connection with somebody or I consider them a strong friend. I’ll give you an example. So, if I go to a training as an educator and the presenter is sharing this wonderful idea and he’s got great PowerPoints and he’s very passionate about what he wants to share and you and I are together in this meeting and we’re really close friends and we walk out together and I’m kind of excited about this idea, but I turn to you and I say: “Hey, what do you think about this idea?” and you say: “Hmm, I don’t think so.” I’m less likely to uptake that idea, because we have a strong connection. So in a way our relationship actually undermined my ability to go and try and do something new and something different. So I think my point here is that we have to be mindful about these networks and more importantly I think we have to visualise them. Our networks, we’re surrounded by these invisible sets of relationships that impact us in ways we’re not even aware. So how do we make them visible? And interesting work is suggesting that these networks influence how happy we are, even our weight. I’ve got some great colleagues at UCSD that are looking at this sort of thing. So these networks are consequential on our lives in ways that we can’t even imagine. So the question is: For schools, how do we help visualise these networks in ways that they can be used as a force of good? Particularly in communities that are impoverished or suffer from poverty? And I want to take this one level further, because I don’t think it’s just the networks within schools, I think we have to think much broader than that. I think it’s about the networks and connections out to communities, between community members. I think what we have to start doing is thinking about ourselves as network weavers; that we are connecting and linking together these networks in support of kids and families that are in poverty. Because at the end of the day, when we can lift children, and the families and communities that are in poverty, we all benefit. We all benefit. And so the question is: How do we do that in deep and meaningful ways that honours those communities? Sees them as assets, not as deficits? And I think that can be accomplished through supporting and nurturing our networks.
Are social networks the answer to helping disadvantaged students avoid unemployment, low-paid jobs and social or work exclusion?
I think they’re part of the answer; I’ll address that in a moment. But I think these are larger, complex societal issues, and I think as societies we have to take a long, hard, cold look in the mirror and say: Are we really ready? Are we really committed? Do we really have the passion and the purpose to really, fundamentally change communities? I think first we have to answer that question, right? And the answer to that question, I know in my heart, surely in yours, surely of the people that are here, I know they believe that deeply. So first we have to establish that: Do we have the will to make this happen? And then the second question is: Do we have the skills to make that happen? No one person does. No one agency does. No one unit does, but together we actually stand a much better opportunity. We are better together. But the question becomes: how do we link ourselves together? How are we intentional about the relationships that we are forming? How are we mindful about them? How do we create authentic and genuine and respectful relationships that enable us to do the work? How do we make sure we’re not duplicating services? That we’re working together complementarily? How do we take our egos out of the picture, so that I’m vested in your success and you’re vested in my success? How do we create inter-dependent systems that are going to move youth and families to better places? We all win when that happens, all of us. The deep question is: Do we really believe that in our hearts? Or do we really believe that we’re out fighting against everyone else and I get ahead by stepping on you? So the question for all of us becomes: Are we ready to embrace our own sense of humanity and humility? And really connect in deep and meaningful ways that are going to make fundamental change not just in education but in our broader society.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
While women continue to opt for more socially-oriented courses, this report
points out that the occupations most necessary in 2030 will be those linked
to the digital economy.
Is the Learning and Performance Improvement Programme (PMAR) effective for
the prevention of early school leaving? According to this study,
participating in the PMAR increases the probability of obtaining an ESO
qualification by 12%.
Do we have quality education? In this report we analyse three fundamental
dimensions: access to sufficient educational level, obtaining of adequate
knowledge to contribute to economic and social development, and degree of
inclusion of the education system.
In Spain, 20% of workers are overeducated for the job functions that they
perform. This study analyses how this situation reduces satisfaction in the
employment sphere.
“Science issues are increasingly pressing civic issues”
Lee Rainie and Cary Funk, Pew Research Center.
Pew Research Center is a fact tank that informs the public about issues, attitudes and trends that are shaping the world. As a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder, it is a nonprofit, nonpartisan and non-advocacy organization, based on values such as independence, objectivity and rigor. Lee Rainie is the Center’s director of internet, science and technology research, and supervises the surveys that examine people’s online activities and the internet’s role in their lives, as well as the intersection of science and society. Cary Funk is an associate director for research, focusing on science.
Pew Research Center conducts a wealth of research and produces many facts. How do you choose your research topics?
We are constantly looking to see which topics and key questions in society are pressing issues and could benefit from the kind of data and analysis that we can provide. Our mission is to conduct original, primary research that helps inform major policy decisions and cultural conversations. This means that we spend a lot of time trying to discern noteworthy and urgent issues in public discourse and determining which of these conversations might be helped by the kind of sound, timely data and analysis that we provide. However, we do not perform our research for the purpose of taking a position on policy outcomes.
Since facts are never completely neutral, do you take any neutrality measures with regard to dissemination?
We work to make sure that our research is balanced and neutral, starting with how we design our questions right through to how we describe our findings. Dissemination of our research focuses on people, groups and organizations who share an interest in the topic under study, regardless of their policy position. So, for instance, we hope our material is equally useful to those who want to limit immigration even more and to those who support more liberal immigration policies, or to those who want to cut science research and those who support higher levels of science research. We know that we are achieving our goals for balanced research when advocates on both sides of an issue cite our studies. For example, we recently observed in an appeals court that the judges on both sides of an immigration argument used our data to support their opinions on the case.
Why has the Pew Research Center expanded its research on science and society?
The Center decided to expand its research in these areas for three reasons. First, science issues are increasingly pressing civic issues: significant policy and ethical questions are driven by what scientists discover and how policymakers and the general public react to those discoveries. Second, science and technology innovations are at the heart of societal change: nations look to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, genomics, brain science, energy technologies, food production, robotics and other fields to fuel economic growth. Third, scientific findings are a key battleground for how cultures decide what is true: the rise of the internet and the explosion of communities of interest around science issues have raised fundamental questions about how facts are unearthed and what meaning they should be assigned when crafting policy solutions.
What is the relevance of science research in relation to other topics tackled by the Center, such as politics and religion?
As we already said, science issues are more broadly civic issues. Our analysis of public attitudes across 23 science-related issues showed that sometimes people’s political views are a major influence on their positions on a science issue and sometimes their religious beliefs and practices are a notable influence. Other times, people’s general level of education and their specific level of knowledge about science are influences. We find that some judgments about science are increasingly divided along partisan lines, such as support for federal government spending on scientific research, but also that many science subjects are not swept up by partisan hostilities.
The thing we find most fascinating with regard to all of these issues is that there is no single explanation for why people think the way they do about science. For example, people’s political views matter significantly in their thinking about climate change and energy issues, whereas religion is strongly related to how people think about end-of-life medical issues and people’s views about biomedical advances on the horizon
In science debates, what carries more weight: political ideology or facts?
People’s political orientations appear to serve as an anchoring point for how knowledge influences their attitudes. For example, many in the scientific community believe that if the American public were better informed about the science behind climate change and energy issues, people would hold views more closely aligned with those of scientific experts. But as we found in a 2016 Pew Research Center survey on these issues, how much people know about science has only a modest and inconsistent correlation with their attitudes about climate and energy issues, whereas partisanship is a stronger factor in people’s beliefs. People’s level of science knowledge help to explain their beliefs about climate change to a certain degree, but the relationship is a complicated one.
Do you know how public and/or private bodies take your studies into account?
Even though we do not have a policy agenda driving our work, we want our material to be useful to the policy audiences. So, the starting point is building awareness. In recent years, we have presented our findings to staff at the White House; Congress; multiple federal agencies and advisory bodies, such as the National Academies of Science; a number of prominent scientific societies, and the science journalism communities. Our work is included in the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators report from the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation; it has also been included in at least two studies by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and served as the catalyst for a three-year project on the public face of science by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
What are the latest internet-related issues that you have investigated?
Our two recent reports on cybersecurity focused on how Americans think about cybersecurity issues in their everyday lives and on how much Americans know about cybersecurity issues and concepts. This work extends the research we have done over the last three years about Americans and privacy issues. We have also continued our studies about the future of the internet by examining what experts predict the impact of algorithms will be on human activity in the next decade. We must remember that algorithms are instructions for solving a problem or completing a task that lead to massive amounts of data being created, captured and analyzed by businesses and governments. We have also examined how experts think people and technologists will handle free speech issues in this age of trolls and worries about fake news.
And what are the latest science-related issues that you have investigated?
We released a series of studies assessing public judgments about scientific expertise, consensus and credibility. These surveys gathered parallel measures across three science issues: global climate change; childhood vaccines; and genetically modified foods. This in-depth look at public trust in science stems from questions raised in our earlier surveys comparing the views of the public and those of the scientific community, which showed that on a number of major, controversial issues there were wide opinion gaps between them. The findings raised questions about the reasons behind these wide differences, and many speculated that they reflected a lack of public trust in scientific experts and their research.
And what are the mid- and long-term trends that you would like to explore? Why?
In our technology-related research, we are interested in several developments. One is the emergence of the Internet of Things and how people will incorporate connected devices and appliances into their lives. Of course, that has major implications for privacy and security. Another trend is how people try to navigate this new information ecosystem and how they figure out how to find information they can trust. Yet another issue is what role automation, robotics and Artificial Intelligence play as factors in people’s workplaces and learning experiences.
In our science research, we will continue to explore questions about new developments in biomedical research and how people think about these developments. Our most recent research on this showed that people are quite wary of biomedical advancements used to enhance human abilities, such as gene-editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood substitutes. Many people are concerned about what these enhancements might do to them, their loved ones, and society.
Another area we hope to address in our coming research is how people learn about science issues and the role of education in people’s attitudes towards and understanding of science. We want to better understand public participation in these kinds of activities and how it might shape public thinking.
How are new media changing society?
Information has a different character when it is digitized and courses through networked communications channels. We have documented in our work how digitized, connected communication has, for example, elevated the importance of personal networks and decreased the power and role of the mass media in people’s lives. It has compelled institutions to create new laws and regulations around “information politics” on issues ranging from privacy, to hate speech, to intellectual property ownership. It has enabled people to participate in media culture in ways that were previously impossible and to create new kinds of communities that are organized around every possible connective element of human life. Furthermore, it has added new stresses to life, and has provided new ways for people to torment and wound each other.
In your opinion, how much of the research that you do in the USA can be universalized or extrapolated to other countries/cultures?
This is a core question driving our work at the Pew Research Center. We would love to know more about the extent to which our findings in the U.S. generalize to other countries. All the questions surrounding science research are relevant not just to the U.S. but to societies around the world. With so many technology companies based in the U.S., we often see Americans adopting new technology early, but as more people from other countries use these technologies, their use often evolves in new ways. Our colleagues who study global issues, for instance, have seen that social media adoption in developing countries is much higher among internet users than it is in developed countries. And that people in different countries use social media for different purposes.
One big mystery at the moment is whether the developing world will have a different experience of the changes enabled by the spread of mobile phones, compared with the experience that developed economies went through in the past generation with the wired internet. Some have speculated that the spread of cell phones in developing countries will allow them to “skip a generation” of tech adoption. No one has yet fully documented what that means or suggested how it will unfold in the future.
From a Spanish point of view, one thing that is striking is that you have a “Hispanics” section. Why this specific section and not others?
The United States of America is a country known for its diversity. The Center has studied other key demographic and religious groups in the country including U.S. Muslims and African Americans. We are also looking to better understand the key migration patterns of immigrants in the U.S., in Europe and around the world.
We originally began studying the experience of Hispanics in the U.S. because the number of Hispanics was growing rapidly. Hispanics are, according to a 1976 US Congress law, “Americans who identify themselves as being of Spanish-speaking background and trace their origin or descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America and other Spanish-speaking countries”. This was a particularly useful line of research for the Center to pursue, because their experiences had not been comprehensively studied by other researchers. The number of Hispanics in our country now totals about 57 million adults and children. While the rate of growth has slowed, Hispanics still accounted for about half of the population growth in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014 (54%). Most Hispanics in the USA originally come from Mexico (64%); smaller percentages come from other Latin American countries.
The European Union set a target for the business sector to invest 2% of GDP
in R&D. How is the convergence of Spain and Portugal towards this goal
progressing?
What are the most decisive factors in a country’s research and innovation
systems? You can see the video of the discussion we organised to debate
this issue here.
What is society’s opinion regarding the possible impacts of science and
technology? Establishing citizen participation mechanisms is necessary to
generate confidence and detect points for improvement.
In Spain and Portugal, the proportion of innovative companies, and the
degree to which these collaborate with other companies and organisations,
is below the EU-27 average.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.
“The most important contribution of the arts is giving identity to a country or region”
John W. O’Hagan, Trinity College, Dublín
How can the arts and culture contribute in a way that benefits the public? According to researcher John O’Hagan, the most important contribution made by the arts is giving identity to a country or region, improving social cohesion.
The social benefits resulting from investment are also highly significant, because if the state invests in innovative arts, then the commercial arts also benefit. National prestige and economic repercussions perceived directly or indirectly by different sectors are other benefits stemming from state investment in the arts.
Researcher John O’Hagan also talks about differences in attendance at subsidised art events according to education levels and reflects on whether state funding of the high arts is regressive.
What contributions can the arts make to benefit the public?
The most important contribution is in giving a country or a region identity. So, where would Spain be without Cervantes or Velázquez? I think that’s the most important contribution. And identity brings social cohesion. Spanish people can identify with great works of art and that brings about social cohesion for the country.
What are the social benefits of investing in arts and culture?
There are four major benefits in my opinion. The first is they create a sense of national identity for Spain or Ireland, where I come from. People associate Spain with Cervantes or with Velázquez, when in Ireland we associate Ireland with things that are artistic, so that’s the most important thing: the identity of a country.
But the second thing is the social benefits from investing. If the state invests in innovative arts, then the commercial arts benefit, because the cinema and the commercial theatre need the subsidized sector to bring new ideas and experiment. So, in that sense, the commercial arts sector in Spain depends on the subsidized sector for its success. And the two other benefits, there’s national prestige, so we were talking about soccer earlier today, it’s the same with the arts. If Spain does very well in the arts, then that brings national prestige and benefits for everybody. And, of course, there’s economic benefits. If people are coming to Madrid to see the Prado or to Paris to see the Louvre, there are spin-off benefits for the rest of the economy. So these are all the benefits from the state investing in the arts.
What does the evidence say in relation to the patterns of attendance based on educational level at arts events?
All of the evidence shows that there is a very uneven pattern. So, the more educated people are, the more likely they are to attend the state arts. That’s true, not just in Spain, but in every country in Europe, and it’s been true for at least 60 years; there is a marked variation. As I’ve said, people with low levels of education simply do not attend the “so-called” high arts: the arts that are subsidized by the state.
What are the barriers that are preventing greater access to attendance at the high arts for those with low educational attainment?
Some people talk about the price, and some people talk about that people are afraid to go into the grand opera houses, and so on. But all of the evidence shows that people from lower educational classes are simply not interested. So, even if there’s free entry they will not go. That means that people’s preferences and people with lower educational levels simply have no preference for the state-funded arts.
None?
Well, not none, much less than the people with a higher educational level. One of the arguments is that to appreciate a difficult drama, or a difficult opera, or difficult music you actually need to be a well-educated person. You need the cognitive skills to be able to understand them and that’s why only people with higher education, or so this argument goes, tend to attend the higher arts.
Is it correct to say that public funding of high arts is regressive and diverts money from the poor to the rich?
In my opinion no, because if there are these public benefits… You don’t have to be attending the high arts, but let’s assume that people are coming to Madrid eating in cafés and so on because they go to the Prado - everybody’s benefiting then. Or if the Spanish soccer team is doing well, it’s not just the people who are attending the Spanish football matches, everybody gets a benefit from that… So, I don’t think it’s regressive. It may be slightly regressive, but it’s not regressive if everybody’s benefiting from this sense of belonging, from Spanish achievement.
How does cultural participation contribute to more inclusive societies?
If you take festivals… I was involved in festivals in Ireland - it was an opera festival, and almost nobody in the town would have gone to the main festival. But they were all involved: there was an amateur choir, there were hundreds of people involved in volunteer work at the ticket office, and so on. There was a fantastic sense of community, even though they weren’t attending the actual opera. There were a lot of other fringe events. Spain has a lot of festivals and I think that creates a sense of inclusiveness, provided everybody is included. But that’s not the high arts. The high arts don’t create that sense of inclusiveness, unless over time…I mean Cervantes is a star in Spain now, but at the time nobody would’ve known about him. Or Velázquez only worked for the royal family but every Spanish person now is proud of them, I think, whether they’re poor or rich. Maybe that’s wrong, but I think so.
What are the main differences with respect to other events, such as sports?
Well, sport is very similar to the arts, really. There’s also people with a higher education level who tend to go to sports events more than people with lower educational level. Sports also create a sense of community and a sense of national pride. This is also a different question, but, certainly, in Ireland sports are heavily subsidized by the state. Some of the arguments I was talking about, like prestige, apply to sports just as much to achievement in the arts. So they are very similar, and some people might say, “Sports is even more important, because they’re good for your health”, which the arts may not be, but the profile of an attender is quite similar at both types of activities.
Okay, so you think sports joins more people than arts, but actually it’s more visible.
Yes, definitely, but it’s a commercial activity that doesn’t really need any state support. Spanish music, popular music may unite people, but it doesn’t have these innovative benefits that I’m talking about. Popular Spanish cinema may unite people, but popular Spanish cinema may not do well if they didn’t have the subsidized sector from which talent comes. So… But you’re right, I mean…
Do you think that creativity can be contagious?
Not only do I think it, all of the evidence shows that it is. Most of my work has been looking at composers and visual artists and philosophers where they worked over centuries and it’s incredible…they’ve always worked together. The most important activity was where it happened: Italy, Florence, Rome, Paris. And it’s the same in the software industry today. Creativity is definitely contagious. People say it’s because of tacit knowledge. If you’re working with a group of people that are very creative, you learn from them what you cannot learn through a computer and also there’s competition between you. All of the evidence shows that it is contagious. In other words, it benefits everybody to work together.
How do you think that Economics (the way economists think) contribute to a better understanding of cultural engagement and cultural production?
I think economics can bring a logic. Economics can ask all the questions. You know…Why the Spanish film industry is subsidized? Economics is a way of thinking about that question and answering that question.
It helps you to ask the question and answer the question. So, why subsidize Spanish filmmaking? Economics gives us a framework for thinking about that question. Also, economics asks for evidence. One of the most important things of economics is to say, “What is the evidence for making an argument?” I think in two ways it provides a basis for argument and reasoning, and also economics is very strong on providing evidence.
Which topics do you think could be of interest for young researchers starting their careers in the coming years?
I think probably industrial organization. I’ve just looked at a paper on the film industry, which is part of industry. I think the emphasis should shift away from the high arts to the industrial and creative arts and to the importance of cities, to creative cities for tourism and industry. That means going into a branch of economics, cultural economics, that haven’t been in much… It’s called the industrial organization period and urban economics. I think those are the interesting areas for development. A lot of Spanish people working in the cultural area, economists, now work in that. In some ways, they are leading the way.
Do policy makers and others stakeholders take into account the research produced by universities and research centres?
They do if we try to take account of politics. Economists very often come up with solutions, but they’re politically impossible. One of the issues today would be immigration in Europe. There’s no point in coming up with a solution unless it can be politically acceptable and get through the Spanish Parliament or the Italian Parliament. I think economists and researchers are listened to, provided they take into account the reality of politics. I always tell my students, “You cannot study economics separate from politics.” The politics and economics of Spain or Ireland, where I come from, are inextricably linked. But once we recognize that, then I think that we can contribute.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Spain stands at the head of the countries of the EU-27 in the global
computation of digital society indicators (connectivity, Internet use,
etc). Portugal, however, is situated at the tail end.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
“You must not measure everybody using the same set of criteria”
Paul Wouters is Professor of Scientometrics and director of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. He specialises in the development of evaluation systems and how these systems are creating new constraints for the development of knowledge. We met him on the occasion of a symposium on “New Models of Research Evaluation”, organised by the University of Barcelona and the Open University of Catalonia.
Why is it important to measure and evaluate science?
A lot of researchers are asking this question, because they are finding they have to spend more and more time on evaluation, and this takes time away from their primary interest: research and projects. I think there are some good reasons for paying attention to it.
One is that old accountability styles (knowing people locally or knowing people in your profession) don’t work anymore. Everything has become distributed and globalized. This means that no single individual can oversee the field anymore. You need a more advanced way of assessing where you are in your own development.
The second reason is also related with accountability: science should explain to the public what it is doing because it is basically funded by public money. In addition, the way people live their lives is strongly influenced by research: communication, media, healthcare... So we can see that research is becoming a very important resource for society as a whole.
And the third reason is perhaps a more positive one: if you use evaluation in a formative sense, then it is actually helpful for you as a researcher. We call it formative because is meant to detect where your strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can develop. If people are not performing well, this should be said, but a formative assessment is meant to make sure that you improve. The problem is that institutions want summative assessments: “Was my money spent well enough? Why is my university sliding down in the rankings?” They tend to look back, but the main energy should be spent on looking forward and using evaluation in this creative way.
Could you explain what the “Leiden Manifesto” is?
The Leiden Manifesto was published in 2015 in Nature. It was an initiative created at a scientometrics community conference. We discussed which indicators we have to use, especially at the level of individual researchers’ assessments. We decided that we wanted to give a voice to the concerns that many researchers have.
The Manifesto has ten principles, but they could be summarized in two main ideas. One idea is that indicators should always support a judgement and not replace it. The second idea is that you must not measure everybody using the same set of criteria. If you do an evaluation, you start with the mission of the research group that you are evaluating and then the rest follows. For example, a clinical research group is very different from a group that studies traffic in Barcelona.
How do we currently measure the impact of science? What indicators are normally used?
At the moment the most popular indicators are the journals impact factor and the h-index (for individual researchers or group Principal Investigators). Another important indicator is the share of your articles, whether they are highly cited and your position in the top 10 percent or in the top 1 percent; this is perhaps best used at the level of departments. Another indicator is the amount of external funds that you can attract. On the universities level, the position in the global university rankings is very popular. All universities are anxiously checking where they are in every ranking. I find it a little strange, but these are the more popular indicators.
How do we measure or capture the quality of research? Is there any problem with these measurements?
In my field, the consensus is that the best way to do this is by informed peer review, where you make a combination between quantitative indicators, citation indicators and your own judgement about the quality of the proposal. In bibliometrics, some people claim that the number of citations is equal to quality, but we don’t believe that. Citations measure feasibility and short-term impact, rather than quality, which requires a more multidimensional approach.
The difficulty with indicators is that they do not measure quality directly: you can only measure a very small set of dimensions of scientific performance. There are two key problems. One is that peer reviews tend to be conservative, because they are based on the current state of expertise. The other problem is with citation rates, because these are based on past performance. So, what we try to do with the scientific system is a mix between peer review and evidence-based indicators, but you can then find yourself with the problem that a proposal is too wild or too radical to be appreciated by peers, or that things like creativity or a good research question are not measured.
How do we detect science that is relevant from a societal point of view?
There is no general answer for that. You really need a case-study approach and in that approach you can incorporate very particular indicators and databases. Impact has to be defined specifically even if the discipline is too general.
For example, we have a project on the impact of research into heart conditions, and it is funded by the Dutch Heart Foundation. There, we look at the impact in professional clinical journals, the impact on healthcare arrangements, on hospital practices and on medical treatments. But we also have a project with a research group in theology. Here what you talk about is very different: you speak about the way problems are discussed in newspapers or the way they influence the general discourse about, for example, the meaning of life.
Can metrics change the way research is conducted? How?
Yes, there are two main mechanisms: through funding and careers. I know several people whose research area was no longer funded because it was no longer seen as interesting by the funding agencies. For example, at universities in the Netherlands, economists have been fired from economics departments because they were not publishing in economics journals, so they moved to sociology or to law and then did economic research in law or sociology. Assessment can have an enormous influence on the short-term way that research is done.
In the long term it also has an influence. It shapes the definition, for people who are being trained and educated, of what a researcher is. The new generation of researchers are entering a system in which these indicators are very important, they know nothing else. For them this is normal practice. That creates the problem that they no longer see research as an aim to solve a particular problem, but as a career device based on publishing in a high-impact journal. Then you are actually corrupting the scientific system, you are damaging the very core meaning of why we have the scientific system.
Can indicators change the definition of excellent science?
Yes, actually indicators do this. In the past, excellent science was always recognized by its leading experts. Nowadays excellent science is defined as being published in top journals. In the future it will be changing again, because this journal impact factor is not the best way to assess quality. In the long term, you would want to recognise which piece of knowledge has a big impact on the structure of our knowledge. But we only know that after twenty years, so it is difficult to predict.
This is also why we are so interested in this problem of evaluation. The way you create the indicators influences the definition of the original activity that you wanted to measure, and it changes that activity. So you have a kind of feedback loop.
Open science represents an innovation in the way research is conducted: why is this approach relevant in today’s society?
That is also a question researchers face, because sometimes they see that open science is rather like evaluation, that it is been imposed upon them. They think “What’s the problem? I’m doing well!”.
I think opening up the process of knowledge creation is more fitting in a society where lots of citizens are also well educated and can say something useful for researchers. There is no reason anymore to keep it closed: science could become more like a platform on which people can interact with each other. This way you decrease the capital cost involved in entering the scientific enterprise, and that can only be good. This can also accelerate innovation.
How should evaluation change if we shift from current procedures to open science?
Evaluation and peer review systems should also become more transparent and open. It makes sense to have peer reviewers to be responsible for their job, to be accountable. An important element is to include stakeholders and users of knowledge in the process of evaluation. For example, we participate in an experiment at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, at a medical hospital, to include patients in the assessment of research. This is a first step: I think it should not be limited to patients.
What is the “altmetrics” movement about? In which sense are these metrics an alternative?
Altmetrics are measures of communication and social media processes, we do not consider them as a substitute of traditional quality or impact indicators. This is measuring something different from scientific performance in scientific publications. For example, if your publication is tweeted a lot, it may mean very different things. It certainly means there is a lot of communication going on about your article, that you are able to engage people. You can’t say tweeting is about societal impact, or Facebooking is about friends, because it can be very different in each case: it does not always mean quality or a long-term impact.
It should be the context of a particular evaluation that defines how you want to use indicators every time. There is no general formula: indicators are only the last part of the story, so they should not be leading the research you do.
The European Union set a target for the business sector to invest 2% of GDP
in R&D. How is the convergence of Spain and Portugal towards this goal
progressing?
What are the most decisive factors in a country’s research and innovation
systems? You can see the video of the discussion we organised to debate
this issue here.
What is society’s opinion regarding the possible impacts of science and
technology? Establishing citizen participation mechanisms is necessary to
generate confidence and detect points for improvement.
In Spain and Portugal, the proportion of innovative companies, and the
degree to which these collaborate with other companies and organisations,
is below the EU-27 average.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.
“Culture belongs to the upper classes. It is hard to attract families with lower education levels”
Françoise Benhamou, professor of Economics of the University of Paris-13, and specialist in the field of the economics of culture
Françoise Benhamou is an economist, university lecturer in social and economic sciences and a columnist in several French publications. She collaborates with numerous public and private organisations related with the economy and culture, including the Managing Board of the Louvre Museum and the Regulatory Authority of Electronic Communications and Publications (ARCEP) in France. She was advisor to French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, and has published several books on her main area of research: the economics of culture.
How has the emergence of new technologies helped redefine the notions we held previously on the democratisation of culture and cultural diversity?
One of the greatest challenges we face is trying to understand how cultural consumption has changed with the emergence of new technologies. In France we have invested an enormous amount of money in developing programmes focused on attracting new audiences in the cultural sphere.
But on analysing the statistics we suffered a major disappointment. Although it is true that cultural consumption is very broad, if you observe the data in detail, you realise that the profile of users is not very diverse. For example, most of the audience have university qualifications, and while not necessarily rich people, for the main part they do belong to the middle and upper classes.
And is reversing that tendency complicated?
It’s very difficult. For six years I have been a member of the Managing Board of the Louvre, the world’s largest museum. We receive between 8 and 9 million visitors per year, but leaving aside school visits, the audience is very homogenous.
So we are asking ourselves: How can new technologies help us to tackle this challenge? My answer is that they can help solve a part of the problem, although not completely.
The Louvre recently opened its doors for the recording of a video clip by Beyoncé and Jaz-Z. Is this an example of the type of proposals that might help to expand and diversify access to culture?
Exactly. Over seven million people saw the video during the first 24 hours following it being posted on YouTube – today it has over 100 million views. The large majority of this audience is people who would never come to the Louvre. But through the video they have been able to visit, even if only virtually, a part of the Museum. Many people have seen for the first time masterpieces such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci or The Wedding Feast at Caná by Veronese, as well as discover the majestic staircase of the Louvre or the famous pyramid designed by architect I. M. Pei.
Subsequently, we had the idea of organising a guided tour around the Museum which tours the 17 works that appear in the video clip. It is working very well and attracting new audiences. Obviously, these experiments don’t solve the entire problem, but they are changing things a little.
So, do you believe that the use of new technologies can help to bring culture closer to the newer generations?
Undoubtedly. It is very interesting to use new technologies to expand the cultural audience. We have to learn how to use videogames or tablets in an effective and educational way. We need people to feel that culture is closer and more accessible.
For example, by using videogames on school visits to museums; or offering the option to do the visit with a tablet so that people can explore information on the cultural contents they are visiting. It is very important to convey the message that culture is not for the elites, but for everyone.
What initiatives have been implemented by the public or private sector in France to attract new audiences towards art and culture?
Cheaper admission prices have been introduced for museums and shows, as well as longer opening times and cultural heritage days.
From the application of these initiatives to date, I would extract three conclusions: Firstly, that if it is already difficult to attract families with lower levels of education and unaccustomed by their family environment to visiting cultural places, it is even more difficult to get them to return: the great challenge is converting the first-time visitor into a faithful user.
Secondly, price plays only a marginal role: free-of-charge museums have not served to change to profile of visitors.
Thirdly, the initiatives carried out by schools are crucial. I am not referring only to school visits, but to introducing the learning of the arts through participation by artists or writers in school activities.
What types of cultural projects have been successful and what conclusions can be drawn from those initiatives that have not caught on?
The greatest difficulty for promoting these policies is their cost. The budgets allocated to expanding the number of visitors to theatres, museums or historical monuments are mainly fuelled by governmental or local subsidies, which usually suffer cuts.
Some regions and cities offer “culture cheques” which enable young people to access cultural attractions. The French government is preparing the launch of a 500-euro Cultural Pass for people reaching their 18th birthday. Through a smartphone app, they will have access to museums, historical monuments, shows, concerts and cinema, as well as being able to buy books and music. It is a model that has already been tested in Italy, but it is very controversial due to its low efficiency.
Here too the project is highly disputed because of its cost (500 million euros), because of the unexpected effects it may have (young people willing to pay would benefit free of charge) and the doubts about its efficiency in relation to the democratisation of culture: many believe that only young people who are already interested in culture will take advantage of it.
“Online music platforms must pay for the whole value chain lying behind artistic creation”
You have written that with the arrival of the Internet, we consume culture in a more individualised way. Is this positive, negative or simply a sign of the times that we must adapt to?
Philosopher Bernard Stiegler says that with the Internet, we have the poison and the remedy at the same time. And the same thing happens with cultural consumption. Thanks to the new technologies, for example, people watch films from their computer. It is not the same socialisation experience as going out to the cinema, not to mention the problem of piracy… But at the same time it opens up new pathways for culture. They are complementary experiences.
The Internet is no substitute for the physical experience of consuming culture, but it is a new pathway for discovering works of art, monuments or even books.
And what does it mean for the artists? With new technologies, the creators of art have found not only a new way of expressing themselves, but also a channel of unlimited reach for distributing their work.
In part yes, but it is an ambivalent question. On the one hand, the artist can show his or her work to a very broad audience. But only in theory, because on the Internet there are millions of pages, and the fact that something is published does not necessarily mean that anyone will see it. It continues to be intermediaries who direct the audience towards a work of art.
In the case of music, online self-production platforms help record labels to discover who is innovating, who is proposing new sounds and new tendencies.
But on the other hand there is also the question of remuneration for artists. And here is where the ambivalence lies. The Internet created a major tsunami in the music industry. It meant the loss of half of its income. Now, with streaming, people are buying music again. But artists earn very little money with business models like Spotify. So despite increasing numbers of people listening to music, the artist cannot make a living from it… and that is a very serious problem.
How do you believe that the public sector can help find solutions to the problem of making culture economically sustainable for the artists?
In the case of music, the question is that platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, etc. belong to private companies. So I would say that where work needs to be done is in regulating these business models. Public policies should promote an agreement between the artists and these companies.
The key is that these platforms should pay for the entire value chain that lies behind artistic creation, from the creator to the record label; and secondly, of course, it is necessary to continue fighting against piracy.
When you talk about the monetisation of culture, are you referring exclusively to the remuneration of artists or is it a broader concept?
It implies many aspects, of course. The question of the pay of creators and artists is one of the main ones, but the problem of the monetisation of culture is much broader.
In France, for example, there is an intense debate on the monetisation of cultural heritage. It is currently a very important question on the agenda for the current French Minister of Culture. The question is that it is very expensive to preserve and open historical monuments to the public. Even though the State is the owner or manager of that heritage, it cannot assume the entire cost that its maintenance represents, so we have to think about alternatives.
The solution to conserving cultural heritage must involve a combination of public and private funding. We have decided to add new forms of funding cultural heritage: not only hiring out venues, or offering marketing products, but also devoting part of the income from the National Lottery to the maintenance of cultural heritage.
“The key for developing the market for digital products is finding the right price”
Digital natives may think that culture is free, as they have had a large cultural offering available to them on the Internet for as long as they can remember.
This is a fundamental issue that we still haven’t solved. But I believe that the public is starting to understand, that if they consume culture free of charge, somebody is paying for it for them: it may be advertising, it may be that the quality of what they consume is decreasing; or it may be that artists are not being suitably paid for their works.
However, we are starting to find solutions. For example, the case of streaming. Two or three years ago, people – especially young people – believed that they could listen to music without paying anything. But now, the money that Spotify or Deezer request for subscription to their services corresponds with what users are prepared to pay.
I think that the problem of cultural contents being free of charge is that for a long time, the people in charge of culture set prices too high. And the public was not prepared to pay them. Another example: e-books. Publishers set prices too high because they didn’t want the e-books market to swallow the traditional publishing market. And the consequence was, firstly, the emergence of piracy; and secondly, that the e-books market did not evolve.
So the key to developing the market for digital products is to find the right price.
“Before educating children so that they learn how to use the Internet, we need to educate their parents and teachers”
Perhaps parents or teachers should educate young people to understand that there is a large human and industrial chain behind every piece of cultural content…
The education of children is very important, obviously. But I believe we have a problem with the parents too. We should educate the parents first. And also the teachers.
It is a very complicated problem to resolve because all of this is relatively new. It is logical to think that teachers must educate their pupils in the use of the Internet, but what happens is that the teachers themselves are not always well informed about the way in which online consumption is organised.
I think, on the one hand, that there should be a research programme; but also, on the other, a programme for the entire education sector that helps to reflect on how we should teach students to interact with the Internet. First of all, it is necessary to train the teachers, and after that, the students.
We need to ask students: when a teacher gives you homework or asks you a question, do you go directly to Wikipedia? And when you get the answer from Wikipedia, is it enough or should you consult other information sources?
It is also necessary to bear in mind the question of intellectual property rights. Kids (and their parents too) should know that when they copy something from Wikipedia, the sources are not always mentioned or it is not always possible to know if the sources are reliable or not.
It is not easy to understand this, nor to learn to manage the information that we receive from so many different sources. It is the same problem as the one raised by fake news.
It is an ethical, political and economic question.
What do you believe can be done, through public or private initiatives, to make culture more accessible for groups at risk of social exclusion, whether for geographical, economic or cultural reasons?
What is happening in France is very interesting in this sense. There is a model of cultural promotion that is being developed at this moment in time, the result of collaboration between the public and private sector.
A very symptomatic case is occurring in the field of museums and private foundations. It is important to take into consideration that private foundations that work in the promotion of culture, like "la Caixa” in Spain, are not very common in France. It is very under-developed field.
But today things are starting to be done differently. We have found a new way for the public and private sector to collaborate. A paradigmatic example is that of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, but there are also other examples outside of the capital, such as the Leclerc Foundation, in Brittainy, or the Carmignac Foundation, in Ile de Porquerolles, in the south of France.
These foundations open up their artwork exhibitions to an audience of tourists who do not necessarily have a very high educational level. I think that the public sector should imitate these practices, and in fact I think that has already learned how to do certain things. These are practices that perhaps can open up a door to diversity.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Digital identity, the power of algorithms, social construction from behind
the screen… We reflect on the digital revolution and the major impact it
has had on our lives.
Digital identity, the power of algorithms, social construction from behind
the screen… We reflect on the digital revolution and the major impact it
has had on our lives.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
"When at-risk youths come into contact with the arts, their academic achievement and their civic and social engagement improve"
Sunil Iyengar, Office of Research & Analysis Director at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Sunil Iyengar directs the Office of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the federal agency responsible for promoting the arts in the United States. Under his leadership and strategic vision, this organisation has produced dozens of research reports aimed at showing the impact that participation in the arts has on societies’ economic development and people’s health and well-being. Prior to joining the NEA, Sunil Iyengar worked as a reporter and editor for a host of scientific publications. He also writes poems and book reviews.
Have you found any evidence of the value of cultural activities to social integration or to the reduction of inequalities, especially among sectors of the population that do not have easy access to culture?
Equality of access to culture is a fundamental aspect of our work. In our strategic plan, we have placed a lot of emphasis on ensuring that all Americans are able to benefit from engagement in the arts, regardless of the community they belong to or the part of the country they come from. And that is the unique strength of the NEA.
One of the goals of our research projects is precisely to understand how we can close the gaps in access to the arts. It is vital to our work to understand what routes of access to culture can be improved and which ones cannot, and to inform our political leaders accordingly. Our projects try to make the arts attractive to people and, among other things, they enable us to decide who we award grants to, which is part of our work.
We therefore need to take great care in our assessments, since we are obliged to produce annual performance reports and meet the requirements of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Nevertheless, and despite being a relatively small federal agency, I believe we manage to have considerable impact because of our ability to reach Americans from the most disadvantaged backgrounds through the arts. The arts projects benefiting from NEA funds are spread across the country, in urban and rural areas alike, and they are aimed at each and every demographic group.
From the research that the NEA has conducted and the programmes it has implemented, can any conclusions be drawn about how the arts are able to help at-risk groups and, in particular, younger people?
Indeed they can. We have found that social equality can be promoted through the arts. The most effective way of doing this is through an arts education. Our analysis to control for the structural socio-economic differences existing in our society show that the gap between rich and poor tends to narrow when adolescents have been in contact with the arts from a young age.
The rates of improvement among at-risk individuals or groups who are aware of and participate in the arts are very significant in every aspect. That is, when youths from less advantaged communities are in contact with the arts, either at school or through extracurricular activities, the differences between them and youths belonging to a higher socio-economic status decrease in the short or medium term with regard to both academic achievement and civic and social engagement.
However, previously at-risk youths may not manage to get better test results than those obtained by children with a higher socio-economic status. But at least they are much closer than they would have been if they had not taken part in arts-based activities.
Bringing the arts to Americans from the most disadvantaged backgrounds helps to promote social equality
That is, at-risk youths get better grades and adapt better to society when they experiment with the arts.
Exactly. Within the same socio-economic group, there is a very solid correlation between academic performance and life conditions in the medium term among children who have had intense arts-related experiences compared to those who have never had any contact with the arts.
At-risk youths who have come into contact with the arts tend to do better at school and beyond than children on the same socio-economic level who do not participate in arts-based activities. The same thing happens with children from a higher social class, but the difference is not as big. That is, the greater the risk of social exclusion, the greater the benefit from participating in the arts.
So, we have a reasonable belief that the arts can help to level the playing field, especially for youths and children. Many of them have often not had the opportunity to access culture. But when we do give them such opportunities, they seem to act as catalysts for them to get more involved in academic life and become integrated into a social and economic group.
How can the benefits of the arts be measured socially and emotionally, or on people’s health? Can you give an example from specific programmes?
We do a lot of work, for example, with the U.S. Department of Defense. We try to understand how the arts can help heal the physical and emotional injuries of military personnel who have taken part in armed conflict. Arts therapies (music, dance and visual art) have been applied in these programmes. Such therapies, in the very early stages, have proven highly beneficial to patients, who are mainly war wounded. This is one of the ways we have been able to research and measure the value of the arts in other contexts.
How do you think new technologies, especially smartphones, social media and video games have affected youths as regards the consumption of the arts or access to them?
That is a very important question, and we are paying particular attention to it in the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a regular report we do for the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to the latest data available to us, from a study conducted in 2012, between 81 and 83% of adults participate in some type of arts-related experience via electronic or digital media. It is a high percentage compared to the one for those who have visited an art gallery or attended a performing arts show.
So, in short, a high proportion of the population – youths for sure, but also older adults – participates in the arts via their smartphones and tablets. And these statistics will almost certainly be higher in the results from the next survey.
In a society as heterogeneous as the American one, are their differences in participation in the arts by the individuals’ cultural origin and social class?
One of the most significant results we obtained from our studies was precisely the high participation of demographically very diverse groups in artistic creation using these electronic media. For example, African Americans, Hispanic or Latino Americans, and Americans of Asian origin are more likely to create music or digital art with electronic digital media.
And that is great, because it enables them to empower themselves and become engaged in artistic creation at a much higher level than we have seen in the past.
As a consequence of these data, our agency is determined to allocate more funds and grants to the development of digital art projects across the country. Our director of media arts, Jax Deluca, is committed to fostering the cultural participation of the country’s diverse communities via these media because she considers it to be the best way of delivering services to the people.
Artistic and creative skills can help to improve learning in science disciplines
In Spain, the school dropout rate is high at very young ages. Do you think the arts could act as a way of redirecting these people towards the labour market?
That is a very relevant topic that we are also studying in depth. In 2017, we produced a report (The Arts and Dropout Prevention: The Power to Engage) about the importance of engaging in the arts as a means of successfully integrating into society. And we reached the conclusion that such engagement in the arts not only contributes to children’s growth, to improvements in people’s socio-economic situations or to individuals’ health and well-being, but is also an effective way of facilitating access to the labour market.
In these reports, firms and employers often tell us that the skills they are looking for in new graduates are precisely those that an arts education provides: creativity, critical thinking, communication skills and cross-disciplinary thinking. All these competencies are acquired by studying and practising the arts.
What I think this suggests is that we have a unique opportunity to include participation in the arts as a fundamental part of the education system. This would mean a shift from the STEM model (the science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning methodology already used in many education systems such as those in the United States, the United Kingdom and Finland, among others) to the STEAM model. By adding the A, which refers to the arts, it means that artistic and creative skills can help to improve learning in the scientific disciplines.
So what type of artistic skills is applicable to science studies?
It is important to stress that it is not a matter of adding the arts as a complementary area of knowledge, but rather of integrating them into this educational model to foster creativity, innovation and design, for example.
There is evidence showing that such collaboration among disciplines works and is useful for educating people who aspire to enter the labour market. This year, we have collaborated on a study led by the National Academy of Sciences: Branches from the Same Tree, which explains how the arts can improve learning outcomes in higher education, as well as professional success.
And this operates in both directions: by integrating the arts into practical science studies, and by integrating science, technology and engineering into the arts.
The NEA’s mission is to promote arts-based activitiesto facilitate individual progress, as well as the social and economic progress of the country. How does this vision align with the notion of “art for art’s sake”, that is, the idea that artists lead lives that are “Bohemian” or on the fringes of arts institutions?
Our mission is to pay attention to the entire value chain of the arts, strengthening the creative capacity of our communities at every stage: from those that understand art as a value in its own right – those devoted to art simply for “the love of art” – to those that give it an economic value. The conception of art as a channel for educating society is, of course, included within that.
Achieving true integration between how art is produced – whatever form it might take – and the way in which the importance of the arts is communicated is, therefore, among our objectives.
The main task of the NEA’s Office of Research & Analysis is to conduct research into the social benefits of the arts. It should be borne in mind that we depend on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. We are therefore accountable for many concrete aspects, such as measuring the added value that the arts bring to the country’s gross domestic product.
Participation in the arts is an effective way of facilitating access to the labour market
When a youth decides to devote him or herself to the arts as a career, his or her parents’ reaction is usually to try to talk him or her out of it: “It’s badly paid”, “You won’t be successful”, “It’s a tough path”, “Do it in your spare time but look for a serious job”, etc. What would you say to these people?
Yes, this is a classic reaction… but the fact is that it is now happening much less often because many of those preconceptions no longer reflect the reality of the situation as it stands today. We have also addressed this; one of the reports we have produced on the trends and conditions affecting American artists (Creativity Connects) concludes that being an artist is not a linear path.
Careers in the arts are changing. The resources and opportunities available to artists are on the up. It should be borne in mind that people who do devote themselves to the arts often have other careers. Most artists combine the arts with another type of occupation. In addition, the skills that the arts give you can be useful in many other areas: in management, communication and marketing, and in many other fields. Even the sciences, as we said earlier.
In short, people with an arts education can use their competencies in conjunction with other skills, thus becoming more attractive for the labour market. As a result, they can make contributions to other sectors while developing their artistic careers. This is what being a 21st-century artist means.
Furthermore, schools for the different arts disciplines (those that train musicians, dancers, actors, etc.) incorporate personal finance, business strategies and many other subjects into their study programmes. An arts education is not limited to learning and practising a specific speciality. Instead, it provides students with an integral education to develop other competencies that can help them in their personal lives.
The Social Observatory of the ”la Caixa” Foundation has announced a call to
support research projects on the social reality of young people in Spain,
using quantitative survey data in social sciences.
While women continue to opt for more socially-oriented courses, this report
points out that the occupations most necessary in 2030 will be those linked
to the digital economy.
What future lies ahead for millennials? We will be discussing this question
with Fabrizio Bernardi, Professor of Sociology at the European University
Institute. From 29 November to 1 December, at CaixaForum Madrid. Event
language: Spanish.
Is the Learning and Performance Improvement Programme (PMAR) effective for
the prevention of early school leaving? According to this study,
participating in the PMAR increases the probability of obtaining an ESO
qualification by 12%.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
“Fair society, healthy lives”
Michael Marmot, Director of the Institute of Health Equityof of the University College London (UCL)
Based on your policy work, what mechanisms connect social inequalities and health outcomes? What role can early child development play in reducing health inequalities based on social class?
Our WHO Commission Report on Social Determinants of Health says that inequalities in health arise from the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. Inequities in power, money and resources give rise to these inequities in the conditions of daily life. Our approach was to look at the conditions of daily life through the life course. But we also looked at the drivers of these inequities in power, money and resources. I would not look at early child development without also looking at the social and economic policies relating to inequalities in early child development. What inequalities in early child development lead to in terms of inequalities in education, job type, income, place of residence.
Evidence across Europe appears to show that countries that spend more generously on benefits and welfare have better health outcomes and narrower inequalities. These countries also offer better employment conditions, so what implications must this have with regards to future work on health inequalities?
My starting position is: inequalities in health between social groups, that are judged to be avoidable by reasonable means and are not avoided, are unfair, hence inequitable. So the question is: what can societies do? And the evidence suggests: a great deal. At the societal level, they can be generous in welfare spending, for example. What we see across Europe is, the more generous the welfare spending, the better the health outcomes, and the narrower the health inequalities, as a general rule. It’s difficult to say if this is cause and effect, because many other things may have an influence. Many people think that if unemployment benefits are too generous, people won’t want to work. However, that’s not what the evidence shows. It shows that countries with more generous unemployment benefits actually have lower rates of unemployment.
One of your social policy recommendations is to adopt a living wage to release people from poverty, a measure you see as a significant factor for improving health outcomes. Can you give us evidence that the living wage helps eradicate or reduce inequalities?
The evidence for a living wage is indirect but quite powerful. A question I have struggled with for a long time relates to absolute inequalities and relative inequalities. In Western Europe, in the European Community, nobody really has lack of shelter or not enough calories to eat, so in that sense, absolute deprivation has been tackled. However, people on low incomes need to go to food banks to feed their children. So they can bring home calories, but there is a threat to dignity.
In Britain, for example, most housing benefit goes to people who are in work but are not paid enough to cover the private rental, so they need housing subsidies. This is somewhere in between absolute and relative inequalities. It’s absolute because you don’t have enough money to live, but relative in that it’s not the destitution seen in low-income countries. It’s a threat to dignity and self-esteem. It threatens what you can give your children, or how you relate to your family, things which are vitally important. In Britain, for example, over the next five years, the family type that will have an income furthest below the minimum income threshold which is needed for healthy living is a single mother with children, followed by two parents with two children. So single people with no children will get closest to the threshold, but families with children and particularly single mothers will be the furthest below it. Predictably there will be families with children who won’t have enough for a healthy life. Indirect evidence shows that this will damage their health, starting with the quality of early child development, then quality of food, how you relate to people, and so on.
You also recommend addressing avoidable mortality in relation to wealth. In “Fair Society, Healthy Lives”, the so-called Marmot Review of 2010, the study found that people living in the poorest neighbourhoods will, on average, die seven years earlier than people in the richest neighbourhoods in Great Britain. Can you elaborate on that and assess the problems of European governments in recent years with regard to the Marmot Review?
One of my key insights is that health inequalities are not confined to “poor health for the poor and good health for everybody else”, but follow a gradient. Our data classifies every neighbourhood in England by degree of deprivation. The more affluent the neighbourhood, the longer people’s life expectancy. The gap between the 5th centile and the 95th centile stood at seven years.
Inequalities in health refer not just to length of life but to quality of life, where the inequalities are even greater. We see this gradient phenomenon – the higher you are, the better your health, the lower you are the worse your health – right across Europe, without question, but with varying magnitude.
If you look by education, the difference between people with a university education and those with only primary education is quite small: in Sweden and also Norway, Italy, Malta. But if you go east, to Estonia, Hungary, Rumania or Bulgaria, with a lower average and a steep gradient, there is a huge gap between the same two groups. There will always be inequalities in society, and inequalities in health will follow social inequalities, but the magnitude can change, and it can change between societies. This should be encouraging: it suggests that there are things we can do to address the situation.
The European region has seen remarkable health gains in populations, after experiencing progressive improvements in the conditions in which people are born, grown, live and work. Spain is an example. But curiously, inequalities persist. What factors do you think determine the persistence of those inequalities? And, what would your recommendations be?
In my English review, the so-called Marmot Review, there were six domains of recommendations, which feature in our European Review as well: Early child development; Education and lifelong learning; Employment and working conditions. The fourth, as already mentioned, is: Everyone should have the minimum income necessary for a healthy life. The fifth is: Healthy and sustainable places in which to live and work. And the sixth is: Taking a social determinants approach to prevention. So instead of just saying: “Don’t smoke”, you deal with the drivers of why there’s a social gradient in smoking. You don’t just say “Don’t eat so much” or “Don’t be fat” but you deal with the fact that obesity follows the social gradient. Looking internationally, I would also add the inequities in power, money and resources that give rise to inequities in these six conditions of daily life. So I believe there is a great deal we can do.
In your research you distinguish between global, country-level and local-level actions to diminish health inequalities. Can you provide some specific examples of these different policies at different levels of government?
One example is the English city of Coventry. Its leaders have declared it a Marmot City. They took my six recommendations and said: “In Coventry, we are going to do it.” That action was taken by the local government, not the health authorities, and that’s good. But we need national action too. Let me illustrate that with early childhood. There is quite clear evidence that parenting makes a difference to the quality of early child development. Input from parents: cuddling, talking, singing, playing... all of these things matter. Children who get more of these things develop better cognitively, linguistically, socially, emotionally and behaviourally. Their social conditions are partly affected by local policy: whether local government has policies for housing. Does it make good housing available, particularly for families with young children? But they are also affected by national policy. We did a comparison of child poverty in different countries, in which child poverty is a relative measure: less than 60% of median income, before and after transfers. It showed dramatic differences. Sweden, for example, has a child poverty level, before taxes and transfers, of about 32%, not very different from Latvia. After taxes and transfers, Sweden’s child poverty drops from 32% to 12%. Latvia’s only drops from 32% to 25%. In other words, Sweden is saying it doesn’t want child poverty, that it’s a bad thing, and that it will use its tax and benefits system to reduce it.
To reduce health inequalities it would be necessary to focus on six types of policies:
1. Provide all children with better starting conditions.
2. Allow all children, young people and adults to maximise their capabilities and control their own lives.
3. Create a fair labour framework and offer the whole population quality employment.
4. Guarantee a healthy standard of living for everyone.
5. Create and develop healthy and sustainable environments and communities.
6. Promote health prevention and consolidate its achievements.
Marmot Review of 2010
In terms of the household level: What would be the main features of a type of good parenting that could influence health outcomes for children?
Good parenting involves, of course, the supply of nutrition and stability first of all. But it involves two things in my opinion: the presence of the good and the absence of the bad. And they are different. What do I mean? I described good parenting in terms of reading to children, talking to children, cuddling children, singing, playing, talking... basically input. Loving, and all the things that go with loving. Regrettably, we find that this tends to follow the social gradient. The lower people’s income, the less likely they are to do all these good parenting things and, I would say, at least partly, because of the pressures upon them. The other part of good parenting is the absence of the bad. A body of evidence exists about adverse child experiences. They take various forms, including physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse and family disruption.
What do you think will be the short-term and long-term effects of the economic crisis on health? Can we prevent them? How are different socioeconomic groups affected?
The short-term effects that we see relate to mental illness and suicide. Data across Europe show that, on average, a 3% rise in unemployment is associated with a 3% rise in suicides if there is no expenditure on social protection in the country. However, the more generous a country’s expenditure on social protection, the less the rise in suicides. So in Western Europe, where countries are quite generous in terms of social protection, a 3% rise in unemployment is a less than 1% rise in suicide, whereas in countries of Central and Eastern Europe, it is closer to a 2-3% rise in suicide. When the economy turns down, unemployment doesn’t strike at random: the more years of education people have, the less likely they are to become unemployed, and vice versa. Looking at the indignados on the streets of Madrid and with over 50% youth unemployment – which may include hidden employment, the grey economy, etc., but still reflects high levels of youth unemployment – I would say they are right to be indignant and angry, because the implied promise of: “work hard, study, and then you’ll have a job and good conditions”, has been broken.
How should the health agenda and the economic and social agenda work together in Europe?
My argument is that the magnitude of health inequalities tells us a great deal about how we are doing as a society. Look at the changes in Spain. It went from being a rather primitive fascist country to a liberal democracy, despite its ups and downs. It reduced poverty and improved conditions, and health improved. Those improvements in health told us a great deal about what was going on socially. On the other side of Europe, in the communist countries, health is doing very badly. With the collapse of communism, there has been a mixed picture. Countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland have had dramatic improvements in health but also an increase in inequalities. The former Soviet Union has not done so well. It’s had a very rocky health trajectory, but I think that’s partly because of social breakdown. Instead of replacing communism with something that functioned well, they replaced it with something rather dysfunctional. So social improvement and health improvement go hand in hand. We don’t just need investment in the health care sector, but also in education, social protection, early child development: they are all vital. Look at climate change. There is good reason to believe that environmental impacts affect social groups differentially. With climate change, mitigation and adaptation, if not done carefully, will increase inequalities. We must take that route, but we should always bear in mind the equity dimension.
Interview by Joan Costa-i-Font, Associate Professor of Political Economy
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
What impact has the economic crisis caused by covid-19 had on wage
inequality? Have public subsidies been sufficient? We analyse which groups
have been most affected.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Spain stands at the head of the countries of the EU-27 in the global
computation of digital society indicators (connectivity, Internet use,
etc). Portugal, however, is situated at the tail end.
Some 29% of Spaniards have a social position above that of their parents,
and over 40% believe they have risen above their grandparents on the social
ladder.
The fertility rate in Spain is 1.23 children per woman, the second lowest
rate among European Union countries.
«Science was never intended to be in the market, but today it’s a commodity»
Andrea Saltelli, researcher at the University of Bergen and at ICTA (Autonomous University of Barcelona - UAB)
Andrea Saltelli (Italy, 1953) is adjunct professor at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen (Norway) and guest researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Together with philosopher Silvio Funtowicz he has recently written a series of pieces on the post-truth debate.
Everybody is talking about a crisis in science... What’s it about?
First of all, there is a crisis in replicability which is especially evident in the medical field, replicability meaning that a study should produce the same results if repeated exactly. Many articles have been written by people who attempted to replicate experiments and were disappointed to find how many of them failed. For instance, John Ioannidis and others have tried to replicate preclinical and clinical experiments.
What are the causes of this crisis?
This discussion can be thrown open very wide because there is a chain of causes. The main one is that science was never thought or designed to be in the market. But today science is a commodity: it is in the market, and it’s sold at a price. Historian Philip Mirowski has detailed this process in a book called Science-Mart. Privatizing American Science. It’s a play on words to express that when science becomes a supermarket, when it becomes too much of a commodity and it’s sold over the counter, the result is that its quality disappears.
Is this happening in all disciplines?
It affects all fields; it is also notable in psychology. Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, was the first person to realize that something was going really wrong because experiments could not be replicated. Auguste Comte, a mid-19th century philosopher, thought that sciences follow a hierarchy, according to how close they are to exact laws. So at the top you have mathematics, geometry, and then you have physics, chemistry, biology and the social sciences. The more you move away from the top, from exact laws, the closer you get to domains where things become messier, more complex. Nearly two centuries after Comte, Daniele Fanelli looked at reproducibility rates across disciplines. He found that the lower you travel down the hierarchy of sciences, the greater the increase in positive results, which confirmed his hypothesis that 'softer' disciplines are more prone to bias.
In this sense, where are the limits of science?
Science cannot solve every problem. Reductionism is the idea that you can take a complex system, cut it down into bits, and if you study all the bits, then you understand the complex system. But there are systems which cannot be treated in this way, for example living systems. Whenever you want to study a biological system, you have to somehow delimit it. But how do you delimit it? In organisms, everything is linked to everything else.
I know this is very controversial, but with climate this happens over and over. Climate is too complex to be predicted with any confidence by mathematical models. When a system has so many possible co-causes, effects may cancel out or be hidden by natural variability. Back in the 1960s, someone called this trans-science, to indicate those processes that can be studied scientifically but no solution can be found to the problems they create. We are unable to tackle some problems because of their dimensions. Science needs to learn humility and be prepared to admit it when a solution cannot be given.
Would consortiums of different centres and countries be a possible solution to tackle such a big problem?
Well, for example, the Human Genome Project was successful, but the idea that from human genome mapping we can infer relationships between genes and diseases has been much harder to prove. And this is exactly one of those cases in which the system has behaved as a complex system with emerging properties: you don’t detect those properties by cutting it into pieces and identifying a limited number of genes. For this reason, I believe there has been a considerable disappointment in the field of start-up companies trying to make a business out of using gene mapping. I am not saying it shouldn’t be tried, but we should beware of falling into this trap of reductionism.
Is post-truth reaching science too?
This post-truth story is very disingenuous. Now we have post-truth: why? Because we had truth before? I would strongly doubt this. Science was born in the 17th century as a combination of discovering nature purely for the pleasure of discovering nature and of dominating that very same nature. Both aspects contributed to science becoming the foundations of the modern state. But when modern markets developed, science increasingly became an instrument of domination, profit and growth, as well as the source of all kinds of wonderful things that we enjoy. This is no longer science for the sake of learning.
Yet these days, what is science for? Is it for the common good or for the profit of the few? So there is a collapse in the legitimacy arrangement between science and democracy on the one hand and science’s own governance on the other. This is the result of science being more and more in the market, even being a market itself. So for me there are two processes behind post-truth: the loss of legitimacy of science and knowledge as pillars of the modern state; and the collapse of the quality of science itself.
It seems that trust and confidence in experts is eroding... Why is this happening?
A classic example of this is the sugar story. It is explosive and I am surprised at how it passed by virtually unnoticed. People are progressively losing faith in science but I was expecting a much stronger reaction because the story is huge. Last year the journal of the American Medical Association published a report bringing to everyone’s knowledge the fact that the sugar industry has funded research that would focus attention on fat, in order to take the spotlight away from sugar. Can you imagine the consequences in terms of health effects this may have had? What if we calculate how many years of life have been lost e.g. to diabetes because of this gigantic act of corruption of research integrity?
What is the role of scientists, as individuals, in this crisis?
It’s relatively easy to get it wrong and think that you have discovered something. The physicist Richard Feynman said that “you are the easiest person to fool” because when you are looking for something, everything looks like that something. This is called confirmation bias. It means every scientist has a greater tendency to believe those results which he/she thought would be true in the first place.
Can biases like this be fixed?
You have to be tenacious, but also obsessed with the quality and accuracy of what you do. Thinker Jerome Ravetz understood scientists and their communities of practice very well. Everything that you do in the lab has many elements that you can’t find in the handbook, they have to be communicated from person to person. This is the unspoken element of a craft. Everything is personal in science, in these communities. But nowadays these communities have mostly disappeared. Science has become impersonal.
I can publish a paper and I don’t care if I am wrong, because after all, people know me through my impact factor. The higher my impact factor, the more brilliant I am, and so I am interested in publishing many papers even if they are wrong. And so, there are errors that can remain in the system for years and that nobody will ever find out.
Are people working on the edges of science more likely to be misled?
People who are really on the cutting edge of science are small communities and often less likely to make mistakes. Science can be spectacularly successful there. I am thinking, for example, of high-energy physics, or of the discovery of gravitational waves. It’s a triumph; it’s really something huge thanks to the tenacious effort of physicists.
In your opinion, what are the potential solutions to this crisis?
There are many good people doing very good work and they are trying to change the system from within. Munafò, Ioannidis, and other authors recently published A manifesto for reproducible science. We should really stop using things such as impact and citation factors, numbers which purport to describe the importance of journals and researchers. Also the peer review system has become very dysfunctional. There are recommendations for changing the situation, and I am all in favour of these approaches. We need something very powerful because I don’t think the system can heal itself.
Is there any collective effort attempting to solve these problems?
There has been an important declaration against the use of the impact factor to award grants. If you look at the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA Declaration) of 2012, it was a very important document and a very well designed set of recommendations for metrics, but nobody applies even part of them. If I want to earn a European Research Council grant they will look at my impact factor. And this brings us to the paradox that people of my age – who should be saying I don’t care about my citation numbers – are instead very careful about them.
Even when your ideological conviction is that these things are bad, you still use them, as do the research institutions that award grants. Why do they look at the impact and citation factors? Because the only alternative is to read the candidates’ papers, and this takes time. Students in many countries are requested to have three papers accepted in peer-reviewed journals to secure their PhD, and even here the quality check on the candidates is outsourced to the journals, instead of being performed in the faculty. Thus with all these driving forces, what happens is that there are 2 million papers published every year; a huge paper-generating machine.
Are you pessimistic in this aspect?
I am more pessimistic than optimistic, yes. In spite of all these declarations and manifestos just mentioned, it would be very difficult to fight the perverse incentives which head in the direction of cheating. If you love science you have to defend science and this implies being critical. But many people prefer to hide the problem because, they say, if you attack science you will jeopardize funding for science. But I wouldn’t be against jeopardizing funding for science if the science involved is not properly conducted. Why should we pay for bad science?
Taking into account the context you depict, can we identify initiatives that have led to an improvement at system level? Or any good practices that are already working to improve the current situation?
We can register – ironically, not as a suggestion for the west - that in China, prison terms or even capital punishment can be used against those who submit fake data in drug trials.
Ironies aside, initiatives such as Brian Nosek’s Reproducibility Project in psychology, John Ioannidis’ Meta-research Innovation Centre at Stanford, and Ben Goldacre’s alltrials.net are all worthy undertakings which are not only setting about changing things, but also fostering a new climate of reform. Add to this Retraction Watch, which does an invaluable job in keeping up the pressure on journals and their editors. I am also convinced that the direct involvement of scientists on the side of citizens in societal and environmental problems is a precious contribution helping to generate trust between science and society. The case of water pollution in Flint, Michigan, and the role of scientist Mark Edwards, comes to mind here. Back in the seventies, a group of scientist-activists called the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science sought to change the world by first changing science itself: something of this sort is perhaps needed now.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
The European Union set a target for the business sector to invest 2% of GDP
in R&D. How is the convergence of Spain and Portugal towards this goal
progressing?
What are the most decisive factors in a country’s research and innovation
systems? You can see the video of the discussion we organised to debate
this issue here.
What is society’s opinion regarding the possible impacts of science and
technology? Establishing citizen participation mechanisms is necessary to
generate confidence and detect points for improvement.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.
“No matter what the economy does, art and culture will continue to function”
David Throsby, Specialist in the Economics of Art and Culture, Distinguished Professor of the Department of Economics, Macquarie University (Australia)
Economist Throsby responds to questions such as the role of the institutions, public and private alike, and their active participation in promoting culture as well as the impact of such phenomena as globalisation, the digital era and new technologies on the economic behaviour of culture and art.
In his discourse, Throsby highlights the concept of “sustainable cultural development” which refers to the use of cultural resources to satisfy our needs so that art and culture may be perpetuated for future generations, an especially relevant concept when we think about cultural, tangible or immaterial heritage. Certain key principles that provide the foundation of sustainable cultural development and that Throsby considers vital and essential for conserving cultural and artistic manifestations of quality are the following: non-discrimination in access respecting equality, free access and the protection of their diversity.
How do you define the cultural value created by the arts and cultural sector?
If I make a distinction between cultural value and economic value, cultural value is something we can’t measure in monetary terms, although it may have a relation in monetary terms. I’ve proposed that the only way really to think about cultural value is to try to deconstruct it into component elements. What makes it up? That would mean things like aesthetic value. If we’re talking about artwork, for example a painting: its aesthetic value, its social value, its symbolic value, its historical value perhaps, its value as an authentic piece of work… These are all components of something we have come to call cultural value, which is a way of expressing the cultural significance of an art object. Or not just of an object, but of the arts in general.
What are the differences between the intrinsic and extrinsic value of cultural expressions?
There’s a long debate in philosophy about whether or not cultural objects have intrinsic value. That there’s something that’s contained within them and exists, whether anybody appreciates it or not. If you think about some of the great artworks of music, or visual arts or literature, that they have their own internal value, aesthetic qualities, cultural qualities… You don’t need anybody to recognize them or experience them for those to exist, they exist like that. Otherwise you could say, “This only comes into play if there is some extrinsic, external sort of force which happens to make the intrinsic values come out”.
So, they’re both equally relevant?
It’s hard to say, I think, because the balance depends on one’s point of view. Yes, I suppose I would have to say they’re both equally relevant in the sense that they are both important.
Should public institutions lead investment in arts and culture?
Public institutions? Yes, of course public cultural institutions do, like museums and galleries. Other sorts of public institutions…. Do you mean like public buildings that might have commissioned artworks to display in the foyers or something like that? Then of course, yes. One of the things which we know that the public authorities can do is to have what we call a percent for art, that is, in a new institution, in a new building, to have a percentage of the construction costs to be spent on artworks and that can be quite an important source of not just income for artists and new commissions, but also a way of making art available to the public.
What role should the private sector have in this investment?
The private sector has a very strong role to play because we live in an economy which is, in a sense, dominated by the private sector in economic terms. If the arts and art in general is to flourish, then some involvement by the private sector is important. There are commercial reasons why the private sector might be interested in art, like acquiring art for boardrooms which might be valuable and become part of the assets of a company. But there’s also the more general question about the private sector’s involvement in funding the arts through philanthropy, etc. And that is another whole area, which is very important and is, if you like, complementary to the public support for the arts and culture, which, of course, is still fundamental. It varies a lot between different countries, but nevertheless, the notion that there is a public responsibility to fund the arts and culture is there. But the private contribution to that can be, and indeed is, very significant.
What does the concept “culturally sustainable development” mean?
That’s a relatively new concept and in order to understand it you really have to think in terms of the whole development about the debate of sustainable development. That goes back to the 1980s when the World Commission on the Environment and Development set up by the United Nations, which was chaired by Mrs. Brundtland, so it’s known as the Brundtland Commission, and that put forward the idea of sustainable development. Sustainable development was defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their own needs. That was put forward in terms of ways in which humanity uses the environment or natural resources. It was very much related to the fact that we were in the 1980s, and even today we’re exploiting the natural resources and we’re going to run out of oil, going to pollute the environment, we’re going to have global climate change… And these are all issues that have to be dealt with through environmentally sustainable processes. So out of that came a concern for the over-arching notion of sustainability, and within that, culture plays an important role because it’s talked about that there are three pillars of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. There’s also the proposition that there’s a fourth pillar which is culture. Culture is important for development because it provides the context within which development happens. And even it can be a driver of development because the cultural industries can contribute to economic growth and so on. So, out of all of this, this is a sort of preamble to answering your question about culturally sustainable development… Just as there is a notion of environmentally sustainable development, we can also talk about culturally sustainable development, which means using cultural resources in a way which satisfies our own needs but doesn’t compromise the continuation of the culture for the future generations and so it has particularly to do with the creation of art and the preservation or protection of cultural heritage.
What are the most important principles behind culturally sustainable development?
One of the things that we found with the whole notion of sustainable development is it can’t so much be defined as specified in terms of a set of principles. And so the principles of culturally sustainable development I could say would be, first of all, what we call intergenerational equity, which means what I’ve been talking about: taking care of resources so they will be available to future generations. So concern about the future is essentially the first principle. The second principle has to do with the ways in which culture is provided and access now for our own generation and for our own people. There should be non-discrimination, we should have free access to cultural participation, there should be freedom of artistic expression… These are all contained within this notion of equity for the present generation. Then, on top of that, there are some further principles which we could say, but the most important is protection of diversity. Cultural diversity is understood as something which is to be celebrated and not something which is to be feared. We have to accept the fact, and we do accept it, that the human mosaic, as the phrase is, the sort of variety of different cultures, people, skin colours, ethnicities, religions, etc. is part of what makes us human. We can celebrate the different aspects of that, but I think there’s always the idea and the underlying principle that it should be done in a way which is tolerant and accepting rather than fearing or being aggressive or violent.
How can cultural industries contribute to sustainable development?
That really comes to the question “How is culture actually perpetuated?” or “What do we do to make culture happen?” if you like…. We have music, we have performance, we have cultural goods, we have literature which we write, we have works which we create and some of these things are purely artistic, but they’re really very useful and contribute a lot to people’s well-being.... They define cultural industries, nowadays, quite broadly as industries that produce cultural goods and services, and that means cultural goods which have some sort of meaning, some sort of symbolic qualities. That includes not just artworks but also film, television, music, video games and even includes the media... Cultural industries are quite a broad conglomeration of industries. The proposition is they can contribute to economic development because they produce employment, they produce output, they produce incomes, etc. At the same time, they also contribute to cultural development because every time we make a film or something like that we do something for our culture. Perhaps, something innovating, something fresh, interesting, new… Cultures never stay still. They continue to change. That happens through this process of cultural participation, cultural production and so the cultural industries contribute to sustainable development because they can do exactly that. They can link economic development and cultural development together.
What kind of strategies and measures can governments and other stakeholders implement to facilitate the generation of social benefits produced by the cultural sector?
There’s a very broad canvas now for what we understand as cultural policy. As we were saying, there’s the sort of things that governments can do, but governments are not the only players in the game, of course. Nevertheless, governments do have an important role. The question is that cultural policy has grown up, as it were, in the last 10, 20, 30 years to be much more clearly defined as to what constitutes a policy towards culture. And it’s very much a multidimensional thing because it’s not just support for the arts or support for cultural industries or something like that, but it extends right across the board to things like education… How do we use culture and education? How do we educate kids to be creative? How do we give them opportunities for that sort of thing? It means cultural trade… How do we have international trade in cultural products? It means intercultural dialogue, regional development, industrial development, innovative policies…. Almost every ministry in the government has some connection with cultural policy and, although in any government situation, it varies, of course, between different countries, in most countries there’s something like a ministry of culture or something like that and that takes the responsibility for being the centre of cultural policy. But it extends right across the board into all of these other areas. In each of those areas, there are particular strategies which might be used. In education, for example, a strategy to introduce more cultural understanding and creativity into school curricula…That sort of thing. In another area, it might be cultural exchanges with other countries, sending the artist and performing companies abroad. These are all different strategies that might be used within the different areas of cultural policy.
What are the remaining challenges for integrating a cultural dimension into sustainable development frameworks?
That’s an interesting question because it’s very easy to say that we should integrate culture into sustainable development. But it’s much more difficult to know just what we should do. I could refer here to the Cultural Diversity Convention, the UNESCO convention in 2005, which is probably the most important international instrument, which provides a framework for cultural policy. A key part of that convention is to say that countries should make every effort to integrate culture into their sustainable development policies. What we find in most countries… I’ve done a lot of reviews of different countries about the policies in this respect on behalf of UNESCO. What we find is that some countries have a national development plan, a 5-year plan or 10-year plan. Some have specifically sustainable development plans that try to do something about environmental issues, and so on. What can be done is to think about the ways in which culture generally but particularly the cultural industries can be included in a national development plan. It’s really through the planning process, I think. It is the answer to the question. It’s really through the planning processes that can stand back and say, “What do we really need to do to understand how culture can participate in the development process and provide the context for development and can actually drive the development process?” That comes through the planning mechanisms.
How do you think that economics contributes to a better understanding of arts and culture?
I think one could say that art and culture have their own rationale, of course, and they’re quite independent of economics. We have art in our lives because art is important to the human soul and there’s nothing to say about economics in relation to that. It’s something that is absolutely essential to human existence. Our cultures define who we are; our art is the way we express them and that hasn’t anything that has a rationale, it is entirely self-generating and will happen anyway. But having said that, we could say that there are ways in which all of these processes have some economic dimensions. For example, an artist may be solely concerned with producing art, but they have to live, they have to make money, they have to sell their work… As soon as they start to sell their work then they are engaging in some economic process. There are economic processes right throughout this thing. So economics is the study of how these processes work in the general economy. They work as much for art and culture as they do for anything else. What we do find is that often, because of the peculiar nature of the arts, and the peculiar nature of culture some of the ways in which economics applies to phenomena in the cultural sector is rather different from the way it applies elsewhere. For example, in relation to artists… Now, we usually think of workers as being people who only work in order to make an income and the less work they did the better, and they would prefer to do less work. Artists are exactly the opposite. Artists like to work more because it’s their calling. We find that all the labour market economics, if applied to artists, get turned upside down because artists are different. We find that quite often in this area. Economics is really important to help us understand it and one of the intriguing things about working in the economics of art and culture is that we find constantly these sorts of peculiarities in particular characteristics of the arts and culture, which make it really interesting to do. Economics is a social science, it’s a philosophy… It has a lot to say about the way in which art is made and the ways in which we can facilitate the production of art. But you never want to say that’s all there is to it. We always understand that, of course, art and culture are essential to human life and that’s going to go on. Whatever economics does, that’s just going to go on.
Which topics do you think might be of interest to young researchers starting their careers in the coming years?
I guess I could say just about anything. One of the nice things about the culture and economics conference, the biennial conference, is it’s always amazing how much variety there is of work that’s going on that interests people and that they’re doing interesting and useful work. I think though, that if I have to sort of specify… I guess that one of the things which is influencing the arts, like the whole of the economy, is the phenomena like globalization and the emphasis on new technologies, and the rise of the digital economy…the ways in which the digital economy is affecting the arts and culture. That is throwing up whole other new questions, many of which have been grappled with, but there’s still an awful lot more that we don’t know about that. I think this is something that is going on very rapidly, the technological changes of the last 5, 10 15 years are… There’s been as much happening in that time as there was happening in the whole of the Industrial Revolution, or the entire 19th century. It’s a really interesting time to be alive and it’s throwing up all sorts of questions about art, culture, how we produce art, how we consume art particularly, and almost every day some new questions are coming up. So when you talk about young researchers, they tend to be the people who are on Twitter or Facebook. They use social media a lot or play video games, for example. They’re the ones who are engaged with this sort of new technology. The problems that come up through that is that they would be really well-placed to study. Having said that, I think that there are certain perennials that go on forever. How much would the state be involved in the production of art and culture? How do we value the arts? I myself am very interested in questions of evaluation, how do we evaluate things? These are questions that go on and the reason why they’re interesting is that we never actually solve them. They just keep on being… If we solved them they wouldn’t be interesting anymore. It’s something that will keep us going, I guess, forever.
Which topics do you believe are still undeveloped in academic literature?
The one that I’ve just been talking about I guess because the whole question is still evolving. Otherwise, I’m not sure I could say that anywhere particularly is undeveloped in the literature. Literature is very broad nowadays. To keep abreast of the literature is really quite a thing. In any area there’s so much going on. Of course, it’s also easier now because of Google and other forms of Internet searches help us to track stuff down much quicker than it used to be. When I was a student, if you wanted to find out what was going on you had to go to the library and get the journals out and look through them. Nowadays, we can do it all on Google and other search engines, databases, etc. So, that’s one area. I think the question of data, how we use data, how we use big data, for example, these are questions that haven’t been yet properly explored but it’s all related to this question of new technologies and new things.
Do policy makers and others stakeholders take into account the research produced by universities and research centres?
Yes, but probably not enough. I think the things that we do in universities and research centres… I think you have to make a distinction between, as you do in science, between pure research and applied research. In science we say that pure research goes on and we don’t necessarily know what it’s going to be useful for, but out of that comes something which will make the transition to applied research and become something really major in the scientific area. I think you can say the same in economics and the economics of the arts. That there is a sort of pure, theoretical research going on which doesn’t immediately have any application or relevance but which may provide safe methodological tools or analytical tools that will be useful in the future. Then there’s the applied stuff, which is more directed to specific problems and designed to produce answers. A lot of the applied stuff does get used. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. There’s always the possibility that there’s more. One can always say that policy decisions are motivated as much by politics as by economics or other considerations. Sometimes we can give very good reasons why the decision might be made in this way but it will happen some other way because of purely political reasons, which we don’t have any control over. That’s often just the state of life. We continue to do it but I do think that research in this area has been effective and will continue to be effective.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Spain stands at the head of the countries of the EU-27 in the global
computation of digital society indicators (connectivity, Internet use,
etc). Portugal, however, is situated at the tail end.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
“One of the functions of art is to open up debates in society”
Jen Snowball, Professor, Department of Economics and Economic History, Rhodes University
Jen Snowball is also a researcher at the National Cultural Observatory in South Africa. Her research interests are focused on the fields of cultural economics (or the economics of arts and culture), as well as environmental and natural resource economics, local economic development and tourism economics.
How do you define the concept of value created by the arts and cultural sector?
I think cultural value stretches across all spheres of society, so there’s no short answer to this question. It would include economic or financial factors, it would include social factors and it would include very personal kinds of value. All of these should be included when one talks about cultural value.
How can the impact of artistic expressions be measured?
Culture can contribute two types of values: extrinsic and intrinsic. As I understand it, extrinsic values are more objective and, therefore, easier to measure. These can be things like the economic impact of a concert or a festival where you can use market prices to measure the impact on the economy of that particular event. Intrinsic values are much more personal. These are the feelings that you get from going to a concert or seeing some wonderful art or listening to music. It’s that feeling of delight or happiness. Or sometimes the function of culture is to make you feel uncomfortable, so you feel worried or you feel that your ideas about the world have been changed or questioned in some way. I think the extrinsic ones are easier to measure and that’s why economists tend to focus on those. As for the intrinsic ones, it’s very difficult to find some kind of way of aggregating them to express them as a general feeling because I think they are quite different for everyone.
Should public institutions lead investment in arts and culture?
I think this is very different according to the circumstances of each country. So, for South Africa, where I come from, public funding does lead the way, especially in fields where there are lots of spillovers of the type that are for the good of the general public. Things like heritage, museums, libraries and so on. The private sector leads the way where there are more specialist interests involved, for example, a jazz festival. Then you will often find there is a bank or another kind of private company that’s funding that. I think that’s a good mix, because if you only have public funding then only certain kinds of activities get funded. They are always in line with what the government thinks should be provided for the country. Private funding gives an opportunity for other voices to be heard. The private sector may fund some things that the government sector would never go near. It may just be something for particular parts of the population. But it may also be something that’s quite risky or innovative or that may cause offence. I think that’s also a function of art, to spark debate in society, and I think that’s where the private sector really comes in.
What does the concept “culturally sustainable development” mean?
I think sustainable development by itself is quite difficult to define and culturally sustainable development is an even more difficult concept, but I think that the two have to be connected. So, sustainable development goals have to take into account the cultural context in which this is all happening. You can have something which is economically sustainable, but not culturally sustainable. You might have something that is best practice in the market, but which is totally rejected because of the culture of the people. In a multicultural society, like the one I come from, there are really different ideas about what is valuable and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in terms of how you make your living, how you develop, what is important in life, the kinds of relationships you have with your children, your parents, your grandparents and all those kinds of things. The danger from a developing-country perspective is that we take sustainable development models from the developed countries. So we say, “Here’s a nice model,” we put it in place right here in South Africa and it should work perfectly because it worked so well in Spain or the UK or Canada or wherever. Then, of course, it doesn’t work. I think quite often that’s because they haven’t taken into account the cultural context. For me, culturally sustainable development means taking into account the value systems and the culture of the economy or the society where these things are being put in play.
Sustainable development goals have to take into account the cultural context in which this is all happening
How does culturally sustainable development contribute to social wellbeing?
Wellbeing is much more than just having enough food or healthcare or access to education. It is a much broader kind of concept. It has to take into account individual or personal feelings. Of course, if you think of the hierarchy of needs, people who don’t have access to good water or healthcare or food wouldn’t be thinking about other things very much but as soon as you get past that, then suddenly cultural development becomes really important. You know, how you are feeling depends on your ideas about freedom and about selfexpression, and your identity. These are important at every layer of society when you get just past your basic needs being satisfied. For me, wellbeing is just automatically connected with culture, because the way that somebody from South Africa defines wellbeing (even within different groups in South Africa) might be totally different from how someone in Europe or the U.S. or Australia defines wellbeing. So what’s important is really quite separate. That’s why you also need to take into account the cultural context.
How can cultural institutions contribute to sustainable development?
Cultural industries as a sector, as an understanding, that is quite a new thing. They’ve always been there, of course, but they’ve never been seen as one connected sector. We’ve always looked at the movie industry or architects or advertising but as separate things and the problem is they’re still quite dispersed in terms of policies. In South Africa, for example, the Department of Trade and Industry provides all the film subsidies but the Department of Arts and Culture deals with all the museums and professional associations. I think understanding the sector as a coherent whole that has similar, not the same, but similar kinds of ideas and goals is a really big step in the right direction in terms of helping them to reach their potential and acknowledging their importance in society. We don’t have the data yet for South Africa, but there are indications and it’s been shown in many countries that the cultural and creative industries grow faster than the rest of the economy. They’re part of this new service sector, with creation and innovation being really important drivers of economic growth, so I think this is a big potential contributor to economic growth overall.
How does economics, in other words the way of thinking of economists, contribute to a better understanding of art and culture?
Well, you’re asking an economist, right? I think there’s a lot of resistance from artists themselves or practitioners, shall we say, to this idea that economics can have something important or useful to say about the cultural creative process. I think it’s because there is a misunderstanding that economics means money, so if you are an economist, you only care about money or finances or market prices and those kinds of things you can measure easily. But that’s not really true. Economics is about everything, it’s about the choices that you make in your everyday life, the choices that a government has to make: wellbeing as you’ve already mentioned, sustainable development, livelihoods… All of those things fit under economics. I think economics can have quite a lot to say to the arts and culture sector, particularly helping to express the kinds of values that they produce in a way that policymakers and funders will understand. A lot of the work that I do is to use economic theory to talk about different kinds of value associated with the cultural and creative industries and then say to artists: “Could this framework be useful for you to talk to the funders and the community that you work in and the government policymakers?” In a way, I think we can be a bridge between all the different groups in society for expressing and, in some cases, for measuring cultural value.
What topics might be of interest for young researchers starting their careers in the coming years?
In cultural economics? If it were me, let me answer it that way, I think I would be really interested in this idea of the cultural and creative industries as drivers of economic growth and development. Not just growth, but also development. And the big gap is not so much on the consumption side, what do the users do and buy and so on… but on the production side. How does this happen? How do the cultural and creative industries actually work? There’s a lot of case study, anecdotal evidence out there about the precariats, people who are highly educated in, say, the film sector, one of the most studied sectors where you have a short-term jobs and you move from one contract to the other. But I think there are lots of things we don’t know about: what’s happening in other sectors, for example, how does the craft sector work? These seem to be small stable businesses that exist over time. How does the informal sector work? I think this is an opportunity where developing countries can have an advantage, because, for us, the norm is the informal sector.
Creation and innovation are really important drivers of economic growth
The minority of people are employed fulltime, with a pension plan and a kind of permanent job; most people are working in the informal sector in a whole bunch of different activities or production areas. If I were going to choose a direction in cultural economics now, I think I would go in for the production side of the cultural and creative industries, and the differences between developed-country and developing-country contexts.
Do policymakers and other stakeholders take into account the research produced by universities and research centres in South Africa?
There are different spheres of influence, so if I publish an article in an academic journal, I don’t think there’s that much chance that some policymaker will read that, which is why I think it’s so important to have a kind of parallel communication system like a blog, or a website, or a short policy brief or something like that. And I think they do notice. Very recently, the Department of Arts and Culture in South Africa established the Cultural Observatory, which is a government-funded research hub focusing on the cultural and creative industries. I’m part of that and the job there is to produce policy-relevant research. That means there is a direct channel to the Department of Arts and Culture when we talk or publish something or do some research, and some of that will filter up, I think, into how decisions are made and what policies are put in place. So, yes, you have to work a bit harder than just writing your paper and sending it to the journal, but there are lots of opportunities for those kinds of conversations and knowledge-sharing to happen.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Spain stands at the head of the countries of the EU-27 in the global
computation of digital society indicators (connectivity, Internet use,
etc). Portugal, however, is situated at the tail end.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
“A science-informed approach specifically refers to understanding how problems develop”
Dr Nick, Axford Senior Researcher and Head of What Works, Dartington Social Research Unit
Researcher Nick Axford reflects on the reasons why vulnerable groups have been the most jeopardised by the reduction in aid programmes motivated by the economic crisis.
In his opinion, decision-making when creating aid policies for people in a situation of social exclusion is too heavily influenced by political criteria. Furthermore, such proposals are drawn up without involving the people they are intended to benefit, which means that many of the resources allocated fail because they lack effectiveness.
Parliamentary politicians who design these programmes tend to lack a strong scientific background, which means that their understanding of available evidence is quite limited. Trying to ensure, from the start, that the services we implement are underpinned by science and evidence is extremely important.
The economic crisis in Europe has led to cuts in policies and programmes: what have been its worst effects on the ability to meet children’s needs?
I think the worst effects of the economic crisis on being able to attend to children’s necessities, to their needs, in the UK at least has been increased rates of hardship, of financial hardship for families, of poverty. Certainly there has been a much greater use of food banks. I don’t know if you have those here in Spain, but places where families can go for free or very cheap food. I think for service providers and for policymakers, they are faced with very difficult decisions about which services to continue with and which services to cut. And, increasingly people are having to cut services that are maybe more prevention and early intervention, because they’re needing to try and maintain the services that are for families with a higher level of need and making sure that families in crisis are helped. So that’s obviously a very challenging time for everyone.
Why are programmes promoting child-parent attachment so important for children’s wellbeing and have they been affected by the economic crisis?
I don’t know if the economic crisis has had a particular impact on those kinds of programmes – programmes for children and supporting their attachment. The reason it’s very important, I think, is because it’s the foundation of a lot of what children go on to do, it’s a foundation for, obviously, their relationship with their parents, for their behaviour, for their own emotional wellbeing and so on. And we know that children who don’t attach well to their parents have various problems both in childhood but also potentially in later life. Obviously that’s not set in stone; these things are not deterministic, things can change later, but that’s why it’s so important. And as you say, there are numerous programmes that exist to try and help parents and children to build those important bonds in the early years.
What has the greatest influence on policymakers when defining priorities relating to children’s wellbeing: scientific evidence, cost-benefit analysis or polls?
I think the way policymakers decide these things is influenced by various factors. Sometimes I think it’s just influenced by what they are particularly interested in or by some experience that they have had personally or maybe people that they’ve been speaking to. So often policymakers or politicians in particular will, if they speak to members of the public and particular issues are mentioned, then that becomes a priority. I think, other things that they will take into account, sometimes of course research evidence although I think that that is less than we would like. And certainly in the UK, a lot of policymakers and politicians there, politicians in particular in parliament, they don’t have a particularly strong scientific background, so their understanding of evidence is often quite limited, so that’s a problem. Polls I think, yes for sure, and consumer opinion must influence things. But certainly, we as an organisation are keen that these decisions are influenced more by evidence of what works, what doesn’t work, and of course, by studies that are done either at a local level or at national level that illustrate what the particular needs of families are in a particular area.
Many current examples and experiences aimed at improving education outcomes for children from poor backgrounds are local in scope: could they also be applicable on a national level?
It’s an interesting question. People often say this; that policies or programmes work at a local level and maybe not at a national level. Firstly, I think that it’s important that things are developed and tested locally and I think certainly there are sometimes local contexts that are important. And I think the idea of designing interventions or programmes and policies in context and taking into account the situation where they are going to be delivered is very important. And therefore, involving people in the design of those interventions and services, whether they are local practitioners, teachers, health workers, social workers or service users or potential service users, I think that’s very important and helpful. And there’s a danger if we don’t do that,that we design things that people will never use or they’ll never implement. At the same time, I do think sometimes that this idea that children or families in a particular area are somehow different to children or families elsewhere, is exaggerated. We know that the kind of factors that influence child wellbeing and child behaviour and so on, they’re fairly common from place to place. So, sometimes people in the UK will say “Well, my children...” or “The children in my area won’t benefit from this” and I don’t always buy that. I think that’s not quite right. There is a challenge in our field though as well, in terms of the transportability of interventions and often people think about that in terms of the transportability of interventions from one country to another and whether something developed in one country will work in another. But you could potentially, I guess, apply that at a local level as well, or going from local to national. There are some programmes, I think, that transport very well and there are some that transport less well and I think we need to do more research in that area.
Your paper, “Children’s services in Spain”, states that Spain is lacking “overall reflection on the concept of quality services for children”: What would your main recommendations be here?
That’s a very big question, so: how to improve the quality of services. I think there are various things, I mean I think, first of all there’s just the general design of services for children and families, and I think clearly that needs to be influenced by evidence of how children develop and evidence of what works and I think we are certainly doing work in that area and many other people are as well. So, trying to make sure that in the first place the services e implement are underpinned by science and evidence, that’s very important. I’ve said already, it’s important that they are influenced by the people who are going to use them and the people who are going to implement them, that they have a say in the design of services as well. We clearly need to test what we do and find out what’s working and what’s not working and we can, having done that we can make improvements, so whether, for example, maybe programmes are not being delivered or interventions are not being delivered in the right way or by the right people or to the right length and we need to gather that kind of data and reflect on it on a regular basis, not just wait until the end of the intervention but continually reflect on it, so I think that’s important as well. Those would be some key recommendations.
How do you view the fact that in Spain, pre-school education is not compulsory or free, and in many regions prices are unaffordable for many families?
Well, clearly, families play a critical role in the early education of children. And children spend most of their time with their families and that’s really important. And so, anything we can do to promote families’ interaction with their children is clearly very important. But we also know that pre-school education is important, particularly for more disadvantaged children I think. The evidence is strong on that, in terms of the way it can help to improve their development, all aspects of their development: social, emotional, physical and so on. So I think that’s clearly very important and there’s also evidence that it can have longer term benefits. So I think it’s a getting a good balance between pre-school education and supporting families in looking after their children at home. And of course a lot of programmes increasingly are not just about helping the child but also helping the family as a whole and helping the parents to interact well with their children.
Dartington Social Research Unit stands for a science-informed approach to service design: is this the most useful approach to service design in public systems?
Yes, so you would think that a science-informed approach would be common. I think it’s less common, much less common than you would think. And I guess what we’re talking about when we talk about a science-informed approach is particularly, I think, understanding how problems develop, so understanding what we sometimes call the risk and protective factors that are involved in the development of problems. Risk factors are the things that make poor outcomes more likely; protective factors are things that operate in the context of risk to try and protect children and families against those risks. And there’s a lot of very good research about the factors that cause problems and how they interact. And so a more science-informed approach to developing services would be based on that understanding, would be saying: well, what do we know is effective about addressing certain risk factors? What about promoting certain protective factors? And as I said earlier, a science-informed approach would also be taking into account what practitioners think and what service users think. I don’t think we should necessarily see those things as different, that can all be part of a science-informed approach.
What is Dartington’s most significant contribution towards change in refocusing children’s services design?
I guess the thing that we are doing particularly at the moment which is interesting is that we are thinking more about how to adapt programmes and also how to do rapid testing of interventions. So, as well as helping people to design new interventions or adapt existing interventions, whether by taking on board the science or taking on board the views of implementers or service users. We are very interested now in testing those things and gathering data and reflecting on it quite quickly. So instead of waiting until the end of the intervention or the end of the service and finding out whether it worked or what people liked and so on, we are interested in gathering that data in real time and looking at it in real time – so for example, every week or every month – and potentially making changes as we go. So I think that’s something that we’re doing a lot of work on at the moment and particularly in relation to one programme called Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) which is a home visiting programme for disadvantaged young mothers.
You emphasise the need to do research with data in a way that is easy to interpret. Do you think social researchers communicate clearly enough?
I think it depends, I think some social workers do communicate their research very clearly and others don’t. Sometimes I open a journal and I don’t understand the title of half of the articles in the journal, and I’m someone who works in the field: that’s a bit worrying! I think things have got better in recent years. Academics are more aware that they need to communicate things in plain English. So often you will find research findings communicated in quite technical terms but then there will be a kind of plain English summary alongside. I think, increasingly researchers are translating their research into a form that can be understood by service users and will disseminate their research results in that way. And of course there are more innovative ways of disseminating information, so it’s not just through written products. I think increasing them through the use of more visual means: data visualisation, I think, is an area that’s really developing, and the use of interviews and videos, those kinds of things as well. So I think we are getting better but I think there’s a long way to go.
Can you explain your main lines of work and projects right now: Do you envisage new research findings in the near future?
I think the main things I’m doing at the moment: I’m finishing some randomised control trials that we’ve been doing as a unit over the last few years and they’re in the area of, kind of, preventing anti-social behaviour and crime. So for example, there’s a dating violence prevention programme in schools: We’re looking at that. And a parenting programme, and another programme which is a mentoring programme for young people, so those will all report next year. We also recently completed the trial of a school-based bullying prevention programme from Finland which was implemented for the first time in the UK. And that was particularly interesting, because the programme focuses on the role of the bystander, not on the bully and not on the victim but really on the bystander and how they can encourage or discourage bullying. So that’s an interesting study. The other thing we are working on is some work on this programme called Family Nurse Partnership which is an evidence-based home visiting programme for disadvantaged young mothers and last year it was evaluated in the UK, not by us but by another centre. It was a randomised control trial and it found no impact, or next to no impact. So we are working with the FNP to adapt parts of their programme, both clinical content but also the way in which the programme is implemented more widely. And we are testing that, both for its impact on outcomes but also for how users find it, how the clients find it, but also how well the nurses implement the adapted version. So that’s a really exciting project for us and it’s also a project where we’re gathering the data and looking at it on a regular basis, in a kind of iterative way.
What impact has the economic crisis caused by covid-19 had on wage
inequality? Have public subsidies been sufficient? We analyse which groups
have been most affected.
What future lies ahead for millennials? We will be discussing this question
with Fabrizio Bernardi, Professor of Sociology at the European University
Institute. From 29 November to 1 December, at CaixaForum Madrid. Event
language: Spanish.
How can we put an end to the intergenerational transmission of poverty? We
analyse proposals that defend universal child benefit and other policies
that propose selective benefits for poor families with children.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused a health crisis and an economic one. The
two books reviewed here offer complementary perspectives on the role of
family policies in times of economic decline.
Some 29% of Spaniards have a social position above that of their parents,
and over 40% believe they have risen above their grandparents on the social
ladder.
The fertility rate in Spain is 1.23 children per woman, the second lowest
rate among European Union countries.
“Regulating the work of undocumented immigrants in the care sector is a priority”
Giovanni Lamura, Researcher at the National Institute on Health and Science of Ageing (INRCA) in Ancona, Italy
Giovanni Lamura leads the Centre for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing at INRCA (Istituto Nazionale di Riposo e Cura per Anziani). He graduated in economics, achieved a PhD in "Life course and social policy" at the University of Bremen (Germany), and was visiting fellow at the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany) in 2006-2007 and the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy & Research in Vienna (Austria) in 2010-2011. His research interests are focused on international research on family & long-term care; migrant care work; prevention of elder abuse; ICT-based support for informal carers; intergenerational solidarity; interdisciplinary research on ageing.
An economist by training, Giovanni Lamura has focused his entire career on socioeconomic research related with ageing, a vocational field for him. In his youth, rather than doing military service, he chose to work as a carer for elderly people in the municipality of Saltara (Pesaro, central Italy). Thirty years on from that first experience, he reflects on the current situation of dependent-care systems, whose sustainability is being thrown into question in many places in Europe.
We are facing a “care crisis” in which informal carers are ever fewer in number and have ever less availability to care for their elderly relatives. To what point is this situation concerning?
I don’t like using the term “crisis”. It sounds like something sudden and unexpected. We all knew that this situation would arrive. And in fact, the demographics are still favourable: the baby boomers are now reaching retirement age. The majority of informal carers are aged between 50 and 60 years old and are caring for their parents. Then there are the spouses, who really are people of a very advanced age. Between them they make up the largest population group, so demographically we are not facing a serious problem these days. The issue is that the tendency to lengthen working lives is putting these people under pressure.
In other words, in the near future, those who are of a working age today will be less capable of providing care because they will have to work for a longer time.
Well, in some cases it’s already happening. In Italy there was a major labour reform five years ago and the retirement age was set at 67 years. That’s very late! The same thing happens in countries in the north of Europe. But I am observing other bigger problems: the reduction of public services due to financial limitations means transferring to families responsibility for some of the care services that were traditionally provided by public care systems.
Do these same challenges occur in countries in the north and those in the south of Europe?
In the Scandinavian countries a lot more money is invested in configuring the care system. It is much more professionalised. In the past it was more residential, and now it is more focused on care at home. In the south, meanwhile, elderly people are less willing to go into a care home because there is a different concept of the home and elderly people want to remain in their own houses, even when they are not in the best of conditions.
Which means that money plays a role…
True, the Scandinavian countries invest much more in long-term care than the Mediterranean countries and those of Eastern Europe. But it is also a question of preferences and of the system’s design. In Southern Europe, and also in some countries in Central Europe such as Germany and Austria, a pattern is observed that consists of offering money to families (instead of providing services) so that they are the ones that obtain the services on their own account. So what happens then? The families resort to the “black market”.
In search of what?
Immigrant workers. Families buy a cheaper and undeclared service, because this is the only way that informal care can be affordable in some countries. It happens in Spain and Italy, for example. And many governments are turning not just one blind eye, but two to this situation, and they allow it because that is the easiest thing for them to do.
Moreover, these are workers without proper training...
That’s correct; the training of the workers and the quality of the service is another problem. Everything is related. You cannot expect well-prepared carers if you are finding them in the black market. Everything is connected: exploitation of immigrants, low quality of services and contributions that are not paid.
Faced with this scenario, which policies should be prioritised today to tackle all these problems?
In the Mediterranean countries, the issue of regulating work by undocumented immigrants should be a priority. It is not acceptable for them to become the other victims of this system. In their current situation they will have no pension, no access to the healthcare system and no unemployment benefit.
What are the problems in the north of Europe?
This matter of undocumented carers who are hired via the black market is not exclusive to the southern countries. Moreover, the Scandinavian countries are faced with the problem of the system’s sustainability. Life expectancy continues to grow, so it will be necessary to continue investing large amounts of money in prevention so that people age in an active and healthy way. Care in the long term is very costly and it remains to be seen if this level of investment can be maintained over the course of time.
So, what elements of the Nordic models could be most easily imported?
The ideal solution would be to implement a long-term care system as envisaged in the Dependency Law in Spain, for example, and at the same time demand recognition of the work of immigrant carers. It would be necessary to invest more and be very strict in controlling the money assigned to families for the care of their elderly people. In other words, I assign a benefit to you and in exchange, you must legally employ people with adequate training to certify that they are providing high-quality care services. This is the easiest route for transferring the professional services of the northern European systems to the Mediterranean countries.
What about the other way around? Do we have anything that the Nordic countries might envy?
The personal care provided by immigrant carers in Spain and Italy is something that many Nordic countries envy, especially given their extension: 24 hours per day, nights included, and in many cases six days a week. The problem with this is labour exploitation, but the reality is that this is precisely what many dependent elderly people who cannot afford a care home actually need.
What is the predominant profile among informal carers in Europe?
In the Scandinavian countries they are principally spouses. Many elderly people do not want their children to take care of them, or at least not as much as in Mediterranean countries, where there are still many children and above all daughters who take care of their parents.
Talk about the “care burden” is usually in negative terms. But is there any positive effect from taking on the burden of care?
Yes, of course there are positive effects. When somebody decides to act as a carer by their own will, generally a very solid interpersonal bond is created with the person they are helping. In addition to the affection received, benefiting somebody through care strengthens the carer’s own self-identity. I would say that this is the main positive aspect.
Yet carers receive little recognition from society...
Yes, this happens in many places, and I fear that doctors themselves have had a negative influence as they do not take into account the work of carers nor their opinions regarding the people in their care.
In your opinion, what are the formal supports that carers need in order to perform care tasks sustainably?
Firstly the carer’s role must be recognised. There should be a formal assessment at the start of the process to understand what needs carers may have, because if not they run the risk of becoming the second victims of the elderly person’s illness. Secondly, advice with the dual aim of offering opportunities for growth for carers and to relieve their work burden. Support groups are very important for carers as they enable them to meet others who are in the same situation as themselves. This helps to break with the isolation suffered by many carers, people often trapped in their homes, which they rarely leave. Carers should have their own personal lives. Thirdly, training. And finally, technologies, which also help a great deal. In reality, all these supports are interconnected.
Let’s analyse some of these aspects in more detail. What role does training play?
If you ask the carers, many of them will say: “I don’t need any training. I already know what I have to do.” But that’s not true. Just because you know how to treat some aspects of the illness, or just because you are doing what you have always done, you should not take for granted that you have nothing to learn. I am in favour of designing an initial training package that is effective for different forms of carer involvement, because it is also true that on many occasions a profile with a very high degree of professionalisation is not required for this work.
How should this training be provided?
It should be done in the least invasive way possible for the lives of carers. It is important to be aware that many will have difficulties attending training courses because they have people in their care. Thus they should be provided with occasional substitutes.
What skills should be fomented in carers?
Beyond technical questions, I believe that the most important is the ability to be respectful all the time. Because when informal care becomes a permanent habit, often care can become abuse. And one is not even aware of it. For this reason, remaining sensitive to the situation of the other person is extremely important.
Within the provision of care, what role does volunteering play?
Its usefulness depends on the organisation of the volunteers. In some places, there are very powerful associations that offer a very important support. The other side of the coin is that nobody is obliged to do volunteering, as the word itself indicates, so there is a high turnover. What I would suggest is to run campaigns aimed at young people, especially in countries affected by youth unemployment, such as Spain. I believe that it is a good idea for young people to become involved in volunteering aimed at helping the elderly, because it will help them to understand how their lives are going to end: “Look, now you are strong and you are fit, but at the end of your days this is what is going to happen to you”. It is a good life lesson.
But the reality is that the care sector is not very attractive for young people….
That is why I say that you it is necessary to invest in campaigns to raise awareness among the population and among young people in particular. I often ask myself, and I believe that we should all ask ourselves: Why is the image of care for elderly people so poor? I believe that there is an opportunity for young people to realise to what point they could be useful and necessary for someone. They can’t even imagine how much! I am convinced that care for dependency could change the lives of many young people, but unfortunately many of them consider that old age is a long way off for them.
Finally, to what point can the introduction of welfare technologies be a solution that contributes to the sustainability of care systems? What benefits and drawbacks do they have?
Technologies enable tasks to be carried out more quickly; they facilitate people being in contact, the sharing of information and even provide better work tools. But behind all of this there has to be a sensitive person, because if there is no human intermediation, then technologies alone resolve nothing.
The drawback is that they are not easy to use. And I am not referring solely to users: the main barriers to using technology in the field of elderly people are professional. Firstly, workers are worried because some technologies may represent the loss of their jobs and secondly, simply because they don’t know how to use them and also do not receive sufficient training. Many workers in the sector are not young but middle-aged people. They are reluctant to learn something new at work. This is a significant obstacle and we need to invest in training in order to overcome it.
Interview by
Juan Manuel García Campos
Journalist, La Vanguardia
Classification
Author
Giovanni Lamura , Researcher at the National Institute on Health and Science of Ageing (INRCA) in Ancona, Italy
Child support benefits improve the economic situation of families and
appear to be positive for increasing fertility rates. How can they be
designed with efficiency?
The covid-19 pandemic has caused a health crisis and an economic one. The
two books reviewed here offer complementary perspectives on the role of
family policies in times of economic decline.
Some 29% of Spaniards have a social position above that of their parents,
and over 40% believe they have risen above their grandparents on the social
ladder.
The fertility rate in Spain is 1.23 children per woman, the second lowest
rate among European Union countries.
“Reablement is a new way of working, with the aim of improving elderly people’s independence.”
Tine Rostgaard, Lecturer on Citizenship and Elderly People, Department of Political Science, University of Aalborg (Denmark)
Tine Rostgaard is a lecturer on Citizenship and Elderly People at the University of Aalborg in Denmark. Her research focuses on social care policies for elderly people, and she has special interest in understanding care practices and their implications for care quality. She chairs the Danish Gerontology Society and is also editor of Elderly and Society.
Reablement is a re-learning process designed for people with moderate dependency, its aim being to help them to perform the activities of their daily life independently so that they can remain in their homes for the longest time possible. The programmes are run prior to the person concerned being assigned an assistance resource (home help service, day centre, long-term care home, etc.). Recently, the European Commission has highlighted Denmark’s efforts to implement reablement policies as an innovative initiative that reduces the challenges that care systems must tackle. Tine Rostgaard is a co-creator and one of the foremost promoters of this programme, which is being applied with notable success in several northern European countries, Australia and New Zealand.
In recent years, the sustainability of care systems for dependency has been thrown into question and there is talk of a future care crisis. What, in your opinion, are the factors that may endanger the current system?
The real challenge is ageing. Demographic changes – fewer children are being born and people’s lives are getting longer – mean that there will be more people needing care during the last stages of their lives. We calculate that by the year 2060, the cost of caring for elderly people will have increased by 100% with respect to the cost today. This is a notable increase that represents a major challenge.
We also have a challenge with regard to who should be caring for elderly people. Ageing also affects the sector’s workers, whether formal (professional care staff) or informal (families who are carers for their elderly members). We have to improve staff recruitment and retainment. Few young people are seeking work in this sector and those who do so rarely remain in their position for long, as this work is not attractive to them, even in countries with an efficient dependency care system.
There has been a sea change in the mindset of women and of elderly people. Traditionally women have taken on the burden of caring for elderly family members. But today it is no longer as common for families to live together: young people leave home earlier and emigrate or move to other cities. Meanwhile elderly people frequently prefer to look after themselves and not depend on other family members. This is a common finding in all cultural systems.
So in summary, yes, we do have a lot of challenges.
Which are the policies that we should be prioritising today in order to be able to tackle future situations?
The policies that we must concentrate on are along the lines of reablement (time-limited home rehabilitation policies). To prevent dependency, it is necessary to invest in elderly people so that they are capable of managing their life situations during the longest time possible. It is also necessary for informal carers to be able to care for their loved ones but at the same time keep their jobs. For this, new work policies must be promoted that allow people to take a few hours or even a whole day off to care for their parents or grandparents. And formal carers must receive a fair wage and obtain greater social recognition for the work that they do.
What is reablement? In what sense is it an innovative policy with respect to more consolidated practices in this sphere?
Reablement is a new form of working whose main aim is to improve the independence of elderly people. Along the traditional lines of providing care within the home, a social worker visits the elderly person at home and assists them with basic needs: getting out of bed, washing, dressing and cleaning the house. With reablement policies, the first thing is to ask the elderly person what their needs and goals are and what they would like to achieve: Would you like to be able to leave the house? Go shopping? How can we assist you in managing your daily tasks, in such a way that you do not have to depend on someone coming to help you? It is a programme aimed at achieving objectives.
What does reablement consist of ? How is it applied technically?
The programme consists of an intervention that lasts 12 weeks. We keep the figure of a carer who travels to the person’s home, but in this case it is an occupational therapist. The physical condition of the elderly person is worked through muscle-strengthening exercises. At the same time, they are shown how to use personal assistive devices (walkers, bed hoists and other ergonomic objects). We are not talking about digital devices but about very simple technologies actively used by elderly people. In contrast, they reject more complex devices because they believe they will not be capable of using them.
To improve quality of life for the elderly, we need to help them become more independent.
The programme’s focus is on doing things differently: learning routines, doing tasks according to the resources available and, in short, going one step beyond the traditional form of providing home care, which basically consists of having another person do things for you.
What are the benefits of reablement? What advances does it offer with respect to rehabilitation, which is practised at day centres and residences?
It is oriented towards specific objectives. One of the people that I talked with told me that her daughter’s family lived on the second floor of her building, but that she could not climb the stairs to visit them. Improving her physical fitness paved the way to ensuring that she could fend for herself and also be able to visit her grandchildren more often. We also ensured that she was capable of performing personal hygiene and household tasks on her own.
This improvement in the beneficiary’s capabilities, rather than an advantage, might seem to be a drawback…
Yes, that’s true. On this point the system may be too ambitious and it receives some criticism. The programme’s beneficiaries often say to me: “I can appreciate the benefits of getting out of bed on my own, getting dressed, washing, etc., but what is the benefit for me of cleaning the house again like I used to?” I understand that stance, it is normal to find it rather odd.
The truth is that the fact that municipal services aspire to the system’s beneficiaries being able to do their own household cleaning, although generating controversy, is important with regard to the sustainability of dependency care systems. If elderly people are capable of performing these tasks through their own means, then the municipal services will save money. Thus, ideally, these policies provide a dual benefit: firstly, achieving elderly people who are more independent and have a better quality of life; and secondly, serving to save money in public services.
Is there any proof of the efficiency of launching reablement policies with respect to quality of life and gaining control and independence?
We know that the programme has a major effect in terms of gaining in quality of life. People gain independence and feel more confident about performing tasks autonomously. This is shown by the results of some Norwegian research studies.
In Denmark, we do not yet have specific results because we are still at a very early phase of implementation of the programme on a national level, but we have indicators that show that these systems help people to become more independent and, therefore, they need less help once the programme has concluded.
Is there any evidence available on the effects of the programme in terms of the costs of care systems?
Some provisional results suggest that 20% of the elderly people who have benefited from reablement programmes require no other service after the 12-week intervention. This allows us to get an idea of the saving that it represents in social services costs.
However, it will be important to calculate properly what the return on investment is and the costs of re-implementing the programme. Initially it costs a lot of money because it is quite intensive. Therefore we must be meticulous when it comes to evaluating whether the programme continues costing as much in the subsequent phases of implementation, or alternatively whether it is costly at the start then subsequently expenditure decreases. This analysis will give us the key to knowing whether reablement represents savings for government or not.
The standard user of reablement programmes is a person who suffers from a moderate degree of dependency.
What is the typical profile of reablement beneficiaries?
The standard user is a person suffering from a moderate degree of dependency. In other words, they are not people with severe problems or serious disabilities, nor people with early dementia, but people who live in their own homes and are in need of intermittent support or have other limitations affecting their personal autonomy.
What happens if the person reaps no benefit from the reablement programmes or cannot participate in them?
It is problematic applying these programmes to people suffering from senile dementia or another type of cognitive disability, because an essential part of reablement consists of talking to them and finding out their objectives. The person must be capable of fulfilling their daily routines and of being committed to cooperating with their carers. And this requires a certain level of cognitive competencies.
However, we are trying to expand the programme to include people suffering with dementia. And we have even started to use it quite successfully with terminally ill patients, helping them to improve their quality of life in the last days of their lives.
Since when have these reablement programmes been applied in Denmark?
By 2007, the system was already up and running in 98 municipalities in Denmark. But since 2015, all Danish municipalities have been obliged to use it. Now it is included in the legislation.
In which other countries has the programme been applied? Are there similar experiences in countries in the Mediterranean area?
Norway has quite a lot of experience in the use of reablement; it is also applied in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia.
As for Southern European countries, it is worth highlighting that quite a large divide exists with respect to the Scandinavian countries, not only with regard to the use of these programmes, but to the way of organising dependency care systems in general. In countries in the north of Europe, we have a more solid formal structure of the care system. We trust that our Government will contribute solutions for our wellbeing. That is the reason we pay taxes. We have much more generous social services: around 14% of people aged over 65 years receive home care, free of charge. This does not occur in many countries in Southern Europe.
Is this attributed to cultural or economic reasons?
I would say it is a combination of both. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg. Moreover, we live in more individualised societies. We do not expect families to look after their elderly. This does not mean that they do not matter to us. In fact, in some of the research that I have conducted on loneliness among elderly people, I have observed that, although in countries of the North elderly people live alone more often, there are higher rates of loneliness in countries of the south, including Spain.
Living with the family does not always imply that you feel like a participant in affective relations that are significant for you….
Of course. Another factor that contributes to loneliness is that in countries like Spain there are many people of advanced age obliged to care for their spouses, who are often ill. These people feel lonely because they cannot leave their homes nor have a life of their own.
In your opinion, what strategies can we follow to humanise care?
I believe that reablement is a very good strategy, because it puts the person at the core of the care process. We focus on people’s preferences and goals, thus we offer them the possibility of making decisions relating to their lives. It is a system with a highly individualised focus, which is the best way of dignifying people care.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
While the participation of female PhD holders in Portugal is situated above
the EU‑27 average in all fields of knowledge considered, in Spain the
participation of female PhD holders is situated below the European average
in the fields of art, humanities and social sciences.
Some 29% of Spaniards have a social position above that of their parents,
and over 40% believe they have risen above their grandparents on the social
ladder.
The fertility rate in Spain is 1.23 children per woman, the second lowest
rate among European Union countries.
«Creative work favours innovation and, therefore, growth»
Hasan Bakhshi, Director de Industrias Creativas, NESTA
In recent years, the creative economy has grown at a greater speed than the rest of the economy. Creative work generates innovation and wealth, to the point that it could be the most important factor for economic growth in the long term.
Numerous studies have confirmed that the creative professions produce a higher level of happiness among workers, and this has repercussions on the global wellbeing of all citizens. Hasan Bakhshi explains that professional profiles should be broader, starting by reconsidering the traditional barriers of education which distinguishes between technical versus creative training.
Over the course of the interview, he also comments on how technology is helping with the understanding of the monetary value of art and culture, by providing macro-data on their consumption and the economic repercussions of this activity.
What should governments do to help the creative economy grow?
If there’s one thing we’ve understood in recent years is that the creative economy, which we define as that part of the economy which makes use of creative work for commercial purposes, that part of the economy has been growing very rapidly and for that reason alone, policymakers should focus on it.
We think of the creative economy as that part of the economy, which makes use of creativity and creative work for commercial purposes. If you look at the economic statistics in countries like the UK, we find that the creative economy in recent years has been growing 2 or 3 times faster than the rest of the economy. In a recent research report we’ve also learnt that the European economy also has a very fast growing creative economy.
Are there any differences among the workforce in the creative economy and the workforce as a whole?
If you think about what creative work is, creative work involves deploying cognitive skills, analytical skills to bring about novelty, product differentiation, new ways of thinking and doing things in a way that cannot be anticipated fully in advance. The quintessential idea of creative work is that it’s conducive to innovation. It gives rise to innovation and, hence, growth. So we believe that the creative element of the workforce is more important for long-term economic growth.
Are creative occupations associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing?
We undertook a study using UK labour force survey data last year, which suggested that, in general, creative occupations were associated with high levels of happiness, with a feeling that people’s lives were worthwhile and with higher levels of life satisfaction than other jobs. But, of course, well-being is explained by lots of other factors. For example, income, how much you’re earning. If you control for those other aspects, those other determinates of well-being, what you find is that artistic and design oriented occupations have higher levels of well-being than other occupations, but another element to the creative workforce area is in IT related occupations, advertising, well-being appears to be actually lower.
What should be the scope of cultural policies in the context of the creative economy?
I think the first thing to say is that cultural policy should be mainly designed and implemented for cultural reasons. That said, it is undeniably the fact that countries which have very healthy and vibrant cultural sectors also tend to have vibrant, economically successful commercial creative industries. From the point of view of policymakers, they should try and understand the relationship between the cultural sector and the commercial creative industries and then where are these linkages or what are sometimes described as spill overs from the cultural sector and creative industries… they should be supported and maximised.
An additional thing I’d say is, “What do we mean by culture?” If one looks at the way cultural policy is actually implemented, in different countries in Europe, they’re remarkably conservative in what the definition of what art and culture actually is, the scope of art and culture. And, yet what we know is that culture on the ground, in reality is very, very dynamic. There are new forms of art and culture arising all the time, new forms of cultural participants and cultural participation, and yet policy sometimes seems to be behind the curve. One of the things I think governments generally need to do is to prove their understandings of culture as it’s happening on the ground. And then ensure that the way they support culture through cultural policy instruments is more fit for the purpose.
What are the benefits of combining arts and science skills in secondary education?
We published a research report in Nesta recently which suggested that businesses that employed both artistic and design skills as well as science and technology skills in the workforce, other things being equal, grew faster and were more innovative than businesses that just focused on science and technology skills in the workforce. There seems to be some pretty strong evidence, economic evidence, that there are economic returns to be had for a country from investing when more broad-based skills make up its workforce. The implication for the education system, of course, is that we should be very careful to avoid inadvertently introducing barriers to this multidisciplinary education. Sometimes there tends to be…there are incentives for younger people to specialise in either science or technology or the arts and humanities at a young age. This sort of research suggests that education policymakers need to be mindful that they’re not inadvertently discouraging the type of broad-based education, which appears to be valued in the workplace.
What should governments do to avoid disciplinary silos?
I think the first thing governments should do is to recognise that some of the disciplinary silos that have been created, for example in schools, are partly a reflection of what government itself has done. The way they have structured curricula, the way they’ve identified or valued technical or specialised skills that teachers have to teach their own subjects. They should look at the curriculum, for example, or they should look at the way in which school environments are structured to enable the more multidisciplinary education that we’re talking about.
What is the main evidence about the implementation of new technologies in cultural institutions?
All the evidence suggests… In the UK we’ve been conducting a longitudinal survey now for 3 years on how arts and cultural institutions use technology in their work, and all the evidence suggests that there is a high level of awareness amongst art and cultural organisations of some of the opportunities from technology. I think it’s fair to say though, that today what we’ve seen is largely incremental innovations; ways in which technology, for example, can be used by theatres and performing arts companies to break out of the physical constraints that are usually imposed by having a venue, using digital technology to broadcast live or stream their performances to wider audiences. We’ve seen that sort of incremental innovations. What we’ve not yet seen are the type of radical innovation, for example that we’ve seen brought about by technology in the case of music. If we think about the music industry, the way we engage with musical experiences, it’s a far cry from 10, 15 years ago where we were relying on physical recording devices like discs, albums… These days within seconds one can access or have new musical experiences from streaming services. That sort of radical innovation which is changing the very nature of the cultural experience, I don’t think we’ve seen widely in the arts and cultural sector. My prediction is that in the years to come we will see more of these radical, disruptive innovations in the arts and culture.
Can they contribute to social outcomes?
Can the arts and culture relate to social outcomes? I think the prima facie evidence that arts and cultural institutions can contribute to social outcomes is if you look at the missions of many of these organisations. Often, they are instituted as charities with charitable objectives and charitable missions. Those missions are often about as well as improving cultural well-being of the public but also achieving social outcomes. So, I think it’s undeniably the case that some of the outcomes that we see from arts and cultural organisations in terms of well-being are manifested in social well-being, social outcomes in terms of learning and education outcomes for young people, in terms of social inclusion, where communities have been previously disengaged from culture through the work of an individual theatre company, for example, are more engaged with culture. There are many, many instances of that. It might be worth saying that there can also be negative social outcomes. I don’t know if that’s relevant or not?
Negative?
I think that there are many, many examples of institutions that are doing great work in achieving positive social outcomes through their work with local communities. We should also recognise that art and culture can sometimes be the instrument of social exclusion. It can be used as a way of creating barriers to engagements and I think that it’s very important that policymakers are aware of that potential outcome as well.
How do you think that Economics contribute to a better understanding of arts and culture?
The most obvious way in which economics contributes to our understanding of art and culture is by recognition of the fact that, like every other activity, art and culture happens within economic constraints. Artists work within economic constraints. They need, at a basic level, their time and financial resources to undertake their activity. So there’s a very direct sense in which economics can contribute to our understanding of arts and culture in the same way it can contribute to our understanding of all activity, which has an economic dimension. At the same time, economics provides value. We have hundreds of years of quite a developed theory of value, which can be applied to arts and culture, as it can in other areas. This is a utilitarian theory of value. It’s a particular conception of value. It should not be privileged over competing with alternative approaches to value, but as part of a multidisciplinary understanding of what art and culture is. Economists can also contribute their particular approach and conception of what value is.
Which topics do you think might be of interest for young researchers starting their careers in the coming years?
One of the points that the keynote speaker Andy Pratt, Professor Andy Pratt, made at the conference this morning was that in the past, the lack of good data and lack of opportunities for good empirical work in the arts and culture sector was one of reasons why there were not more economists working in the arts and culture sector. One of the benefits of the so-called big data revolution, associated with the internet and ICT, more generally, is that there are vast amounts of data more available now, in principle, for researchers to understand the phenomenon of art and culture. I think one of the things that we are going to see in the coming years is far more empirical work, far more data work to understand those aspects of art and culture activity, which up until now, have been hidden from the eyes of researchers.
It’s because it grows so fast and there is no register of data…
I think it’s partly to do with the fact that culture is very fast changing and dynamic, which makes it difficult for traditional ways that researchers use to try to understand the world, like surveys and censuses and registries. It makes it difficult for those data sources to catch up. So it’s partly about it being fast changing, but it’s also because of the fact that culture is increasingly mediated digitally. What that means is that culture itself is leaving a digital footprint in a way that it wasn’t before. One of the aspects is, of course, of the digital revolution is that it leaves a data footprint, which allows analysts to access that data and try to use it to improve their understanding of art and culture. A good example is social media data. We know that there are a lot of discussions and attitudes and perceptions and reactions to cultural experiences, they are now being mediated on line through social media platforms, which creates opportunities for researchers and analysts like myself to access that data, clean that data and make it fit for the purposes of research analysis and, hopefully, use that to improve our understanding about art and culture as it is today.
Do policymakers and other stakeholders take into account the research produced by universities and research centres?
That’s a very big question and I think the answer varies depending on what type of research domain you’re talking about. I think in the art and cultural area, which is obviously the subject of the conference, the ACEI conference here today, I think partly there’s a problem that there’s an insufficient number of academics who are addressing research questions that policy makers need answers to today. That’s not to say that there isn’t some policy relevant research being conducted, but I do think that there could be some useful re-prioritising of research priorities towards the sorts of questions that policy makers need answers for. So that’s one comment I’d make. I think another thing I’d say, which is a feature of all academic research, not just particular to art and culture, is that the horizons that policy makers often work to are shorter than the horizons that academic researchers work to. What that means is that, for example, where as it may take a couple of years for a monograph or an academic book or volume to be put together, designed and published, the research questions that the researchers were addressing in that volume, that policy makers were focused on at that time, they may have become of less contemporary interest to policy makers. Policy makers have moved on. So I think there is a sense in which there’s a bit of a disconnect between the horizons of policy makers which are shorter and academics which are longer. There’s no easy answer to that, but I do believe the academy can do more to ensure that policy relevant research insights are codified and made more available and put in language that policy makers can act on more quickly than we currently can.
An experimental analysis of the preferred tax rates for different types of
taxes, across a variety of taxpayer income and inheritance assumptions, and
taking into account people’s perception of their own position in income
distribution.
Is it necessary to humanise technology more? In this seminar series that we
are organising with the Knowledge Innovation Market Bcn (KIMbcn)
Foundation, we will be debating on how the digital transformation should
contribute towards achieving social and environmental goals.
Spain stands at the head of the countries of the EU-27 in the global
computation of digital society indicators (connectivity, Internet use,
etc). Portugal, however, is situated at the tail end.
What relationship exists between art and economics? We present two books
that study the importance of creativity and innovation in the arts, as well
as how art contributes to economic development.
«If we are capable of living healthily, living more years does not mean more dependency»
María Blasco, Director of the National Centre for Oncological Research (CNIO)
María Blasco (Alicante, 1965) directs Spain’s National Centre for Oncological Research (CNIO). She holds a PhD in Biochemistry and is a specialist in ageing and telomeres (caps at the ends of chromosomes that contribute to the longevity of cells and the stability of genetic material). In 2016 she published, together with journalist Mónica G. Salomone, the popular science book Morir joven, a los 140 (Dying young, at 140). We had the opportunity to speak with her during a visit to Palau Macaya, where she participated in the cycle The Transhumanism under the lens, organized by the Club of Rome of Barcelona and Obra Social "la Caixa"
Is ageing one of society’s triumphs?
Yes, of course. At the start of the 20th century, life expectancy at birth stood at 30-something years for men and women in Spain, and now it stands at above 80 years. Being capable of living increasingly more years, in a good state of health, is a triumph for the research that has led to new treatments. This is thanks, basically, to a reduction in child mortality, closely related to infectious diseases.
Were we aware that life expectancy was going to grow so fast?
I don’t know if we were ever aware, but it is important to clarify that we continue to age biologically just as we did at the start of the century. This has not changed: a person today ages just the same as people aged back at the start of the 20th century. What we have been managed to do is reduce the mortality associated to diseases.
What differences exist between biological and demographic ageing?
Biological ageing refers to the damage that accumulates in our cells; this damage is behind the fact that eventually the tissues and organs do not function well and illness arises. Demographic ageing makes reference to the ageing of the population: we are increasingly living for a longer time while there are fewer births.
Living ever more years leads to changes in society. How will we organise life?
We are already seeing these changes. For example, delaying retirement age is under consideration, since a person aged 65 years is still someone capable of contributing to society.
Will elderly people be the new market?
In 2050, around 30% of the Spanish population will be aged over 65 years; in other words, one third of the country’s population. This opens up possibilities for new business and markets aimed at elderly people, who increasingly are going to be in a better state of health and will consume more products.
How will life prospects change for a person who knows that they are going to live for 140 years?
Life is already different now. Young people never consider that their life will end at 30, when they find a job and a partner. I think that people’s prospects and desires have changed and I am sure that they will change more.
As a researcher in biomedicine, what is your view of ageing?
In my view, ageing is the cause of the diseases that are killing us today. Just as viruses or bacteria are the cause of infectious diseases, so the molecular ageing process is the cause of many illnesses, such as heart attacks, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. I find it fascinating to try to discover what the molecular mechanisms are that make us age, because I think that is where the key lies for achieving effective treatments against these diseases, preventing them and delaying them as much as possible.
Does the real possibility exist of avoiding ageing-related diseases?
I believe so. To do this we have to understand in depth why they occur. Insofar as we are capable of delaying or preventing ageing, I think that the incidence of all these disorders would also be reduced. If we do not find ways of preventing them, treating them or curing them more efficiently than we do now, undoubtedly they would generate problems.
As director of the CNIO, what role does cancer play in ageing?
Cancer is also a disease associated with ageing, despite it affecting children and young people, although with less frequency. The risk of cancer increases between 40 and 50 years, when defects in our cells begin to accumulate. Since they can malfunction due to these faults, conditions can occur such as cancer or fibrosis, which are illnesses that are a consequence of ageing.
Is the fight against illness the way to demolishing the biological life expectancy barrier?
I see it differently. I think that understanding the ageing process will give us the keys to know how to prevent and treat diseases more efficiently. If you think about it, there is no single effective treatment for any of the degenerative diseases associated with ageing. There is no therapy for renal, hepatic or pulmonary fibrosis... Unless a transplant is performed there is nothing else that will revert or cure fibrosis. I think that the only way of achieving effective treatments will be to understand why these diseases occur. For me, the key has to lie in that biological ageing process.
The other face of survival is dependency. Will living so many years be sustainable?
If we do nothing to avoid or reduce illness, a time will come when we will be more dependent, it has always been that way. But it is also important to consider that the fact that we are now living longer on average is also associated with the fact that generally we live better, since disorders are better controlled. When, in animal models such as the mouse, we manage to lengthen lives, what we do is keep the animals younger for a longer time. You cannot lengthen an organism’s life if you do not lengthen its time in good health. Living more years should not mean more dependency, as long as we are capable of living healthily.
So, will we die healthy?
In nature, animals do not die of illnesses, they die healthy. They die of hunger, of cold, or whatever. Obviously, we have now overcome whatever our survival barrier was in nature. If we now controlled ageing, if we were capable of staying young for a longer time, perhaps the causes of death would be others, such as accidents.
In biological terms, does human life have a duration limit?
Yes, it has a limit that is determined based on the longest-living individual of the species that has existed. With respect to the human species, the person who has lived longest was a French woman aged 122 years, Jeanne Calment. Researchers including myself and others have already managed to exceed that biological limit in other species. For example, with mice we have managed to get them to live 40% longer. If we manipulated the mechanisms of ageing in humans we could exceed the biological limit of our species.
Would we be creating a new subspecies of humans, who would live longer thanks to biotechnology?
I don’t think so, because this is never going to be achieved by genetic manipulation. Ethically it is not possible and no scientist would think of it. But you might think of some type of drug that would extend youthfulness and also lengthen maximum life. That means you will live increasingly more years in good health.
Will spending on health increase?
Spending on health will increase if we do not find ways to prevent illness. There are many lifestyle habits that are increasing the risk of illness. I think that a lot of preventive work would need to be done on lifestyle habits, exercise and healthy eating in order for us to live more years in good health. In Spain, we have some dreadful lifestyle habits and we are doing nothing to be healthy for a longer time.
Why do some people age better than others?
There is a genetic component and a lifestyle habits component to ageing. Both bear influence on the fact that some people age faster than others. Even your socioeconomic level determines your life expectancy. There are studies that reveal different life expectancies among inhabitants of the same city, all depending on which neighbourhood people live in.
Interview by Núria Jar
Classification
Author
María Blasco , Director of the National Centre for Oncological Research (CNIO)
The European Union set a target for the business sector to invest 2% of GDP
in R&D. How is the convergence of Spain and Portugal towards this goal
progressing?
What are the most decisive factors in a country’s research and innovation
systems? You can see the video of the discussion we organised to debate
this issue here.
What is society’s opinion regarding the possible impacts of science and
technology? Establishing citizen participation mechanisms is necessary to
generate confidence and detect points for improvement.
In Spain and Portugal, the proportion of innovative companies, and the
degree to which these collaborate with other companies and organisations,
is below the EU-27 average.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.
“Fighting climate change will benefit our health enormously”
María Neira, Director of the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization (WHO)
María Neira is a doctor specializing in endocrinology. She worked with Doctors without Borders in Honduras and with the United Nations in Mozambique and Rwanda. Subsequently, she joined the WHO as the director of the Department for the Prevention and Eradication of Infectious Diseases. She was president of the Spanish Agency for Food Security of Spain's Ministry of Health and Consumption, where she was responsible for the development and execution of national food and nutrition plans.
Why is the COP21 agreement to fight climate change so important for global health?
The agreement reached on climate change, signed by all the UN countries on December 2015 in Paris, addresses decision-making and brings solutions for global warming to the table. It is important for health because all of the decisions that are going to be made to fight climate change will in the end benefit health enormously. In this regard, measures must be taken, for example, to reduce traffic and we must also consider whether we use a type of energy that pollutes or not; all these decisions are going to have an impact on our lungs and on our cardiovascular systems. If we manage to reduce the pollution in the air we breath, the benefits will be enormous, as 7 million people die each year from air pollution.
What are the main impacts of climate change on the health of the population at the international level and, more concretely, in Europe?
Climate change is affecting the pillars of our society: access to drinking water and food; and the way we protect ourselves, in other words, our housing. Massive displacements may occur due to natural disasters, the lack or poor quality of water and the scarcity of food resulting from episodes of drought. All of this has an enormous impact on our health.
In addition, the increase in temperature from climate change affects the environmental conditions of many vectors that transmit diseases, as is the case with mosquitoes, which could not reproduce in mountainous areas of Kenya because the temperature was not high enough, and now they have just the right temperatures to do so, so we are beginning to detect cases of malaria in areas where it did not exist before.
In Europe, climate change is related to the distribution of fresh water, which is going to become a scarce good. It also affects the use of transport and management of air pollution, and the distribution of harvests at the international level and the new distribution of diseases. It is wrong to think that it is a problem that is only going to affect developing countries. Of course, it is going to affect them much more than developed countries, but it is also going to be a problem for the developed countries.
What public health challenges does a country like Spain face as a consequence of climate change?
Climate change is going to change our life styles. Ironically, this will be a positive result of global warming. People must understand that when the planet suffers – something that is thought to be very distant – our health also suffers.
I think that in Europe we will notice if we take action to combat air pollution and if we change our models for living. We need to think about how we always use private vehicles instead of public transport or walking; or the fact that we do not do physical activity; we move about in cars or on motorbikes; we live very sedentary lives. All of this has a great impact on non-communicable diseases.
One of the problems is that people do not see the connections between global warming and health. Therefore, we have to explain the connections. Once they understand, for example, that the increase in cases of asthma or allergies is related to climate change, people become leaders in the movement to fight global warming. This is not just an issue for committed environmentalists, but it is an issue that has so much to do with our health.
How do environmental factors affect us? How do we minimize their effects on our health?
Environmental factors are responsible for nearly 13 million deaths each year. From a positive point of view, if we manage the environment in a logical, intelligent and sustainable way, we will avoid 13 million deaths a year, and people will have a better quality of life.
If we focus on the individual and the public in designing our cities, and if we plan them thinking of the possibility of people walking or using bicycles, having access to green areas and breathing cleaner air, we will be protecting our health. The idea is not to avoid illness, but to protect health, thanks to better designed cities, focused on their own populations. And these types of actions are also fundamental in fighting climate change.
Among environmental conditions, which are the most important in regard to health? Can we prevent diseases through taking care of the environment?
Prevention is the best medicine. The better we protect the natural environment, which is what sustains us, feeds us, provides us with water to drink and air to breathe, the better we protect ourselves. There is no other alternative. The environment is what decides.
Evidently, one of the main challenges that we face is access to drinking water. In Europe this seems unimportant, but there still many countries where the population does not have regular and easy access to drinking water. It is not just turning a tap, it is a major daily struggle. Other environmental conditions are air pollution, exposure to chemical substances, pesticides and other toxic substances in our daily lives, as well as waste management.
Optimizing our urban environments is essential to improving our health. The better we plan our environments, the greater the benefit to health. The better we plan collective public transport, the greater the decrease in traffic congestion and in the number of deaths and injuries caused by accidents. All this has an enormous positive impact on health. We want healthy urban policies to be developed that take into consideration the public, who will benefit or suffer from these policies.
What impact will improvements in urban environments have on health?
It is important to reduce air pollution, as it causes almost 7 million deaths annually, a figure that we should remember. This is currently one of the most important environmental health risks that we face. Obviously, air pollution affects developing countries much more than developed countries, but it is worrying that 80% of the world's population is going to be living in cities in approximately 20 years. We have got to do something.
Every city must do its own assessment of the origin of this pollution. A great deal of it is caused by vehicles moving around the city. Another part of it comes from waste management: there are places in the world where garbage is burned in people's homes, which produces toxic substances and pollution. Agricultural production around cities and industrial production in some countries that do not have regulations regarding factory emissions, cause air pollution. There is no single cause of air pollution, as it depends for example on the type of fuel, diesel or gasoline, used in vehicles.
Based on this, we must employ a range of measures to reduce it. The ideal would be that citizens understand that reducing air pollution is important for our health, that they begin to demand measures to improve urban life in this sense and that they use private vehicles less to move about, and improve waste management and use more energy efficient practices in the home - not using too much heat or air conditioning, among other things.
Almost two thirds of deaths worldwide are attributed to non-communicable diseases. How can we address this enormous social and public health challenge?
Increasingly taking into account, for example, that making a decision related to the future of a city has to be done thinking about which diseases might be avoided and which might be caused. Exposure to environmental risk factors is one of the first causes of death from cardiovascular disease. We used to think that only other risk factors, such as diet, lack of exercise and the consumption of tobacco and alcohol, which are also very important, had an influence. But today we know that one of the most important risk factors is exposure to air pollution. Therefore this is one of the remaining tasks to be addressed.
There are many ways to deal with the effects of air pollution on health, but the role of the media in educating people is fundamental. This is not a campaign to save the planet, which sounds like something very distant; it is an action to save “my lungs and “my heart”, a health prevention campaign for everyone. I think that this is a message that is going to reach the public more.
What are the main health problems faced by developing countries? How should they be dealt with?
These problems should be addressed intelligently, making strategic decisions at the country level on how and where to invest. Of course, education and health are always the best investments, especially if they are made in a manner that is sustainable over time.
It is also necessary to reflect on decisions about the energy sources that are going to be used in developing countries that are industrializing and changing their model of life, decisions that will affect the transport model that they are going to develop. Are they going to copy ours? Are they going to copy our industrial system, which was very polluting? Are they going to act like China, where all development has involved polluting rivers and the air, where the economy comes before everything else despite the problems this has created?
The main message is that there can be a kind of economic development that does not destroy natural resources and does not affect people’s health. The diseases that we face in the developing countries are of two types. On the one hand, infectious diseases, that is, malaria, tuberculosis, etc., continue to be a problem, but in addition, problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease have appeared, which are related to sedentary lifestyles and obesity. That is, these countries live with two epidemics, which makes it more difficult to resolve the problem.
How can we improve public health through education, culture, research and innovation? Could you propose three measures that you believe could represent a radical change in this area?
Education is fundamental in changing the health situation in countries. Governance is also basic: no matter how wealthy a country is, if there continues to be corruption, poor resource management and bad investment decisions, there is not going to be adequate development in health, even with a lot of assistance, as has occurred in Africa. There must be a population which demands good management and less corruption.
Starting from this foundation, there are three measures that could lead to change: first of all, girls’ education. It is important that girls go to school, since they are the ones who are going to manage the home and its resources. It has been found that thanks to the investment in the education of girls and the resulting better management of household resources, as adults, these girls will also send their children to school. Educating girls is always an excellent investment.
Another measure is to invest in health. This must be a priority in a country’s agenda. It is not only about hospital building, but also, for example, reducing maternal deaths through health education in clinics. The third measure would be to strengthen solidarity. That is, to continue helping in an intelligent and strategic way in the areas where there are results. In addition, another important measure would be to provide access to drinking water and education for everyone, as basic pillars to improve public health.
What public policy recommendations would you make to improve the health of the population?
In countries with greater resources, such as ours, we need to understand that health is multi-sectoral. That is, health is not hospitals. They are fundamental for people’s health, but they are the last step. Hospitals are for when people are already ill.
I would recommend investing in primary prevention, with the understanding that health policy is not only made by the Health Ministry but also by other ministries, such as the Environmental, Industry and Energy Ministry, or in the corresponding ministries in each country that make welfare policies. All ministries should be aware of the following task: demonstrating what percentage of their work is contributing to improving people’s health. All of them must contribute to health because well-being and the absence of illness is generated through all government policies. The Health ministry should not only be concerned with the person who is ill, it must also be concerned with and work for the healthy so that they remain so.
What changes in individual behaviour are necessary to bring about better health?
There are many. Our behaviour is related to the way we consume every day. We have to be very conscious about what we consume and how we do it. We have to reflect on the amount of plastic and paper waste we generate every day, what our contribution to the carbon footprint is and how we move about our cities. This is fundamental.
We must also think about how much we pollute: how do I use energy in the home and how aware am I that energy is not an inexhaustible resource and that using it causes pollution? It is essential to think about my consumption of water and food and also how much exercise I do.
In addition, there are risk factors such as smoking, the excessive consumption of fats and alcohol, and other things. However, these shouldn’t be dealt with in a repressive manner by saying to people “this is prohibited.” We need to think about a culture for a better life. The idea is “this is better for me” and not about feeling bad. It's about that in my life and regarding my health, this is better for me and makes me happier.
Environmental and social conditions can lead to poor health, and poor health may push more people into poverty due to rising health care costs, loss of housing or income. How can we break this vicious circle between environmental conditions and poverty?
We can break it by preventing people from becoming ill. Currently, 97% of health resources go primarily to curing disease. We invest only 3% in prevention. These percentages must be changed. We have to invest a lot in curing illnesses, but we need to be intelligent in looking after health, as I said before, through all of the ministries and all of our policies. For example, any type of construction project should have to have an impact study on health. A culture of primary prevention would break with this vicious circle.
What would it mean to eradicate a disease?
It would be an injection of optimism. There is no doubt that if we could finally eradicate polio, for example, the injection of optimism would be enormous. But then we would have to go on to eradicate the next disease. We would not be able to rest on our laurels for even five minutes. For the international community I imagine it would be like winning the world cup in football. But eradicating a disease does not mean that the possibility of becoming ill is still not significant because of all the risk factors to which we are exposed. Therefore, we have to reduce them.
Finally, the WHO has stated that violence is a fundamental global public health problem. As it is a complex problem and understanding that there are different forms of violence, what preventive measures stand out to try to tackle it?
Education, education, education. It is clear that a society is what it wants to be. If a boy is taught from childhood that he is superior to a girl or that violence solves problems or is a model in our daily life, obviously that society will develop following those ideas. Personally, this is not the kind of society I want to live in. I believe that education has to raise awareness, and we have to educate everywhere: in the home, at school, on the street, through the media, and on billboards. But without repression, simply educating.
How many people aged over 65 years have difficulties in performing some of
the basic activities of everyday life? In our country, 33% of people aged
over 65 years have problems washing themselves independently.
What percentage of public spending is allocated to elderly people? The
tendency in European countries has been to increase the weight of the
resources allocated to this group.
The Social Observatory of “la Caixa” wonders whether it is possible to
combine concern for the environment with economic growth. This study, one
of the first in its field, shows a positive link between eco-innovation and
the creation of employment, even in periods of recession.
Economic crises bring with them numerous political decisions that affect
healthcare systems. In this article by the Social Observatory of “la
Caixa”, we analyse the effects of the crisis on the reform of the long-term
care system in European countries.
According to this study, the most popular form of gambling among teenagers
is sports betting, and there is a higher level of online gambling addiction
among boys.
What use are young Spaniards making of mobile phones? This study indicates
that 19% are hyperconnected, showing difficulties in controlling the use of
this technology.
Things are becoming increasingly difficult for tax evaders, with the new
big data and artificial intelligence techniques that detect hidden wealth,
the abuse of aggressive tax engineering and money laundering.