Top 10 Misconceptions by the British Public

Photograph by puamelia

The belief of the British public seem to be at odds with the facts on a number of social issues according to a recent survey for Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London.

The constant coverage of these topics by the British press is likely to have caused much of the confusion, with frontpage stories being conflated with more general trends, but the size of the discrepancies between belief and reality are notable.

Research firm Ipsos Mori contacted 1,015 people aged 16 to 75 by phones to establish their beliefs, with the following among the top ten misconceptions.

Teenage Pregnancy

On average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%.

Crime

58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.

Job-Seekers Allowance

29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn).

Benefit Fraud

People estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100.

Foreign Aid

26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn).

Religion

We greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales.

Immigration and Ethnicity

The public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups).

Age

We think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are.

Benefit Bill

People are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households.

Voting

We underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% actually did.