To remind of a Paul Krugman point

Something the Good Krugman* once wrote was that economies do have to add up. The specific example was about wages not tracking productivity changes. If this were so then the capital/labour shares of the economy must change. As they didn’t - at the time of his writing they didn’t - then the claim about wages not tracking productivity must, by definition, be wrong. Because economies have to add up, if this happens over here then this other thing, over there, must also be happening. Must, not might, but must. We can therefore look for the evidence of the must happen, erm, happening and if it isn’t we can reject the initial claim.

Adopting from Good Krugman is a good idea - from Bad K not so much. At which point:

Revealed: The true toll of female suicides in UK with domestic abuse at their core

Exclusive: Research suggests official statistics could track as few as 6.5% of the true number of cases

This could be true, it would be appalling if it were.

The number of women who are driven to suicide by domestic abusers is being under-reported, and their cases overlooked by police, in what has been described by experts as a “national scandal”.

Clearly we’d like a test to see if this is, or even could be, true.

If the numbers in Kent reflect the national picture, it could mean as many as 1,500 victims of domestic abuse are taking their own lives every year – up to 15 times as many as previously thought.

Hmm. Can we test this claim? We’re not sure we’ve quite got the hang of this artificial intelligence thing yet but we are at least told that:

In 2024, there were 1,591 registered female suicides in England and Wales

Yes, it’s possible to insist that England and Wales is not the total UK and so on. But add, say, 10% for that? So 1750 female suicides for the UK of which 86% are the result of domestic partner abuse?

We think that’s a very strong claim to be honest. Very strong claims need to be backed by very strong evidence.

Tim Woodhouse, the programme manager and a University of Kent academic, who led the research, said: “We need some sort of national taskforce to get a grip on this.” He added that it was “bonkers that we are basing national estimates on one researcher’s evidence”.

Well, yes. We think that perhaps this requires rather more rigorous testing perhaps? For societies, just like economies, do have to add up.

Tim Worstall

*The standard differentiation is that Paul Krugman is a good to great economist and as a political commentator perhaps not so…..