Reduction in UK consumption of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes by young people - numerical example

A report out yesterday from the Health and Social Care Information Centre shows a dramatic fall in the consumption by young people (aged 11 to 15) of our favourite demerit goods – alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. The report suggests that over the last decade regular smoking fell from 9% to 3% of 11- to 15-year-olds. Regular alcohol drinking dropped from 25% to 9%. Drug use has halved from 12% to 6% over this 10 year period.This, of course, is very good news with regards to the relative health of our youth. As an economics teacher the first question I would ask my students is how this downturn has been achieved? What has happened either within the market or with government intervention to shift consumption in this way? It could be argued that this represents the most successful example of government intervention into markets to change behaviour and can be attributed to regulation, restriction of use and good old education! Information failure does not appear to have had an impact and the political will to succeed has been fairly uniform among the major parties in power.For me, of course, it also offers the opportunity to do the next in my series of numerical activities in preparation for the arrival of the new specifications in 2015!

The table below may represent a typical chart shown in an exam. In the past, questions would have revolved around trends and interpretation. The new specs, with their emphasis on quantitative methods may use the data in a different way. In this case, I’m going to ask a question about averages.

Set this as a task for your students:

Task: Calculate the mean usage rates for people aged between 11 and 15 year for the consumption of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes in both 2003 and 2013.

Extract A: %age of people using illegal drugs over the last year

Extract B: %age of people smoking cigarettes in the last week

Extract C: %age of people drinking alcohol in the last week

My assumption here is that the new assessment will use data like this by starting with a question asking the students to work out the average consumption of the 3 goods before leading on to other questions about trends and government intervention.

We're hoping to include examples like this as many times as possible over the next academic year - trying to get economics teachers to look at ways of taking current data and asking students to make calculations.

The answers are: