It’s that time of year when the ONS updates its famous ‘Basket of Goods and Services’. This time around there’s some notable additions and removals, which once again help to underline changing consumer purchasing behaviour.
Read more on Basket of Goods 2019 – measuring inflation and tracking changing consumer trends
A spate of news stories has claimed that March is one of the ‘deadliest’ months with more deaths occurring over the past five years than in most other months. But as Sarah Caul explains, those numbers don’t quite add up.
Read more on Beware the Ides of March? ONS data reveals which month we are really most likely to die in.
High levels of income inequality have been associated with lower economic growth, poor social cohesion and limited social mobility. But the most effective policy responses need to be informed by the best data. Here Richard Tonkin discusses how the ONS is upgrading its household income statistics to make them more accurate, relevant and accessible than ever before.
Read more on Revealing income inequalities: New data sources shed new light on key policy challenge.
Making ONS statistics more accessible is a key part of the ‘Better Statistics, Better Decisions’ strategy. With the ups and downs of the job market closely followed by experts and non-specialists alike, our reporting of employment statistics is changing to make the information easier to find and the main stories stand out. David Freeman reveals how.
Read more on Transforming how we report employment – why four is better than one
While ONS strategy is focused on making more use of government-held data to improve official statistics , researchers in the Data Science Campus are also exploring the value of social media data. There’s plenty of it and its potential seems obvious. But who is “citizen of the world” and where is “Black Pudding land”? As well as privacy concerns some big limitations in the data need addressing too, conclude Lanthao Benedikt and Emily Tew.
Read more on Can social media data improve official statistics? Not yet, suggests new work on tourism