Friday, 12 July 2013

Muslims, benefits and teenage pregnancies: the perils of perception

The scale of our collective error is startling, as a new survey by Ipsos MORI shows.

People are wildly wrong when we ask them about many aspects of life in Britain. It’s perfectly understandable that we don’t having a precise image of who lives here and the extent of key social issues - but the scale of our collective error is startling, as highlighted in a new survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London.

Just to pick out three: on average, we think 24% of the population are Muslims – when the real figure is around 5%; we think 31% are immigrants – when the official figure is 13%; and we think 36% are aged 65+ - when in fact only 16% are.

Continue reading from New Statesman


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