In 2016, there were over 500 confirmed cases of measles, five times higher than at the turn of the century. If we turn from public health to economic and financial health, the costs of a lack of public trust and understanding are in many respects quite similar: expert advice and services may not be taken-up, worse alternatives may be sought out and contagious scare stories may be allowed to proliferate. Each of these has societal costs which may be significant. Financial exclusion (people excluded from access to core financial services and advice) remains pervasive in the UK. There are almost 2 million people in the UK without a bank account. 26  In the most deprived parts  (including parts of London, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Bradford, Birmingham and Glasgow), over a third of people do not have access to a bank account. 27  While not all of these problems can be  blamed on a misunderstanding and mistrust of finance, these are still depressing statistics. Many more people suffer the consequences, not of financial exclusion, but financial illiteracy. Studies have identified a range of ways in which this can adversely affect people’s financial health. Financial illiteracy is a key contributor to excessive indebtedness. in the run-up to the sub-prime crisis. 29  28  It is associated with an increased incidence of default, including  And illiteracy causes people to seek out high-cost, non-standard  sources of credit, the financial equivalent of alternative medicine.
Fifty years ago, there were almost half a million suspected cases annually of measles in England and Wales. In the following year, a vaccination for Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) was introduced in the UK. Cases of measles fell dramatically, by the mid-1990s reaching fewer than 10,000 per year. In 1998, a widely-publicised article appeared in The Lancet linking the MMR vaccine to autism and bowel disease. 24  News of these findings spread as contagiously as measles itself. In response, rates of MMR  vaccination, which had peaked at over 90%, fell to 80% by 2004. 25  The scare had socially, as well as  clinically, contagious consequences for public health, causing lower rates of vaccination against un-related diseases. Only recently have rates of MMR vaccination returned to their late-1990s highs. The 1998 MMR study has since been comprehensively discredited and the lead author struck off as a doctor. Yet the costs of this episode are still being felt. Rates of measles infection began rising in the UK from the  21  ING-Economics Network Survey of the Public’s Understanding of Economics (2017). YouGov / Post Crash Economics Society Survey (2015). 23 ING-Economics Network Survey of the Public’s Understanding of Economics (2017). 24 Wakefield et al (1998). The article has since been retracted. 25 Public Health England, The National Archives. 22  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  early 2000s and only recently have cases peaked.