Beyond 18, at university and college level, student numbers in economics have also been rising rapidly, with the number graduating reaching 9,000 in 2016/17, a rise of over a third in the past six years ago. This has increased the fraction of university-level students taking economics to over 2%, similar to subjects such as politics and accountancy. It is still of course only a tiny 1% of the total population in this age range. If we look in greater detail at just who is taking economics, the selectivity bias is more acute still. At ages 16 to 18, around 22% of economics students are drawn from independent schools, more than double their population averages. At university, around a fifth of economics students are drawn from independent schools. So not only are economics student numbers pretty small, they have a heavy socio-economic slant. 58  The same may well be true of other subjects. 53  National Numeracy (2017) See https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/research-skills-life-survey-2011 Money Advice Service (2017). 56 PSHE Association (2017), Practitioner Survey 57 Perhaps reflecting that, there is strong support among parents for PSHE having statutory status (PHSE Association, Parent Survey). 58 There are also strong gender and ethnicity biases in the study of economics. There are discussed in, for example, Crawford, Davies and Smith (forthcoming), Tenreyro (2017) and Blackaby and Frank (2000). 54 55  14  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  14  Economics also appears to have a heavy regional slant, probably for related reasons.
Andrew Bailey Governor, Bank of England  ©2023 Bank of England