It takes extra effort to engage with those with whom you may be unfamiliar. Often they speak a different language and have different starting points. Sometimes, for understandable reasons, economic matters are not especially interesting for them. The thing that makes these views worth listening to is the very thing that makes them sometimes difficult to hear. One way of listening to the public is through structured surveys of households. Central banks, including the Bank of England, make extensive and increasing use of such surveys – for example, when gauging households’ indebtedness, spending and confidence. They play an important diagnostic role when setting policy. Surveys are not, however, without problems. 46  Tetlock and Gardner (2016). 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  11  One of the most important is that they use pre-determined sets of questions which may be “framed” by experts’ views. If so, survey responses are likely to offer a restricted, often distorted, window on the non-expert world. Framed questions make for answers which conceal more than they reveal. One of the reasons experts have been surprised by how non-experts have behaved recently is because they have been asking closed questions or, worst of all, dismissing answers that do not fit their own view. Avoiding this risk requires you to ask questions which are as open and unpolluted as possible by experts’ priors and prejudices. This comes from listening, rather than just hearing. It comes from engaging in two-way conversation, from genuine dialogue not monologue.
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.