developing good community relations may be neglected. Such statis-
tics may also be subject to manipulation – in our example criminals
may be induced to confess to a string of unsolved crimes they did not
commit, or ‘unsolvable’ crimes may not be recorded.
Another example of the problems inherent in the use of such
performance indicators can be seen in the publication of school league
tables of examination and test performances. The problem here is that
the environmental differences between schools are neglected –
together with the starting points from which their pupils begin. Some
attempts have been made to assess the ‘added value’ by schools but
these have received much less attention than the misleading crude
headline figures.Evaluating policy outcomes: the distribution of wealth and income
We shall discuss briefly here the outcomes of public policies in
modern welfare states such as Britain in terms of equality and justice.
Consider, by way of example, the distribution of wealth and
income. In contemporary Britain, the official statistics on the dis-
tribution of marketable wealth are given in Table 8.1.
Whilst the distribution of income is not quite so dramatically
unequal, 2005/6 UK Official Figures (Office for National Statistics,
2007) still show the bottom 20 per cent of the population receive only
about 25 per cent of the income of the top 20 per cent aftertax and
cash benefits (£13,500 versus £49,300).
In other developed countries published statistics suggest a similar
distribution of both income and wealth. The most striking inequali-
ties however can be seen if the figures from less developed economies
are taken into account as Table 8.2 shows.234 POLICIES
Table 8.1 Marketable wealth in Britain1976 (%) 1986 (%) 1996 (%) 2003 (%)
Most wealthy 1 per cent 21 18 20 21
Most wealthy 10 per cent 50 50 52 53
Least wealthy 50 per cent 8 10 7 7
Source: Office for National Statistics (2006)