Exciting opportunity in Dunedin Study findings
On the face of it, the results were not a surprise. The Dunedin Study – the landmark longitudinal assessment of the lives of 1000 people born in the city in 1972-73 – this week announced its latest finding was that a small portion of our population was a disproportionate weight on society. They committed by far the most crime, claimed the majority of welfare benefits and were more likely to smoke and be overweight, researchers said. The numbers showed that about 20 per cent of the study’s participants accounted for 80 per cent of its economic burden.
The research drew a causal link between this cost and childhood disadvantage. Again, no surprises. The crucial part was that they found that neurological tests done when participants were three years old could predict with ‘‘reasonable accuracy’’ who would grow up to be part of the 22 per cent who were responsible for, at a glance, 81 per cent of criminal convictions, 78 per cent of prescriptions filled and 66 per cent of benefits paid. This burdensome few scored lower on verbal comprehension, language development, motor skills and behavioural tests as pre-schoolers.
‘‘The strong connections uncovered in this study between brain health and economically burdensome outcomes encourage nations to invest in their so-called greymatter infrastructure,’’ researchers said. The problem in New Zealand, and elsewhere, has been that ‘‘grey-matter infrastructure’’ is a hard sell. ‘‘Tough on crime’’ is much easier and gets you votes.
Encouragingly, the country’s new top political pairing have form in shunning this sort of short-termism. Incoming Prime Minister Bill English has led a wholesale reform of the public service from the finance portfolio, based in part on smarter spending through data analytics. Predictive risk modelling has already been proffered as a way to identify and help vulnerable children and stop abuse and welfare dependency turning into criminality. It wasn’t always popular – a plan to apply modelling to newborns was particularly controversial – but the change mantra has stuck. After English, its biggest champion has been his new deputy, Paula Bennett, a veteran of a host of social services portfolios.
Here, the Dunedin Study ably complements what the Government wants to do. The latest research is a template, not a fully realised recipe for reform, and researchers have noted their work was ‘‘based on only one cohort in one part of the world’’, and should be replicated. Other academics have noted the Dunedin Study draws on a localised sample group now aged in their 40s, and could not account for contemporary factors such as ethnicity and migration. Still, it is valuable research in a politically delicate field done by experts committed to rising above the rhetoric.
‘‘We are aware of the potential for misusing these findings, for stigmatising and stereotyping,’’ the researchers said. ‘‘But there is no merit in blaming a person for economic burden following from childhood disadvantage. Instead, ameliorating the effects of childhood disadvantage through early-years support for families and children could benefit all members of a society by reducing costs.’’
In February, English lamented the lack of progress made by public sector programmes in curbing social ills such as domestic violence. ‘‘We are at a stage where some of those results are starting to flatten out,’’ he said. Here is a gold-plated opportunity to get things moving again.