Channel 4 is airing a documentary telling Jamie Oliver’s powerful personal story of dyslexia in Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution. It highlights the challenges that people with dyslexia face engaging in education and how more needs to be done to support them.
Jamie approached PBE with a simple question – what does this failure to support people with dyslexia cost the UK economy? A simple question that was surprisingly tricky to answer. We found there was a shortage of reliable data relating specifically to individuals with dyslexia which makes precise evidence difficult to pin down. There is also the challenge of deciding which impacts to include – are we talking about the costs to public services, the lost GDP in the economy or the lost quality of life that the individuals’ experience. What can we say with the evidence available?
One useful indicator of the economic costs is the gap in wages that those with dyslexia experience compared to people that don’t have dyslexia. This gives an idea of the lost economic output that could be gained if, as a society, we were able to support people with dyslexia to reach their full potential.
We estimate that the average person with a “severe or specific learning difficulty” like dyslexia earns around £8,000 less per year compared to someone with no disabilities. This difference starts with the hourly wage rate – data from the Office of National Statistics suggests that the average person with a “specific learning difficulty” earns 20% less than the average non-disabled person – this is the equivalent of £3.20 less every hour they work. Given that people with disabilities generally work fewer hours (29.5 hours per week compared to 33.5 for non-disabled individuals), it could add up to as much as £157 less per week. This means that average annual pay for those with severe and specific learning difficulties is likely to be around £19,156 compared to £27,332 for non-disabled people.
To understand the total economic costs, we also need to understand how many people’s earnings are impacted by this. The same ONS data says that there are 175,000 people in employment that have a “severe or specific learning difficulty” – this is a lot lower than the estimated total of more than 5 million adults in the UK living with dyslexia, suggesting the data is picking up only a proportion of the total number impacted. However, to keep the estimate consistent and cautious we will use this far lower ONS number.
This would suggest that lost earnings for those with a “severe or specific learning difficulty” like dyslexia of around £1.4bn per year. This provides a rough estimate of the scale of lost economic output from this group of individuals. It not only has consequences for the individuals themselves, but also the wider public finances. The lost income tax and National Insurance that would be paid on this income is worth around £600 million per year – a significant impact at a time when public finances are stretched.
More evidence is needed to understand the scale of economic costs in more detail. The numbers provided here are likely to represent just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more people that are thought to live with dyslexia than are being picked up in the ONS data. The sheer weight of numbers is likely to add significantly to the total costs. And that’s before we even get started on the fact that just 30% of those with these conditions are in work (compared to 77% of non-disabled people).
However, even with the evidence we’ve got, it appears that the cost of failing to support those with dyslexia to reach their full potential is significant. With more data and research these estimates can be refined but already the case to provide more support seems compelling.