After its rapturous reception in Britain and America, knives are being sharpened for Slumdog Millionaire. "Vile," is how Alice Miles described the movie in The Times. "Slumdog Millionaire is poverty porn" that invites the viewer to enjoy the miseries it depicts, she adds.
Even that old iconic Bollywood blusterer, Amitabh Bachchan, has thrown his empty-headed two rupees' worth into the mix. "If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," he bellowed. "It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition," he added.
Bachchan is no doubt riled, as many other Bollwood no-talents will be, about the fact that the best film to be made about India in recent times has been made by a white man, Danny Boyle. Just as Spike Lee got hissy with Quentin Tarantino after he proved he could make hipper films about black people than Lee could (Lee ostentatiously criticised Tarantino's use of the word "nigger" while littering his own films with the same language), so many Indians will be upset about a westerner having a better understanding of their country than they do. Bachchan gave one of the worst English-language performances in cinematic history with his embarrassingly stupid portrayal of an ageing thespian in The Last Lear. Having failed miserably at cultivating a western audience, it must hurt him to be so monumentally upstaged by white folk on his home turf.
The bitter truth is, Slumdog Millionaire could only have been made by westerners. The talent exists in India for such movies: much of it, like the brilliant actor Irrfan Khan, contributed to this film. But Bollywood producers, fixated with making flimsy films about the lives of the middle class, will never throw their weight behind such projects. Like Bachchan, they are too blind to what India really is to deal with it. Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema.
Bachchan's blinkered comments prove how hopelessly blind he and most of Bollywood are to the reality of India and how wholly incapable they are of making films that can address it. Instead, they produce worthless trash like Jaane Tu, Rock On!! and Love Story 2050, full of affluent young Indians desperately, and mostly idiotically, trying to look cool and modern.
Slumdog Millionaire is based on the novel, Q&A, by Vikas Swarup. I know Vikas – an Indian diplomat, he loves his country as much as anyone and did it the service of telling its truth with great warmth and humanity. And Danny Boyle's film continues in precisely the same vein. His innovative brilliance, fresh perspective and foreign money was vital. As an outsider, he saw the truth that middle-class Indians are too often inured to: that countless people exist in conditions close to hell yet maintain a breath-taking exuberance, dignity and decency. These people embody the tremendous spirit and strength of India and its civilisation. They deserve the attention of its film-makers. I have no doubt that Slumdog Millionaire will encourage many more honest films to be produced in India. But they should be ashamed that it took a white man to show India how to do it.
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Friday, 16 January 2009
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Time to end the work experience scam
Johann Hari:
We want a Britain where the smart kids pull ahead whoever their parents are
When you get to work today, will your coffee be fetched by an unpaid intern? Have you wangled a work experience placement for your own child? Does your business rest on this bottom layer of the unpaid and unmerited? Then you are part of a scam – one that disfigures and damages Britain.
Today, when a student leaves university and embarks on a job hunt, she often smacks into a wall. Many of the best jobs require her to work unpaid for months on end before she has enough points on her CV to even start applying for paid positions. Automatically, most of the population is ruled out and only the children of the rich remain to pick the juiciest plums.
It nearly happened to me. When I graduated in 2001, I knew I wanted to be a journalist, but I also knew there was no way I could work unpaid for some indefinite period. My parents didn't have the money. I couldn't see a way in. I knew people who had been skivvying in television studios and newspaper offices for six months. One friend of mine was even sleeping at night on the floor of the think-tank where she had been working, unpaid, for nearly a year. Now I was freakishly lucky: after I explained this dilemma to Peter Wilby, the principled editor of The New Statesman, he paid me enough to live on. But huge numbers of people who are more talented than me fell at that hurdle and ended up in jobs that under-use their abilities.
This is happening all over Britain's professions. The wealthy writer (and self-confessed "pushy mum") Rachel Johnson is admirably honest about it. She says: "The truth is getting a job depends almost entirely on getting work experience, which depends almost entirely on whom you or your family knows ... This back-scratching cycle of privilege is the middle-class Circle of Life. So it's all jolly unfair, frankly."
Who does this cheat? Johnson says: "All those students who support themselves through university, only to find out when they leave that the glittering prizes have already been handed out, at a ceremony they never knew was taking place, to the undergraduate with the best connections."
This isn't just bad for the people who are shut out. It is bad for the professions – and the country. Talent is distributed throughout the population – but we are only picking from a tiny tier, based on their parents' bank balance. Imagine if the England football team was made up of the sons of the 1966 winners and their mates. How would they perform? Imagine if films could be cast using only the children of actors. How many talents would we exclude?
We don't have to speculate: a recent study showed just how corrosive nepotism is. Social scientists at the London School of Economics wanted to discover why Britain's productivity was so much lower than many rivals, and they found the single biggest cause was our large number of family-run businesses. By definition, these businesses do not seek out the best person, they simply hand them on to their kids. The LSE researchers wrote: "Half of the difference between British companies [and others] is due to the number of second generation-run businesses ... If you want to ruin your family business, give it to your eldest son."
Nepotism in the professions draws on a slightly wider pool: it is not just your own kids but the children of other rich people. Yet it still debars millions of people of greater merit. This is why you see the same surnames endlessly cropping up in British public life, dripping with mediocrity.
In one of those revealing moments that dramatises the differences that remain between Labour and the Conservatives, Gordon Brown this week proposed to shut this scam down. He wants the Government to pay for three months of work experience for everyone, and six months for people from the poorest families. This would mean that, for the first time, significant numbers of people would be financially able to get on the first rung of the professions. He has commissioned Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, to figure out how to make sure poorer young people have access to the best work experience placements. I think there is a strong case for requiring companies to advertise for applicants, and judge them on merit – just as the public sector does.
The Conservatives have savaged the plan. Chris Grayling, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: "This is all about Gordon Brown fighting class wars." Perhaps it isn't surprising that David Cameron's Tories don't see the problem: when Cameron himself applied for a job at the Conservative Research Department, he didn't get it, so he got his uncle, the Queen's equerry, to call from Buckingham Palace. Then he was hired.
Of course, work experience isn't the only hurdle that prevents kids from normal families getting ahead – but it is a crucial one. Yet right-wing newspapers have denounced the proposals as a "war on the middle class", designed to "persecute" them. This is odd on two fronts. The language of the "middle class" is misleading: the median wage in Britain is £22,000 a year: half of the population earns less, and half earns more. Professionals earning more than £60,000 a year are in the top 7 per cent. They aren't the middle; they're the wealthy. And how is asking their children to compete in an open process based on merit "persecution"?
Nepotism is so unjust that few people try to defend it, but it is worth taking a look at those who try, because they state the assumptions that lie beneath this talk. Adam Bellow (the son of Saul) wrote a book celebrating nepotism as "natural". He is right to say that wealthy parents will naturally want to pass on their privilege – but it is equally natural for everyone else to want their children to have a chance to rise. Why see one of these natural instincts as sacrosanct, yet dismiss the other?
This is a question about what kind of country we want to live in. Do we want a Britain where the smartest kids pull ahead whoever their parents are – or do we want the wealthy to be a separate, self-reinforcing caste, united under the motto "no string unpulled"?
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Don't bank on a caring, sharing recession
There is a constant refrain that hard times will encourage people to look after each other. In fact they bring crime and racism
Chris Dillow
One way that people try to cheer themselves up as the economic climate worsens is by hoping that recession will make us a less materialistic, more sharing nation. It won't. If anything, it will make us nastier and meaner.
Start with the basics. A recession is not the zeitgeist or the new black. It is merely a fall in national income. And a small fall. The consensus among economic forecasters is for real GDP to drop by 1.5 per cent this year. Even if they are wrong - it has been known - and GDP falls by more than 2 per cent, this would be only equivalent, on average, to us all taking a week's unpaid holiday this year. That would be only a mild inconvenience.
How, then, can recession be such a bad thing? Because the pain is not so evenly spread. It falls upon the small proportion of folk who lose their jobs or businesses, or who find it harder to get into work; recession causes job creation to slow as well as job destruction to rise.
Recessions, then, are a minority activity. A study of the last serious downturn by the late Paul Geroski and Paul Gregg, of Bristol University, estimated that the worst-hit 10 per cent of companies accounted for 85 per cent of job losses between 1989 and 1991.
The problem is that few of us know for sure that we will not be in this minority. For most, then, the main effect of recession is not to cause poverty, but insecurity. And when people are insecure and anxious, they care less for others. As Adam Smith said: "Before we can feel much for others, we must in some measure be at ease ourselves." Recessions mean that we are not at ease - and, as Smith recognised, more selfish as a result.
Smith was anticipating Abraham Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs. This says it is only after we have satisfied our basic needs for financial security that we care about others. When our security is in doubt, concern for others takes a back seat.
In his book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Benjamin Friedman, of Harvard University, gives historic evidence for this. He shows how times of economic insecurity, such as the 1880s, the early 1920s or the 1970s, were associated with increasing intolerance, racism and hostility to immigration, while better times led to more liberal attitudes.
The same thing is true for the UK. In the good times of the 1960s, people wore flowers in their hair. When boom turned to bust in the 1970s, they watched Love Thy Neighbour. At the peak of the 1980s boom, 2.2 million voted for the Green Party in the 1989 European Parliamentary elections. In the 1994 elections - after the recession - this slumped to under half a million. So much for recessions making us greener.
They also make us meaner in another way - some of us turn to crime. In September a leaked Home Office report said that a recession would lead to a rise in burglaries. It might have added that the Pope is Catholic.
People commit crime for the same reason that I am writing this article - because the benefits outweigh the costs. In a boom, the costs of crime exceed the benefits for many people. Why go to the hassle of robbing someone when you can make money by working overtime? And the costs of being caught are greater if you are in work; going to prison or doing community service can cost you your job.
But if you are out of work, this calculus changes. If you can't make money honestly, making it dishonestly becomes more attractive. And a big cost of getting caught - the threat of losing your job - disappears.
Unemployment, then, increases the incentives to commit crime. This does not, of course, mean all the unemployed become criminals. We are talking about what happens at the margin. But this margin can be quite extensive. The best research here comes from the US, where economists can look at variations in unemployment by state and so control for nationwide factors such as demography (younger people commit more crime than older ones) or culture. One paper by Rudolf-Winter Ebmer, of the University of Linz, and Steven Raphael, of the University of California, San Diego estimates that a 1 percentage point rise in unemployment is associated with a 4.5 per cent rise in the number of burglaries and 6.5 per cent rise in car theft. A huge chunk of the fall in US crime in the 1990s, they concluded, was due merely to falling unemployment.
There is worse. Recessions can also increase racism. The last one hit black workers harder than whites. Between 1990 and 1992, the unemployment rate among white workers rose by 2.6 percentage points, from 6.8 to 9.4 per cent. But the jobless rate among black people rose by 9.4 points, from 12.5 to 21.9per cent.
In large part this is because black men are, on average, less qualified than their white counterparts and employers prefer to shed less-skilled workers. But it can also be that recessions give bosses freedom to indulge racist attitudes. When the labour market is slack, they can pick and choose more freely who to hire and fire. Guess who gets the dirty end of this stick? Kenneth Crouch of the University of Connecticut has shown that the US racial unemployment gap varies over the business cycle in a manner consistent with the fact that discrimination is easier in recession.
All this means that the standard view is plain wrong. This regards recession as a macroeconomic calamity but a cultural blessing. The truth, however, is the exact opposite.
In macroeconomic terms, recessions are no big deal: even a big one would leave 2009 the third-richest year in British history, and it's an open question whether recessions are good or bad for long-run economic growth. But in ethical terms, the effects of recession are usually pernicious.
Chris Dillow is an economics writer at the Investors Chronicle
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A tidal wave of discontent threatens China
The most famous Chinese dissident predicts the Government will be trapped between the angry poor and the powerful rich
Wei Jingsheng
The whole world is suffering from an economic crisis. Some in the West, like a desperate drowning man clutching at a straw, have said the Chinese Government has a lot of money, let us beg them to save us from the crisis. But they do not realise that the Government in Beijing does not know how to save itself.
China has a $2 trillion foreign currency reserve but it also suffers from a huge disparity between the rich and poor: while 0.4 per cent of the people hold 70 per cent of the wealth of the country, a fifth of the population - more than 300 million Chinese - have daily incomes of less than one dollar. This extreme concentration of wealth is a serious problem for the Chinese Government and threatens its grip on power.
First, it means that there are too few consumers to sustain a domestic market. So "the workshop of the world" is particularly reliant on the fortunes of the world economy. The Chinese Government announced yesterday that exports had fallen at their fastest rate in a decade, declining by 2.8 per cent in December, on top of a 2.2 per cent year-on-year fall in November. China's exporters are collapsing, pulling down other businesses with them. The Government claims that unemployment is running at 4 per cent in urban areas; but the official figures cannot be believed. According to some serious statisticians, the unemployment rate may have already passed 20 per cent. This makes the severity of the economic crisis in China much sharper than in the US and Europe.
Second, growing unemployment and stagnant wages will stoke the rising resentment against the super-rich, threatening the position of the ruling class. The Government regards the tens of millions of peasant workers who will return to the cities after the Chinese holiday season to closed factories and no jobs as an urgent threat. Chinese peasants have a long tradition of rebellion.
Following in the footsteps of the US Government, the Chinese Government in November announced a four trillion yuan ($600 billion) public spending package to get the country out of the slump. But this won't work in China. Because China's Government is not elected by the people its policies are run on behalf of the bureaucratic-capitalist class. Instead of acting in the interests of ordinary Chinese, it will try to save the big business enterprises of the ruling elite. But the owners of these big businesses will simply move their assets to safety outside China.
The evidence can already be seen: from Los Angeles to the shores of Lake Geneva, China's super-rich are anxiously snapping up real estate, paying with cash. The more turmoil there is - as unemployment shakes the social order - the more capital will flee China. This will exacerbate the vicious cycle.
So the Chinese Government is trapped by a terrible dilemma. It can act to help ordinary Chinese (in the manner of Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s) or the bureaucratic-capitalist class. But it cannot do both.
If the Chinese Government does not take a New Deal approach, it risks the Chinese people revolting and overthrowing those in power. Across the country there is mounting evidence of popular discontent turning to violence. According to the Chinese Government there were more than 80,000 "sudden incidents" - its euphemism for protests - in 2006; it is now thought that last year the figure rose to 100,000. This rising tide of discontent is Chinese history repeating itself - the end of each dynasty was marked by a crescendo of violence.
Military suppression cannot work. Soldiers are the relatives of the peasant workers who have lost their jobs; the families of the military officers will also suffer through the economic crisis. But if the Chinese Government does act to protect the ordinary Chinese, the ruling class of big businessmen and bureaucrats will overthrow it, and replace it with a Government that will protect its interests.
The first scapegoat will be Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister. While his tears, most famously seen after the Sichuan earthquake, could fool the average person, they will not fool the bureaucratic-capitalist class. His end is set, except for the timing of his departure.
China has seen many political coups within the ruling class. The most recent examples are from the 1970s. Lin Biao failed in his coup against Mao Zedong in 1971; while Hua Guofeng overthrew the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution in 1976. A political coup within the Communist Party could provide the temporary stability necessary to solve the economic crisis.
But if a solution is not found then the Government will fall. In a democracy, the end of a government is a normal event. However, in a dictatorship it is a matter of life or death. Since Hu Jintao, the President, and Wen took power, changing officials has become bloodier. As part of the political struggle for power more and more officials have been executed or sent to prison - usually under the cloak of punishing corruption. The internal conflict between the various vested interests within the Communist Party is getting bigger with each wanting to make the rival factions scapegoats.
From what I hear from people of all backgrounds from inside China they believe, 20 years on from the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that time is up for the regime - they believe that in 2009 or 2010 the Chinese will reach the limit of their toleration for the Communist Party. One particular case sums up this mood of discontent: Yang Jia, a man who was executed last year for the murder of six policemen he killed as revenge for being beaten, became a symbol of resistance to many Chinese. He was hailed as a hero on many blogs, pro-Yang grafitti appeared across the country and crowds turned up at court to support him during his trial. The popularity of this man from Shanghai illustrates vividly the rebellious mood of the Chinese people. The intensity of this feeling far surpasses the resentment that was directed against Mao's Government in the 1970s or the corruption of the 1980s.
The people of modern China are different from their ancestors: they no longer expect a wise emperor and fair judges to rule over them. They know that only democracy will guarantee what they want: prosperity, security and fair treatment. The Chinese ruling class think this too - that's why they already send their children and their money to the West.
Wei Jingsheng was imprisoned by the Chinese State in 1979-93 and 1994-97 for his human rights activism. In 1997 he was deported to the United States. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1996
China has a $2 trillion foreign currency reserve but it also suffers from a huge disparity between the rich and poor: while 0.4 per cent of the people hold 70 per cent of the wealth of the country, a fifth of the population - more than 300 million Chinese - have daily incomes of less than one dollar. This extreme concentration of wealth is a serious problem for the Chinese Government and threatens its grip on power.
First, it means that there are too few consumers to sustain a domestic market. So "the workshop of the world" is particularly reliant on the fortunes of the world economy. The Chinese Government announced yesterday that exports had fallen at their fastest rate in a decade, declining by 2.8 per cent in December, on top of a 2.2 per cent year-on-year fall in November. China's exporters are collapsing, pulling down other businesses with them. The Government claims that unemployment is running at 4 per cent in urban areas; but the official figures cannot be believed. According to some serious statisticians, the unemployment rate may have already passed 20 per cent. This makes the severity of the economic crisis in China much sharper than in the US and Europe.
Second, growing unemployment and stagnant wages will stoke the rising resentment against the super-rich, threatening the position of the ruling class. The Government regards the tens of millions of peasant workers who will return to the cities after the Chinese holiday season to closed factories and no jobs as an urgent threat. Chinese peasants have a long tradition of rebellion.
Following in the footsteps of the US Government, the Chinese Government in November announced a four trillion yuan ($600 billion) public spending package to get the country out of the slump. But this won't work in China. Because China's Government is not elected by the people its policies are run on behalf of the bureaucratic-capitalist class. Instead of acting in the interests of ordinary Chinese, it will try to save the big business enterprises of the ruling elite. But the owners of these big businesses will simply move their assets to safety outside China.
The evidence can already be seen: from Los Angeles to the shores of Lake Geneva, China's super-rich are anxiously snapping up real estate, paying with cash. The more turmoil there is - as unemployment shakes the social order - the more capital will flee China. This will exacerbate the vicious cycle.
So the Chinese Government is trapped by a terrible dilemma. It can act to help ordinary Chinese (in the manner of Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s) or the bureaucratic-capitalist class. But it cannot do both.
If the Chinese Government does not take a New Deal approach, it risks the Chinese people revolting and overthrowing those in power. Across the country there is mounting evidence of popular discontent turning to violence. According to the Chinese Government there were more than 80,000 "sudden incidents" - its euphemism for protests - in 2006; it is now thought that last year the figure rose to 100,000. This rising tide of discontent is Chinese history repeating itself - the end of each dynasty was marked by a crescendo of violence.
Military suppression cannot work. Soldiers are the relatives of the peasant workers who have lost their jobs; the families of the military officers will also suffer through the economic crisis. But if the Chinese Government does act to protect the ordinary Chinese, the ruling class of big businessmen and bureaucrats will overthrow it, and replace it with a Government that will protect its interests.
The first scapegoat will be Wen Jiabao, the Prime Minister. While his tears, most famously seen after the Sichuan earthquake, could fool the average person, they will not fool the bureaucratic-capitalist class. His end is set, except for the timing of his departure.
China has seen many political coups within the ruling class. The most recent examples are from the 1970s. Lin Biao failed in his coup against Mao Zedong in 1971; while Hua Guofeng overthrew the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution in 1976. A political coup within the Communist Party could provide the temporary stability necessary to solve the economic crisis.
But if a solution is not found then the Government will fall. In a democracy, the end of a government is a normal event. However, in a dictatorship it is a matter of life or death. Since Hu Jintao, the President, and Wen took power, changing officials has become bloodier. As part of the political struggle for power more and more officials have been executed or sent to prison - usually under the cloak of punishing corruption. The internal conflict between the various vested interests within the Communist Party is getting bigger with each wanting to make the rival factions scapegoats.
From what I hear from people of all backgrounds from inside China they believe, 20 years on from the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that time is up for the regime - they believe that in 2009 or 2010 the Chinese will reach the limit of their toleration for the Communist Party. One particular case sums up this mood of discontent: Yang Jia, a man who was executed last year for the murder of six policemen he killed as revenge for being beaten, became a symbol of resistance to many Chinese. He was hailed as a hero on many blogs, pro-Yang grafitti appeared across the country and crowds turned up at court to support him during his trial. The popularity of this man from Shanghai illustrates vividly the rebellious mood of the Chinese people. The intensity of this feeling far surpasses the resentment that was directed against Mao's Government in the 1970s or the corruption of the 1980s.
The people of modern China are different from their ancestors: they no longer expect a wise emperor and fair judges to rule over them. They know that only democracy will guarantee what they want: prosperity, security and fair treatment. The Chinese ruling class think this too - that's why they already send their children and their money to the West.
Wei Jingsheng was imprisoned by the Chinese State in 1979-93 and 1994-97 for his human rights activism. In 1997 he was deported to the United States. He was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1996
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Success isn't written in the stars, it's in the length of your fingers
Take a look at your hands – you will learn a lot about yourself, Cambridge University scientists say
I
t is the simplest hands-on experiment – and, for once, it is safe to try this at home. Compare the length of your fingers and predict your own future.
Everything from sporting prowess to academic ability, sexual orientation to susceptibility to disease can be assessed on the twin measurements of the length of the ring and index fingers. It is science's answer to palmistry.
Researchers at Cambridge University have found that finger length can point to success in the City. Traders with longer ring fingers made the most money – up to six times more than those whose ring fingers were relatively short.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found finger size accounted for 20 per cent of the difference. Though the finding provoked scepticism – one blogger tartly responded, "Scientists with little else to do than measure fingers should pull their own out" – the Cambridge boffins are not alone. The significance of finger length has been investigated by research groups worldwide – with surprising results.
The ratio between index and ring finger is believed to be linked to exposure to the male hormone testosterone in the womb. On average, men tend to have longer ring fingers and women longer index fingers. The higher the testosterone, the greater the length of the ring finger and the more "masculine" the resulting child – whether male or female. The longest ring finger is known as the "Casanova pattern".
Professor John Manning, author of The Finger Book, said the ratio was a "living fossil" of the early period of pregnancy – a measure of past exposure to testosterone, and future potential.
Ring finger longer than index finger
More often found in men than women, people with longer ring fingers tend to excel on the sports field, especially in running and football.
Scientists at the University of Bath found that children who had longer ring fingers are better with numbers-based subjects such as maths and physics, which are traditionally male favourites. A study this week showed autism may be linked with exposure to testosterone in the womb. Autism is sometimes described as the "extreme male brain" and is four times more common in boys than girls. Finger length might provide an early warning of the condition. Canadian researchers from the University of Alberta have found a correlation between length of the ring finger and levels of physical aggression – as would be expected in the most masculinised individuals.
Index finger longer than ring finger
The traditional pattern in women, long index fingers can predict a child's academic strengths. Scientists at the University of Bath found that longer index fingers indicated good verbal and literacy skills, where girls dominate. The findings were published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2007. Studies of sexual orientation have shown that lesbian women are more likely to have longer ring fingers, suggesting exposure to higher levels of foetal testosterone. Professor John Manning said research he had conducted suggested that gay men were more likely to display feminised finger ratios, suggesting less testosterone exposure in the womb.
However, sceptics have observed that twin studies show that 70 per cent of the difference in finger length is inherited from our parents.
t is the simplest hands-on experiment – and, for once, it is safe to try this at home. Compare the length of your fingers and predict your own future.
Everything from sporting prowess to academic ability, sexual orientation to susceptibility to disease can be assessed on the twin measurements of the length of the ring and index fingers. It is science's answer to palmistry.
Researchers at Cambridge University have found that finger length can point to success in the City. Traders with longer ring fingers made the most money – up to six times more than those whose ring fingers were relatively short.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found finger size accounted for 20 per cent of the difference. Though the finding provoked scepticism – one blogger tartly responded, "Scientists with little else to do than measure fingers should pull their own out" – the Cambridge boffins are not alone. The significance of finger length has been investigated by research groups worldwide – with surprising results.
The ratio between index and ring finger is believed to be linked to exposure to the male hormone testosterone in the womb. On average, men tend to have longer ring fingers and women longer index fingers. The higher the testosterone, the greater the length of the ring finger and the more "masculine" the resulting child – whether male or female. The longest ring finger is known as the "Casanova pattern".
Professor John Manning, author of The Finger Book, said the ratio was a "living fossil" of the early period of pregnancy – a measure of past exposure to testosterone, and future potential.
Ring finger longer than index finger
More often found in men than women, people with longer ring fingers tend to excel on the sports field, especially in running and football.
Scientists at the University of Bath found that children who had longer ring fingers are better with numbers-based subjects such as maths and physics, which are traditionally male favourites. A study this week showed autism may be linked with exposure to testosterone in the womb. Autism is sometimes described as the "extreme male brain" and is four times more common in boys than girls. Finger length might provide an early warning of the condition. Canadian researchers from the University of Alberta have found a correlation between length of the ring finger and levels of physical aggression – as would be expected in the most masculinised individuals.
Index finger longer than ring finger
The traditional pattern in women, long index fingers can predict a child's academic strengths. Scientists at the University of Bath found that longer index fingers indicated good verbal and literacy skills, where girls dominate. The findings were published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2007. Studies of sexual orientation have shown that lesbian women are more likely to have longer ring fingers, suggesting exposure to higher levels of foetal testosterone. Professor John Manning said research he had conducted suggested that gay men were more likely to display feminised finger ratios, suggesting less testosterone exposure in the womb.
However, sceptics have observed that twin studies show that 70 per cent of the difference in finger length is inherited from our parents.
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