Government statistics on fraud include analysis by age, qualifications, ethnic group etc. for the year 2016

Age Group	Overall (%)	Men (%)	Women (%)
16-24	4.8	4.8	4.8
25-34	7.9	7.1	8.6
35-44	7.7	8.4	7.1
45-54	7.5	6.7	8.3
55-64	6.4	7.1	5.6
65-74	4.9	5.3	4.5
74+	3.3	4.4	2.4

 

You can see from these figures that the age group with the highest incidence of fraud is the 25 – 54 year olds. There could be many reason for this but the most obvious is that this group is likely the most financially active and hence there are more occasions where they can be defrauded.

The separate figures for men and women are roughly the same and show nearly the same pattern by age.

The government statistics also include analysis by marital status and this shows little difference between marrieds and unmarried, except for much lower reports of fraud for widowed people. This is likely to be for the reason that this is largely an older group of people and hence less financially active on average.

The analysis by occupation is interesting in that the greatest incidence of fraud is for those in the professional / managerial group. This may be due to these people being more likely to be involved with investments, overseas properties, visits to major events around the world etc. which create more opportunities to be victims of fraud.

There are various other analyses of the data and the analysis by highest qualification achieved shows highest levels of fraud for those with a degree or equivalent.  This may be due to these people having a higher level of income or can you think of a more likely reason?

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