The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Rosie Blau.
Today on the show, why Miami is booming.
And a radio show that's a microcosm of modern Britain.
But first,
Do good grades matter?
Well, you'll be shocked to hear that at The Economist,
many of us really like doing well in exams.
And that's not just because we're all geeks and swots.
It's also because good test scores can be a predictor of earning more and living longer.
And on a national level, a brainier country means more growth.
So it matters that across the rich world, those exam results seem to be in long-term decline.
Today we have new data from the OECD's PISA tests,
tests of 15-year-olds that are carried out every few years in maths, science and reading.
Mark Johnson is a senior editor at The Economist.
The latest data shows that students' abilities in these areas
have fallen very hard over the last three years.
That comes on top of declines that were measured in previous rounds of the PISA testing.
And the cumulative effect is that 15-year-olds today, in maths and reading,