Elke Hausmann is a salaried GP in Derby
Danny Dorling is a professor of geography and a Fellow of St Peter’s College at the University of Oxford. According to Wikipedia, ‘In February 2006, Dorling’s work in human geography was described as “rummaging around” in numbers, crunching his way through reams of raw data, building up an extraordinary picture of poverty and wealth in contemporary Britain’.1
He has done exactly that again, and admiringly so, in his latest book ‘Seven Children – Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation’.
This book is unusual in that its starting point is lots and lots of statistical data, references for which can be found in an extensive section towards the end of the book. Dorling manages to transform the data into a fictionalised and very readable story about seven contemporary UK children and their lives.
…not only will you get a better appreciation of society as a whole, you will also understand better where you find yourself within that society.
Essentially, he has used data about disposable income after housing costs for the whole UK population, divided this into seven chunks from lowest to highest income, and has then taken the median figure for each chunk to use as a template to represent his seven children’s economic background. It is actually quite a complicated process, and there is lots more information about how he has done that, what decisions he has had to make, and why he thinks this works best, in the lengthy appendix.
‘The seven imaginary children in this book are each a statistical construct. What they have in common is that each was born in the autumn of 2018 in the United Kingdom. This was when the UK was at its most unequal; a more unfair place to be born within than any time since the early 1930; and more unequal than anywhere else in Europe (p.12).
This book is really important and relevant if you want to understand inequality. A key point is that while they are often used interchangeably, ‘inequality’ and ‘poverty’ are actually very different concepts. Politicians often like to talk about lifting people out of poverty; it sounds good, and we can all get behind that – it’s usually about ‘them’, not ‘us’. But what they don’t talk about is inequality. While poverty will only ever affect some of us, inequality will always affect all of us. Inequality is about the society we live in, and about our place within that society. ‘Think of society as a cloth. If you pull it tauter and tauter, the gaps between the threads – between the rich and the poor – will get wider. If you listen carefully, you can begin to hear parts of society’s fabric ripping’ (p.427). And that will affect all of us, up to the very richest. If you can’t think of any examples for that, there are plenty in the book.
As GPs, we are likely to have more exposure to people from diverse economic backgrounds than many. But that does not necessarily mean that we are any better than other people at judging where we are in the social and economic hierarchy. Most people compare themselves to other people of similar economic means – and we always tend to look towards the people with more, which can seriously skew our understanding of how many there are with less.
Monday’s child does not reflect the poorest children in our society. There are about 7% of households that are poorer. But neither does Sunday’s child reflect the richest – there are 7% who are richer. A majority of doctors (of course not all) will find themselves in households with a much higher income than Sunday’s child’s, if nowhere near the highest 1% (those are truly off the scale now). That in itself may be quite a revelation for some. I remember 20 years ago when I did graduate entry medical school, how fellow students compared their projected income unfavourably with that of friends who decided to work ‘in the city’. You never heard anyone compare themselves to friends working in less lucrative sectors.
Dorling shows that while remaining a country of very high inequality, the UK overall is getting poorer…
So not only will you get a better appreciation of society as a whole, you will also understand better where you find yourself within that society. And while Dorling’s children all ‘live’ at one particular point in time, his format also allows him to discuss the lives of people who were born at different times, as well as across time, by referring to his children’s parents’ or grandparents’ stories: to illustrate how lives in the UK have changed over time, for better, or – more commonly these days – for worse.
Dorling shows that while remaining a country of very high inequality, the UK overall is getting poorer, which affects people at every income level. That has many effects which he discusses in detail, from politics to health. You will come away with an awareness of how large a proportion of children in the UK are now living in poverty, and what that means for them, especially at a time when even some of the more affluent parents are now also worrying about money.
This is a really important book. It is easy to read, it’s relatable, it will help you understand where you are situated in the grand scheme of things, and where your patients, who will be coming from all sorts of different walks of life, fit in. It will make you think, which is always the measure of a great book.
Featured Book: Danny Dorling, Seven Children – Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation, C.Hurst & Co., London 2024, ISBN 9781911723509, £14.99
Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Dorling [accessed 1/5/25]
Photo by Super Straho on Unsplash
