Danny Dorling is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He went to various schools in Oxford and to University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He has worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand. With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world.
He has published with others more than 25 books on issues related to social inequalities and several hundred journal papers. Much of this work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. His recent books include, three co-authored texts: "Identity in Britain:
A cradle-to-grave atlas", "The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live" and "Bankrupt Britain: an atlas of social change". Recent sole authored books include, "Injustice: why social inequalities persist” in 2010 and "So you think you know about Britain" and “Fair Play”, both in 2011.
In 2008/9 he was a member of the Academic Reference Group advising Ministers on the Social Mobility White Paper. In 2009 he joined the World Health Organization's Scientific Resource Group on Health Equity Analysis and Research and the advisory group of the Equality Trust. He is a Patron of the charity RoadPeace, an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences and, in 2008, became Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers.
Before a career in academia Danny was employed as a play-worker in children's play-schemes and in pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this by playing with data surrounding people’s lives and representing the results in new, novel and stark ways which usually reveal the inequality of the lives we each live.
1. What’s out of Place in these pictures? Photograph – Phil Fisk, From Dorling, D. (2011) Fair Play, Chapter 12, World’s Apart: How inequality breeds fear and prejudice in Britain, (Bristol: Policy Press) Child Poverty, The National Context Danny Dorling, 23 rd November 2011
21. Those of the world’s 25 richest large countries which are in Europe + USA
22.
23. The UK has a more unequal income distribution than Israel, only three countries of the richest 25 do worse. We are returning to 1918 levels of income inequality:
24. Gridding Londoners Children in families receiving tax credits We see a fractal geography in modern ‘Booth’ maps In areas shaded red more than 84% of children live in families receiving tax credits which are needed to boost their income to a reasonable level: % of Children
25. In the USA the Washington post calculated how much money could be saved by returning to the income differentials of 1970. Here are the UK figures:
26. When poverty and income inequality rise we tend to polarise. Voter segregation now risen for the seventh general election in a row. Only 1918 more segregated than 2010. 2010
27.
28.
29.
30. Income inequality has risen – before & after tax lines below are share of the best-off 1% (‘Injustice’) 2011 2011
31.
32. Politically it is very hard for the last government to blame this one for rising inequalities. Health Inequalities 1999-2008 (summary): Figure 3. Inequalities in life expectancy between areas in Great Britain 1999–2008 Source: Difference between the best and worst-off districts, 1999–2008 (ONS). But health inequalities may have finally fallen slightly in 2009 between areas. Almost everything that could be done to increase them is occurring now. Especially in housing....
33.
34. Rise in anxiety and depression amongst older adolescents in the most unequal affluent countries (source – ‘Injustice’) There was a rapid rise in the number of older school children reporting concerns 2008-2009 before the government cancelled the ‘TellUs’ survey in summer 2010. How anxious would you be now – if you were age 15 today?
![The bottom line ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)