Seven Children Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation
If we found seven typical 5-year-olds to represent today’s UK, who would they be? What would their stories reveal?
Seven Children is about injustice and hope. Danny Dorling’s highly original book constructs seven ‘average’ children from millions of statistics—each child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Dorling’s seven were born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europe’s most socially divided nation. They turned 5 in 2023, amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Their country has Europe’s fastest-rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged. Yet aspirations endure.
Immersive, surprising and thought-provoking, Seven Children gets to the heart of post-pandemic Britain’s most pressing issues. What do we miss when we focus only on the superrich and the most deprived? What kinds of lives are British children living between the extremes? Why are most British parents on below-average income? Who are today’s real middle class? And how can we reverse the trends leaving all children worse off than their parents?
Geographical ‘Book of the Year’
‘Fleshing out what inequality means for families across the income spectrum, Seven Children settles a highly topical question: should we focus on poverty or inequality? Dorling shows, in compelling detail, both that children suffer from a deeply unequal society and that too many grow up in destitution.’ — Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Inequity
‘Essential reading … Of all the books I’ve read this year, Seven Children has stayed with me so intensely it feels like a form of haunting.’ — Kate Womersley, The Observer
If we found seven typical 5-year-olds to represent today’s UK, who would they be? What would their stories reveal?
Seven Children is about injustice and hope. Danny Dorling’s highly original book constructs seven ‘average’ children from millions of statistics—each child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Dorling’s seven were born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europe’s most socially divided nation. They turned 5 in 2023, amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Their country has Europe’s fastest-rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged. Yet aspirations endure.
Immersive, surprising and thought-provoking, Seven Children gets to the heart of post-pandemic Britain’s most pressing issues. What do we miss when we focus only on the superrich and the most deprived? What kinds of lives are British children living between the extremes? Why are most British parents on below-average income? Who are today’s real middle class? And how can we reverse the trends leaving all children worse off than their parents?
Geographical ‘Book of the Year’
‘Fleshing out what inequality means for families across the income spectrum, Seven Children settles a highly topical question: should we focus on poverty or inequality? Dorling shows, in compelling detail, both that children suffer from a deeply unequal society and that too many grow up in destitution.’ — Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Inequity
‘Essential reading … Of all the books I’ve read this year, Seven Children has stayed with me so intensely it feels like a form of haunting.’ — Kate Womersley, The Observer
If we found seven typical 5-year-olds to represent today’s UK, who would they be? What would their stories reveal?
Seven Children is about injustice and hope. Danny Dorling’s highly original book constructs seven ‘average’ children from millions of statistics—each child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Dorling’s seven were born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europe’s most socially divided nation. They turned 5 in 2023, amid a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Their country has Europe’s fastest-rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged. Yet aspirations endure.
Immersive, surprising and thought-provoking, Seven Children gets to the heart of post-pandemic Britain’s most pressing issues. What do we miss when we focus only on the superrich and the most deprived? What kinds of lives are British children living between the extremes? Why are most British parents on below-average income? Who are today’s real middle class? And how can we reverse the trends leaving all children worse off than their parents?
Geographical ‘Book of the Year’
‘Fleshing out what inequality means for families across the income spectrum, Seven Children settles a highly topical question: should we focus on poverty or inequality? Dorling shows, in compelling detail, both that children suffer from a deeply unequal society and that too many grow up in destitution.’ — Sir Michael Marmot, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Inequity
‘Essential reading … Of all the books I’ve read this year, Seven Children has stayed with me so intensely it feels like a form of haunting.’ — Kate Womersley, The Observer