Seven Children — inequality and Britain's next generation
by Danny Dorling
Hurst £14.99

THIS book takes a novel approach to examining how one in three children live in poverty in the sixth-richest country in the world. That country is the UK.

Building on his previous book, Shattered Nation, Dorling drills down to see how seven strata of British children are affected by the poverty and inequality so rampant here.

The seven fictional characters each represent two million children. They do not though include the top privileged 7 per cent.

Dorling’s seven were born in 2018, when Britain faced its worst inequality since the 1930s and became Europe’s most divided nation. They turned five in 2023, amid a devastating cost of living crisis.

The children, Anna, Brandon, Candice, David, Emily, Freddy and Gemma, each represent a day of the week. So the poorest Anna is Monday. She is brought up by her mother, who receives £10,608 a year. That breaks down as £204 a week or £118, once housing costs are taken out.

At the high end is Gemma, who represents Sunday, with a disposable income of £51,000 a year.

The characterisations are an effective way of examining child poverty, though some are more roundly drawn than others.

Housing costs play an important role in impoverishing every child. Dorling points out how 40 years ago the private rented sector was very minor — just 10 per cent of adults rented privately. Rents were low.

Since then, the selling off of council houses and removal of rent controls means that housing has become a huge drain on families across the board. Today, one in nine people are buy-to-let landlords. The sector has become a parasitical device for enhancing inequality in society.

The book is full of shocking facts, like that one in seven children grow up in homes too cold because their parents cannot afford to heat them. Children in 9 per cent of UK households lack access to the internet and one third don’t have at least one week away each year.

Some 43 per cent of adults in the UK don’t pay income tax because they don’t earn enough (below the £12,500 threshold).

Even the height of five-year-olds is falling in Britain, while increasing in Germany and France. These impoverished children cannot afford to go out, so avoid parties. They cannot afford to buy presents.

A killer stat for those opposing extending child benefit beyond two children is that families of three-plus children make up 75 per cent of the poorest 40 per cent of the population. Removing the limit would cut poverty at a stroke.

Dorling warns of a country on the slide, with gross inequality stuck at the same sort of levels for the past 30 years. Britain was most equal in the mid-1970s.

The very rich continue to prosper, while the lot of the poorest and everyone in between continues to decline. It is an unsustainable setup.

Some of the solutions are simple and obvious, such as filling the 648,114 empty homes in England. Dorling points out that if all the rooms available in Britain were shared out equally, no child would have to share a room. Second home owners could be made to pay more.

Dorling asserts there are enough homes to go round if equitably distributed. So there is not a need to build all over the place. Rent controls should return. He suggests investing in the care sector, rather than construction.

Dorling discusses Universal Basic Income, which is being proposed in Wales. He recommends stronger trade unions, so better pay. The outlawing of zero-hours contracts and the like.

In Seven Children he deepens his previous analysis of inequality, with the focus on children. They are the future of the country yet at present are being forced to take the brunt of a bankrupt neoliberal system that increases inequality, poverty and human suffering. It cannot go on.