Daniel Dorling’s scientific contributions

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Publications (132)


Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change
  • Book

April 2023

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3 Reads

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17 Citations

Daniel Dorling

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Bethan Thomas

A unique atlas giving a comprehensive picture of the effect of the recession on Britain. Essential reading for a broad audience with a national snap-shot of Britain during this time.



Identity in Britain: A Cradle-to-Grave Atlas

April 2023

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3 Reads

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18 Citations

Danny Dorling and Bethan Thomas have brought together this outstanding atlas to provide us with a unique visual picture of identity and geography combined. Identity in Britain explores our changing identities as we progress from infancy to old age and tells the story of the myriad geographies of life in Britain.


Chapter 2 - At first the infant: ages 0-4

April 2023

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1 Read

At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; Introduction We start this, and each chapter that follows, with a map showing the proportions of people of the relevant age group living in each neighbourhood. This distribution should be borne in mind when studying the maps in the rest of this chapter. The map on the right is clearly only of the locations of infants that applied when the snapshot used throughout most of this atlas was taken in 2001. Note that at the extreme some neighbourhoods have five times as many infants as others. The patterns of age distribution tend to change slowly over time, but those of the very young change more quickly, influenced by trends in the popularity of having children in particular places at particular times for particular groups of people. However, this map most reflects where women of the ages most common to give birth live in their highest numbers. Most people are not average and the same is true of infants. To appreciate this and its implications, babies need to be put into a few categories, homes have to be valued, mothers’ ages must be ascertained, and a scattering of comparisons has to be made. Just from what has been mapped in the introduction to this atlas we can tell that it is, for instance, true that the most common Council Tax Band in neighbourhoods containing 57% of dwellings is Band A or B, and that the second most common modal age band for giving birth in is 30-34. However, in those neighbourhoods where the majority of mothers are in their early thirties, the most common Council Tax Band for properties is Band D (not A or B). What is perhaps most telling is that there are no neighbourhoods in which most mothers give birth at age 20-24 where the modal Council Tax Band of property is Band D, E, F or G. Furthermore, by Band A and mother’s age, almost all infants living in areas where the most or the second most new mothers are in their early twenties are born in Wales, Scotland or the north of England.


Chapter 5 - Then a soldier: ages 25-39

April 2023

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1 Read

... then, a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth; Introduction Below is the extremely distinctive geography of those in the middle (fourth) stage of life: the mid-years of 25-39 that can be just as clustered into particular enclaves of London as are their younger counterparts into university student lands as shown on page 88. As you read on try to remember that there are differing numbers of people in their midlife in each place, although in most places between one and two fifths of the population are aged between 25 and 39. In the pages that follow we show what is typical and the rates for people of these ages, but these refer to far more people within London than almost anywhere else and only to a small minority of the population who spend these years of life in more coastal and rural environments. If childhood and infanthood are the years before, and young adulthood the years in between, by ages 25-39 you have truly arrived. Welcome to the world. You are your own person and your life is soon half over. We call these years the midlife. Most people become parents at these ages; more and more do not. Very few now live with or look after elderly relatives in their own home, but many are carers of others outside of their home. And these are also the first years in which age begins in earnest to catch up with you. In some places it catches up far faster than others. More than one in eight people in midlife in Glasgow, and only in parts of Glasgow, have a health status usually associated with old age. This is so stark that we highlight it first, in Figure 5.1 opposite, as it needs to be borne in mind throughout the pages that follow, and it also lays some foundations for what we later see in the next stage of life.


Conclusion: merely players?

April 2023

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2 Reads

Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. (Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, in Niall Rudd, ed, 1981, Johnson’s Juvenal: London and the vanity of human wishes, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press) Introduction Britain is a land of clichés, stereotypes and presumptions. There is some truth in most and we have not tried to dismiss many here. We may well be augmenting many and adding new ones. After all, after Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson is one of the most quoted of English writers, so we are continuing quite a few traditions. There are many limitations to stereotyping and we will list a few next, but very few people (to stereotype) have, or can have, a wide grasp of both the variety and monotony of the human geography of this country simply from having experienced it through actual travel. Our sources of information may be limited to a few administrative files and a short form completed by most households at the turn of the millennium, but it is surprising to find how many people, especially academic geographers, do not know who else most commonly lives where they live or where they study; think that they are normal when they are often very much better rewarded than the average person; and think that things, such as social mixing, occur much more than they actually can and do. Thus while there is some truth in most clichés and stereotypes, some understandings of the current busy, crowded life in Britain, let alone China or Peru, are badly misinformed. Different things are also true for different people in different places. What might be a good area to grow up in as an infant can easily be the dullest of villages to experience as a teenager, out of your price bracket and imagined environment of desire as a young adult, to be aspired to later in life and then rejected again even later. The same places can look very different when seen through the eyes of people in different life stages, from the point of view of men or of women, and depending on their personal, household and family circumstances in turn. We have tried to show a little of this variety by considering each life stage in turn.


29 - Air accidents

April 2023

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11 Reads

This is a sub-category of deaths due to external causes (Map 5) and includes deaths from powered and unpowered aircraft (for example, gliders, hot air balloons). Note that we are mapping where people were living at the time of their death, not their actual location of death. The cluster of high SMRs in the north of Scotland reflects the use of small aircraft to travel between remote places and islands. Almost nine out of ten of these deaths are of males, probably reflecting the fact that men vastly outnumber women as both civilian and military pilots. Air accidents are a very rare cause of death, but because air crashes often have dramatic outcomes, when they do occur they garner a lot of attention. Take-off and landing are the times when air accidents are most likely to occur. The majority of aircraft accidents are of private planes and helicopters. In the UK the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, an independent part of the Department for Transport, investigates all civilian air crashes. Although the amount of air traffic has been expanding in recent years, the number of air accidents fell to an all-time low in 2007 (The Times, 3 January 2008). Europe is the safest continent for air travel. The well-known maxim that flying is the safest form of transport for travelling long distances is indeed correct. Thomas Selfridge was the first person to die in an air accident, in Virginia, USA, in 1908. Orville Wright survived the crash.


Introduction: seven stages

April 2023

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20 Reads

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His Acts being seven ages. One hundredth of the world is an island, the island of Britain. One hundredth of the world of people, that is. What does this stage look like if we try to view all the players? Imagine the island were reconfigured so we could easily view it all from the air, just below the clouds. Space out everyone equally. An hexagonal arrangement is best. And give them each 50 coloured placards. The kind of placards you see used in mass games. Then ask the crowd a question to which the correct answer for each is just one of their 50 colours. What would you see? It might be a little confusing. What questions would be relevant to all? Start again. Take just the children. Just the school-age children. Arrange them as a map of Britain in which each is given roughly equal space and has 50 placards. Now ask them: how are they doing at school? What kind of home do they live in? What do their parent(s) do? That makes a little more sense. Different questions make sense to different age groups. There is little point in asking a teenager about retirement. But too many age groups and the answers will not be that different. For old time’s sake let us choose seven stages and play out our acts on them. For an encore we will briefly bring everyone back on at the end. But what is it that we wish to see on these seven stages? What questions do we want to ask? Well, let us start at the beginning and ask a simple one: are they all merely players? Do all men and women have their part to play, their exits and entrances to make and by and large perform as the playwright directs? Can you see evidence of the stage directions from how they move about the stage? Do they show any signs of autonomy or are they just delivering the lines that have been given them? To what extent are most people merely players?


Chapter 8 - To end this strange eventful history: aged 75+

April 2023

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4 Reads

... last Scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. Introduction And so to a final stage of transition, from old age to death, via the years of being truly elderly, which for statistical convenience more than biological import we label here from age 75. These are the years in which almost nobody is in paid employment, in which almost nobody is caring for children, in which good health is not to be expected, and years that, until very recently, we almost all did not expect to reach. Now a majority of men (63%) at current mortality rates can expect to reach age 75 from birth. But of those who do make it to 75, a quarter are dead by 80, over half by 85, four out of five by 90, 95% by 95 and 99% by 99. In contrast, three quarters (75%) of women at current rates can expect to make it to age 75 from birth. Of those, 20% are dead by 80, 40% by 85, two thirds (68%) by 90, 90% by 95 and 97% by age 99. Given these survival rates, the Queen should be sending almost three times as many birthday telegrams to women aged 100 as she does to men. Below left we show the simple geography of those aged 75+. This is the last of our maps of the basic distribution of the seven ages of life. Note here, for the last time, the continued exodus to the coasts, but now especially the south coast, along the length of which the truly elderly, who are likely to survive a little longer than most, flock to. However, as the evidence from earlier years should make abundantly clear, it is not the clement weather that helps them live a little longer on the southern coast but privileges earlier in life. The graph opposite continues the graph started on page 208. The left-hand axis shows the percentage of the truly elderly who can expect to die each year given mortality rates in Britain (200204). The right-hand axis shows the growing proportion of that population who are female as a result of these differences in rates.


69 - During surgery, medical care

April 2023

This is an external cause of death. See also Map 52 Other external causes, which includes complications relating to surgery and medical care. The highest rates are found in Scotland. Whether this is an artefact of different ICD coding of hospital deaths is not known. However, given that Scotland tends to have poorer health than the remainder of Britain, it is likely that surgical outcomes could well be poorer. Scotland also had far more hospital beds and hence more surgery taking place over the period studied here than other areas of Britain. Other clusters of high rates are found in Tyneside, around Birmingham and Manchester. This is a relatively rare cause of death (on average, one per day) that is evenly distributed among men and women. Many of the cases are due to unavoidable risks of the particular surgery undertaken. Some of the cases are due to errors by surgeons, anaesthetists and other medical personnel. Others can be due to adverse reactions to drug treatment. Much depends, however, on how sick the patient was at the time – a fitter, healthier patient being likely to have better survival chances than a very frail one. Additionally, the complexity of the surgery itself is also a factor; emergency surgery carries a higher risk than elective. The dramatic increase in people undergoing cosmetic surgery may see rates rise in the future, and see the average age decrease. Stella Obasanjo, the first lady of Nigeria, and Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives Club, both died while undergoing cosmetic surgery.


Citations (3)


... These depict local authorities approximately proportional in size to their population. The shapefiles for the cartogram were originally created byDorling and Thomas (2011). ...

Reference:

The spatialities of ageing: Evidencing increasing spatial polarisation between older and younger adults in England and Wales
Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change
  • Citing Book
  • April 2023

... There are substantial inequalities in mortality and life expectancy in England, strongly linked to levels of deprivation (Kleinow et al., 2019). This is seen at a regional level, but also at much smaller scales, such as between and within wards 1 (Shaw et al., 2008). Mortality rates among homeless people are particularly high. ...

The Grim Reaper's Road Map: An Atlas of Mortality in Britain
  • Citing Book
  • April 2023

... This paradox causes a territorial inequality of access in the same country, even if there is a National Public Health System. Such difference has been described as a 'postcode lottery' that contributes to social and spatial disparities, because people's access to public services is determined by the postcode area in which they live [60]. These differences should not exist, since the Italian Constitution provides the right for the Essential Levels of Care in equal measure on all national territories. ...

Identity in Britain: A Cradle-to-Grave Atlas
  • Citing Book
  • April 2023