Sunday 14 June 2009

Inequality all over the world

(Click on the table for a larger image)

The world is such an unfair place. The most recent edition of the ONS social trends had a table that reminds us of that fact.

The table looked at demographic indicators from a series of countries located on the Greenwich meridian, including the UK. Once you leave Europe, the further south a country, the poorer the life chances for their residents.

For example, a French woman can expect to live about 24 years longer than her Ghanian sister. In Spain, only 4 new born babies out of a thousand die, while in Mali, that number is 128.

However, there is one number that puts the UK way out in front - population density. We have 248 people per square kilometre, over double the population density in France, and nearly three times that found in Spain.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its very misleading data with such a small sub-selection of countries.

For population density the UK is 52nd out of 238 countries.

List of countries by population density

Alice Cook said...

I am not sure that comparing the UK with Gibralter, San Marino and Barbados is meaningful.

Anonymous said...

And adding the US, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany Singapore would be far more meaningful....

Alice Cook said...

Anon,

The main point behind the post was that the further we move along the Greenwich meridian, the more inequal are the life chances.

In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned population density.

Alice

Anonymous said...

www.isteve.blogspot.com

enlighten yourselves

Anonymous said...

Compare Germany's population density to the UK's, this should help dispell any population density "Supply/Demand" house price inflation justification.

Anonymous said...

I would expect if you separate the different countries of the UK the result would show England much higher than the UK as a whole.

Anonymous said...

Supply/Demand house price inflation?

The issue is nothing to do with population, but everything to with the planning system. It's a completely artificial restriction.