Seven Children

Suppose you chose seven typical children to represent todays UK. Who would they be? What would they reveal? Seven Children is about hidden realities of injustice and hope. In his highly original, thought- provoking new book, inequality writer Danny Dorling constructs seven average children from millions of statisticseach child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket. From the poorest to the wealthiest, Dorlings seven children were born in 2018, when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression and became Europes most socially divided nation. They turned 5 in 2023, amid a devastating cost- of-living crisis. Their country has Europes fastest- rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged. Yet aspirations prevail, and change is possible. Immersive and intimate, this book gets to the heart of post-pandemic Britains most pressing economic, social and political 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 those two extremes? Who are todays real middle class? And what if tomorrows challenge isnt spiralling inequality, but how to reverse the new trend that leaves all children worse off than their parents?