Mortality among street youth in the UK.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Adolescent↗
Biomedical subjects
D Dorling
Publications and source records attributed to D Dorling.
Mapping and analysing 200 years of the census.
"The 10th of March 2001 will mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first census of population and should be an opportunity to look back not merely at the history of census-gathering but at the development of the population, economy and society of the British Isles. [We describe] a major university-based project led by ourselves and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and other bodies.... The project is supported by ONS [Office for National Statistics] and one of our central goals is to create an historical social atlas for publication at the bi-centenary."
Censuses↗
Visualizing changing social structure from a census.
"In this paper it is shown how new visualization techniques are being used to analyze the first results of the British 1991 Census and other large data sets." The focus is on new ways to show how localities develop over time. The author suggests that this cannot be done effectively using traditional quantitative techniques. "Pictures are needed to show how different processes occur in different places, and holistic patterns need also to be seen without generalizing out the detail. Neither traditional thematic mapping nor commercial geographic information systems can do this well. Spatial visualization is an alternative approach in which the researchers choose what they wish to see and how they wish to view it. Many problems require new methods of visualization for their exploration. A new census presents us not only with new statistics, but also with the opportunity and impetus to develop radically different ways of envisioning information to reveal more fully the human facts contained within a mass of social statistics."
Censuses↗
The detailed human geography of Britain.
"This article contains eight cartograms which help to provide answers to a variety of social and demographic questions about modern Britain. How English is England? How is the pattern of birth-places changing? Is there a north-south divide in the nation's health? Are the inner cities less healthy than rural areas? Has the changing pattern of unemployment eroded the economic divide between north and south? How do the various political, social and demographic patterns of modern Britain relate to each other?"
Demography↗
"I'm all right, John": voting patterns and mortality in England and Wales, 1981-92.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between voting patterns, deprivation, and mortality across England and Wales. DESIGN: Ecological study. SETTING: All the electoral constituencies of England and Wales. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Combined and sex specific standardised mortality ratios. RESULTS: For the years surrounding the three elections of 1983, 1987, and 1992 overall standardised mortality ratios showed substantial negative correlations of -0.74 to -0.76 with Conservative voting and substantial positive correlations of 0.73 to 0.77 with Labour voting (all P < 0.0001). Correlations were higher for male than female mortality. Conservative voting was strongly negatively correlated (r = -0.84) with the Townsend deprivation score, while Labour voting was positively correlated (r = 0.74) with this. Labour and Conservative voting explained more of the variance in mortality than did the Townsend score. In multiple regression analyses for the 1992 election Labour voting (P < 0.0001), Conservative voting (P < 0.0001), the Townsend score (P = 0.016), and abstentions (P = 0.032) were all associated with mortality. Labour and conservative voting explained 61% of the variance in mortality between constituencies; when Townsend score and abstentions were added this increased to 63%. CONCLUSIONS: Conservative and Labour voting are at least as strongly associated with mortality as is a standard deprivation index. Voting patterns may add information above that provided by indicators of material deprivation. People living in better circumstances and who have better health, who are least likely to require unemployment benefit and free school meals or to rely on a state pension in old age, and who are most able to opt out of state subsidised provision of transport, education, and the NHS, vote for the party that is most likely to dismantle the welfare state.
England↗
The ghost of Christmas past: health effects of poverty in London in 1896 and 1991.
OBJECTIVES: To compare the extent to which late 20th century patterns of mortality in London are predicted by contemporary patterns of poverty and by late 19th century patterns of poverty. To test the hypothesis that the pattern of mortality from causes known to be related to deprivation in early life can be better predicted by the distribution of poverty in the late 19th century than by that in the late 20th century. DESIGN: Data from Charles Booth's survey of inner London in 1896 were digitised and matched to contemporary local government wards. Ward level indices of relative poverty were derived from Booth's survey and the 1991 UK census of population. All deaths which took place within the surveyed area between 1991 and 1995 were identified and assigned to contemporary local government wards. Standardised mortality ratios for various causes of death were calculated for each ward for all ages, under age 65, and over age 65. Simple correlation and partial correlation analysis were used to estimate the contribution of the indices of poverty from 1896 and 1991 in predicting ward level mortality ratios in the early 1990s. SETTING: Inner London. RESULTS: For many causes of death in London, measures of deprivation made around 1896 and 1991 both contributed strongly to predicting the current spatial distribution. Contemporary mortality from diseases which are known to be related to deprivation in early life (stomach cancer, stroke, lung cancer) is predicted more strongly by the distribution of poverty in 1896 than that in 1991. In addition, all cause mortality among people aged over 65 was slightly more strongly related to the geography of poverty in the late 19th century than to its contemporary distribution. CONCLUSIONS: Contemporary patterns of some diseases have their roots in the past. The fundamental relation between spatial patterns of social deprivation and spatial patterns of mortality is so robust that a century of change in inner London has failed to disrupt it.
Cause of Death↗