The Problem

We live in an unequal city…

  • Nearly all (92%) of children in Bradway get 5 A -C GCSEs, compared to a quarter of children in Brightside.
  • People living in Crookesmoor die fourteen years younger than those living in Crosspool;
  • In Flower there are around 24 teenage pregnancies per 1000 , less than 5 in Fullwood.
  • Rates of mental health problems are three times higher in Netherthorpe than in Netheredge.
  • In Stubbin and Brushes seventeen babies will die for every thousand born, compared to nine in Shiregreen

Graphs showing correlation between wealth and health in Sheffield

 
The Spirit Level, written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, explains how there’s no benefit to health or happiness to developed countries getting richer. What does matter is the gap between rich and poor. The more unequal the country, the more people think that being rich or poor matters, with the poorest fearing that the rest of society thinks they are worthless, while everyone else is stressed out trying to keep up.
 

2 Comments to “The Problem”

  1. Your information makes the same old suggestion that it is poverty that creates the problems in Brightside, Crookesmoor, Flower, Netherthorpe, Stubbin and Brushes rather than inequality. You fail to make the Spirit Level point that it is inequality that makes ALL levels of society worse off.

  2. It is said above that the gap affects everyone, but agree it could be clearer. It remains the case that those in poverty suffer the problems caused by inequality worse than the well off, that argument might be more familiar but the Spirit Level does much to show *why* relative poverty has such damaging effects.

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