Seminar Series 13: Lecture 5 - Danny Dorling

Inequality and Scotland - measures of despair and signs of hope

Prof Dorling says: "In late 2016 we learnt that life expectancy is no longer rising in Scotland. For the first time since records were published in 1861 life expectancy for both women and men did not rise. After 2012 it appears to stall at 81.1 years for women and 77.1 years for men. This is part of a wider trend seen across the UK, and in the USA, but not in other countries in Europe or elsewhere in the world. There is now mounting evidence of falls in life expectancy taking place for particular groups in our societies. Why have things become worse here?

The talk described recent trends in inequality and health in affluent countries and suggest that the UK and USA have become very unusual compared with global trends - with Scotland suffering as a result. There are signs of hope that people in these two, no longer very united, states are now beginning to realise that the growth of inequalities has caused, and is still causing, widespread harm. Signs of hope from elsewhere in the world where inequalities in many other places are much lower and/or falling will also be explored. 

What is happening in the UK and the USA is the exception, not the norm and that in some ways it is the end of a forty-year experiment to test the supposed benefits of promoting inequality, in which we (and especially people in Scotland) have been the guinea pigs. The experiment is unlikely to end well as those who have most benefited from it seek to preserve as much inequality as they can."