Inequality and the UK Riots

Aoife Ní Lochlainn: Amongst the acres of news coverage devoted to the UK riots, comes an interesting piece of work in the Guardian, ‘Mapping the Riots with Poverty’. Using Indices of Multiple Deprivation which are published by the Department of Communities and Local Government, the researchers mapped poverty and the location of the riots. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the incidents took place in or adjacent to the poorest areas. Elsewhere in the Guardian, Nina Power looks at the riots in the context of child poverty and inequality, writing that Haringey (the borough that includes Tottenham,) has the 4th highest level of child poverty in London. Over at the New Economics Foundation Blog, riot-related discussions centre on inequality and how our ‘materialist economics’ encourages us to work and thus yearn for ‘tat’.

Posted in: Inequality • Inequality

Tagged with: poverty • inequality

Dr Aoife Ní Lochlainn

Aoife Ni Lochlainn was a policy analyst with TASC. She holds a doctorate in economic history from the European University Institute in Florence.