{"id":6266,"date":"2017-12-03T13:18:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T13:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=6266"},"modified":"2022-09-11T22:15:44","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T22:15:44","slug":"the-rich-poor-and-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=6266","title":{"rendered":"The rich, poor and the earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The most important benefit of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Equality-Effect-Danny-Dorling\/dp\/1780263902\/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1512305802&amp;sr=1-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the equality effect<\/a> may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging. <!--more-->The evidence for this is only emerging now. We can track the effect across a range of indicators by looking at the 25 richest countries in the world, which have varying levels of inequality. Sometimes comparable data does not exist for all of these countries and we have to consider just a subset, as is the case when looking at the proportion who cycle or walk to work everyday in each country:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6267\" style=\"width: 614px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6267\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6267\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/figure-4-15_med.png\" alt=\"Relationship between income inequality and walking and cycling to work\" width=\"604\" height=\"471\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/figure-4-15_med.png 604w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/figure-4-15_med-300x234.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-6267\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Relationship between income inequality and walking and cycling to work<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The measure of inequality used here is the ratio between the incomes of the best-off 10 per cent of households and those of the worst-off 10 per cent. It is clear that some rich countries are substantially more unequal than others, ranging from the most unequal \u2013 the US \u2013 to the most equal \u2013 Denmark. So what is the environmental effect of living in a country in which households are economically unequal as compared to living in one in which the economic differences are far smaller? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/books\/equalityeffect\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The book<\/a> from which this article is drawn is able to track the effect in detail across 11 different indicators.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6015\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/The-Equality-Effect--192x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/The-Equality-Effect--192x300.png 192w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/The-Equality-Effect--768x1202.png 768w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/The-Equality-Effect--654x1024.png 654w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/The-Equality-Effect-.png 1630w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Economic inequality is now being found to be linked to more and more damaging effects, ranging from high pollution to lower education attainment, especially in mathematics and problem solving. People in more economically unequal countries find it much harder to solve not just mathematical puzzles but also how to better organise their societies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5849\" style=\"width: 615px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5849\" class=\"size-large wp-image-5849\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/MathsAbilityAged16_24-1024x631.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"605\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/MathsAbilityAged16_24-1024x631.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/MathsAbilityAged16_24-300x185.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/MathsAbilityAged16_24-768x474.png 768w, https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/wp-content\/files\/MathsAbilityAged16_24.png 1894w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 605px) 100vw, 605px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5849\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maths ability for those aged 16 to 24 in 2012<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?page_id=6262\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more from this article<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/books\/equalityeffect\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">read more<\/a> about the equality effect in general.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most important benefit of the equality effect may be that it leads us to behave in ways that are less environmentally damaging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6266"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9142,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions\/9142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}