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Comment by arethuza | Hacker News Reader

Scotland is a tiny country but it never ceases to horrify me at the depth of the social and health divisions between different parts of the country, Scotland is often described as the "sick man of Europe" and Glasgow in particular has a remarkably bad life expectancy - the "Glasgow Effect":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect

I can strongly recommend Darren McGarvey's Poverty Safari a personal account of a deprived childhood on the outskirts of Glasgow.

Edit: Something I find grimly fascinating is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) and its interactive map visualisation:

https://simd.scot

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Thanks for sharing that map it's fascinating. Quite eery that knife-shaped area of orange/red in the west of Edinburgh from Sighthill into Haymarket - it is so pronounced and so contained between the train lines. I used to take the bus out from the city to Heriot-Watt University and both 25 and 34 routes zig-zag through that area and it's a bit grim. Playing 5-aside in the pitches at Sighthill was also a fun adventure.

I worked at Riccarton for a few years and cycled from Leith - had a few late night "adventures" including someone throwing a brick at my head, which fortunately missed.

While this is most pronounced in Glasgow, this is something that's seen at smaller but significant levels throughout the UK (outside of Scotland), so I don't think it's particular to that country. Wales, Northern Ireland, and the north of England (Liverpool and Manchester are specifically mentioned in the Glasgow effect Wikipedia article) have similar stories.

The comparison to Liverpool and Manchester is that Glasgow sees worse life expectancy despite similar climate, population, wealth etc.

Yup. It brings them up as similar, but less severe comparisons.

I commented because I thought the implication that Glasgow/Scotland is anomalous seemed odd, rather than simply being the extreme low-point in a general regional trend.

The Glasgow effect is notable because it’s not explained by the usual factors of poverty. If you graph life expectancy vs poverty, Glasgow is an outlier, an anomaly from the trend line.

There was a recent study which suggested that Glaswegians’ higher risk of premature death was caused by rehousing skilled workers in new towns, and leaving the poorest behind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jun/10/glasgow-effec...

In the US one of the most persistent areas of poverty and opioid abuse (Appalachia) was largely settled by Scots displaced during the 18th Century. I wonder if anyone has done any research into a correlation, it not there's at least a master's thesis in it for some sociology student somewhere.

Thomas Sowell digs into this in his book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals"

quote from the book's Wikipedia page:

Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture, which is claimed to be "authentic black culture", is actually a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which existed during the antebellum South. This culture came, in turn, from the "Cracker culture" of the North Britons and Scots-Irish who migrated from the generally lawless border regions of Britain.

That reminded me of Slatestarcodex excellent review of „Albion’s Seeds“:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-se...

That is a great book review.

I don't want to make this overtly political but there is often good news on https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/

The Scottish Government is at least trying to address the problems with some degree of success and a certain amount of innovation, which the posts on the above blog often feature. However there is clearly a long way to go.

> Scotland is often described as the "sick man of Europe"

Off topic. So I thought the "sick man of Europe" was used exclusively to describe the Ottoman Empire and dig into this and turns out there has been multiple countries in different eras called the "sick man of Europe". Read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe

> Scotland has been called "sick man of Europe" several times, but for health reasons instead of economic.[26]

Haven't seen this data in the form of an interactive map before.

For anyone else wondering "Geographic Access" is based on public transport times to selected public services. This is outline in the methodology documentation [0].

[0] https://www2.gov.scot/simdpublictransport

Something similar to SIMD for England is the Atlas of Variation: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/atlas-of-variation

Fingertips also provide a range of useful information: https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/

I’ll add my recommendation for “Poverty Safari”, it’s an eye-opening read.

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