Statistics
This book begins on page 1: "The seven imaginary children in this book are each a statistical construct. What they have in common is that each was born in the autumn of 2018 in the United Kingdom."
Their birthdays are as follows, chosen partly so that they were born on the day of the week that they are later referred to by, but often (if not always) because there was a particular event on their day of birth in the news that can be referred to in the book. Sometimes parents keep a newspaper from their child’s day of birth.
I have also listed their probable geographical locations in the list below, although these are hardly ever mentioned in the book and at least one of them will have moved home since they were born. Clues to where the children might live now appear in some of the footnotes and via the sources of data used for local information about some regulations and schools.
ANNA
BORN:
Monday
19 November 2018
WHERE:
In Coventry. A footnote about the local paper is a clue.
BRANDON
BORN:
Tuesday
20 November 2018.
WHERE:
Wales is a possibly, but no clue is given in the text.
CANDICE
BORN:
Wednesday
12 December 2018
WHERE:
In London in an area covered by the Booth maps.
DAVID
BORN:
Thursday
29 November 2018
WHERE:
In Northamptonshire – again, a clue appears in a footnote.
EMILY
BORN:
Friday
7 December 2018
WHERE:
Possibly in a village near York, but no clue is given at all.
FREDDIE
BORN:
Saturday
17 November 2018
WHERE:
Possibly in Gloucestershire, and the fourth footnote is a clue.
GEMMA
BORN:
Sunday
2 December 2018
WHERE:
Could be anywhere – Glasgow, Exeter, Chester, Belfast?
Here is some more information about them.
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Questions about necessities
Open or CloseAbility of parents to have the necessities detailed in the HBAI survey (all parents of all children in the UK):
Ability of children to have the necessities detailed in the HBAI survey (all children in the UK):
The allocation of the seven children to the above categories to be representative:
Necessities questions for parents
Questions on the children with answers allocated to the children to sum correctly both nationally and by income group:
The same data shown in another way: 'no' means does not have and would like; '?' means doesn't need:
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Ethnicity of children in Seven Children
Open or Close14 sheets of data about the seven children and the data used in the figures all in one spreadsheet
Finally, the image below shows one of the tables from the HBAI statistics released in March 2024 and how it has been used to produce some of the statistics on the ethnicity of children in Seven Children. The table is as published by the Department for Work and Pensions, except for the parts in yellow.
To understand the table, you have to realise that the numbers being given in the main part of the table are percentages and sum to 100 across each row. The final figure in the right-hand side column of the original table is the total number of children (in millions) that 100% implies for each row. This sums to 14.5 million children as there were more children living in the UK in 2022/23 than the 14 million living there when our seven children were born.
You can download this file here.
Note: there is an error in the statistics on pages 8 and 9 of the book that is detailed in the last page of the excel file.
