The neighborhood of Santa Clara and the neighborhood of Polígono Sur, both in Seville, are only a few kilometers apart, but the realities in both seem to belong to two different countries. At least at a demographic level. This is clearly seen in the V Report of the Andalusian Inequality Observatory, which leaves a more meaningful comparison than any table of data: if we are talking about life expectancy, Santa Clara would be comparable to Japan (84 years), while Polígono Sur would be more like Kim Jong-un’s Korea (74 years).

But the most surprising thing is not the numbers, but the reasons.

Tell me where your neighborhood is… And I’ll tell you about life expectancy. Interested in the differences recorded within the same city, Inmaculada Caravaca, emeritus professor of Human Geography at the University of Seville (USA) and coordinator of the Inequality Observatory report, recently asked herself: “Why? Does this mean that when I am born, I am statistically more likely to die earlier than another person in the same city?”

To answer such a mystery, a group of experts joined forces and analyzed in detail the demographic data of the area, “zooming in by neighborhood,” as the University of Seville puts it.

Analyzing big citiesThe study covers 12 Andalusian cities with a population of more than 100,000 and focuses on census segments, which allows researchers to analyze aspects such as education levels, unemployment data, average income per household or mortality rate.

“The study is the first time that multiple cities in Andalusia have jointly investigated socio-spatial segregation patterns,” the US said, before touting the value of its data for preventing “the chronicity of poverty”.

So what does the report show? Within the same city, neighborhoods can have different life expectancies. Very different. The 80-page Inequality Observatory study found, for example, “an urgent gap” in neighborhoods like La Piñera, Saladillo or La Yesera in Algeciras. Here, “a high mortality rate was detected compared to the rest of the city,” the report’s authors note, although the report notes that its population is younger.

But if there is one particularly important case, and one that the University of Seville has focused on, it is the city of Seville, where experts have come across a revealing piece of information: life expectancy in poorer neighborhoods is nine years less than in their richer neighbors.

Tokyo and Pyongyang are in the same city“The difference between Santa Clara, the area with the highest life expectancy according to the Municipal Health Plan, and Polígono Sur is 8.8 years,” the report states. Going into detail and analyzing the data with the map at hand, the experts confirmed how the indicators that reveal the “very high mortality rate” are concentrated in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of Seville, such as Polígono Sur, Torreblanca or Tres Barrios. A friend of .

The United States offers an even more striking comparison: Santa Clara’s population would have the same life expectancy as Japan, where the indicator shows 84 years at birth, while the South Polygon’s is more similar to North Korea (74).

Beyond numbers. Although the figures are striking, the report coordinated by Caravaca goes further and leaves behind a “devastating” reading, as the US itself admits: “It shows that living conditions depend not on personal merit but on structural social conditions such as family income, education level and especially postal code.”

“Inequality has deadly consequences,” emphasizes Sonia Díaz of Oxfam Intermón, who coordinated the report with Caravaca: “The level of stress you experience, the size of your home, the climate, your living conditions shape access or delay in education levels, entry to the labor market, lifestyle, ability to afford expenses, physical and mental wear and tear and, finally, premature death.”

Resistance to inequalityThe data could also lend itself to another reading, equally emphatic, in which Ibán Díaz, professor of Human Geography in the US and contributor to the report, emphasizes the “structural nature” of inequalities. “Discrimination and inequality tend to reproduce themselves in history.” At the end of the day, Caravaca recalls, neighborhoods in Seville that were disadvantaged three decades ago are still in the same situation today.

The Seville incident. The city of Seville is an interesting example because it is home to some of the poorest neighbourhoods in Spain. The urban indicators report published by INE in 2023 warned that this report included the six municipal sub-districts (SDCs) with the lowest annual income. The “top 15” also included the regions of Alicante, Madrid, Córdoba, Malaga and Murcia. The lowest income was seen in Polígono Sur, in the South region of Seville, with 5,816 euros, at least in 2020.

The US also points out that INE data shows that the capital of Andalusia presents “one of the most extreme inequalities” in the entire region. As an example, and to illustrate how the average income in the richest households is four times that of the most disadvantaged areas, it gives two examples: Tabladilla-La Estrella (El Porvenir) and Torreblanca. In the first, the family income is around 75,000 euros, while in the second it is only around 14,000 euros.

Image | Taisia ​​Karaseva (Unsplash)

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