Correlation is not causation, so we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Explanation and sources

The graphic above shows the level of child poverty and joblessness in some of the areas which saw the most rioting from the sixth to the tenth of August according to the Guardian's record of incidents, with the exception of Witney and Westminster which are included for contrast. (Westminster's constituency does include some poorer areas as well as the City of London). This choice was not scientific, and shows some of the areas that have the most child poverty, excluding others such as Ealing and Enfield. A complication of this exercise is that deprivation varies significantly within the areas shown, and that the location of incidents doesn't tell us where people have come from. For example, most of the incidents reported in Bristol took place in the Bristol West constituency, where child poverty is less than half as widespread as in Bristol South.  

Children are legally defined as living in poverty if their household's income is 60 percent below the national average (the median, to be precise). The percentage of children living in these households comes from an End Child Poverty report, and apply to the parliamentary constituencies shown next to the national map, and the (unbracketed) local authorities shown next to the London map.

The figures for cuts show the reduction in local authorities' estimated 'revenue spending power' between fiscal years 2010-11 and 2011-12, and come from the Guardian's Data Blog. The figures for constituencies' unemployment rates and their number of Job Seekers' Allowance claimants come from the Office for National Statistics. The more JSA claimants, the darker the blue on the map of London. I found many of these sources through fullfact.org.

Share this image 

Like most of what we publish online, this image is licensed as creative commons, so do share it as you wish, linking back to this page if you can. If you'd like to include it on your own website you can do so via Flickr. The map of London is crown copyright, and the UK map is by Ras52 [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons