ABSTRACT
Geography makes a profound difference. The ease or difficulty of everyday life, the terrain where you live, the community in which you are brought up all make an enormous difference to your life chances and to the kind of person you are able to become. We tend to take the middle-class standards of the rich countries of the North (in Europe and North America) as a norm for child development and education. Yet even within one country, the UK, the variation in the circumstances of children is enormous. Consider the difference, for example, in being a Bangladeshi child in Bradford, or from an upper class family with an estate near Oxford. But at least in the UK, these children will both be fed regularly, they will have access to running water and sanitation; they will have a roof over their heads, a nearby school and a local doctor. For most children in the world, around 60 per cent of them, even these basics do not exist.
