From silver to gold — the rise in inequality

The influential think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies has produced a briefing note on ways in which economic life has changed in the UK between the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 and the Diamond Jubilee this year.

Up to 1977, income inequality had been on a long-term downward trend, a trend which, as it happens, turned around towards the end of the 1970s.

The 1980s saw a historically unprecedented increase in inequality — an increase which has not been reversed since, despite the very substantial growth in the benefit and tax credit budget in the 2000s.

There are numerous ways of illustrating the way in which the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. In 1977, a person in the top 10% of the income distribution had an income 1.7 times as high as a person in the middle of the distribution and three times as high as a person in the bottom 10% of the distribution.

By 2009–10, a person in the top 10% had an income more than twice the median and more than four times as high as the person in the bottom 10%.

The figures for those at the very top are even more dramatic. The income share of the richest 1% has nearly trebled. Even after tax, the richest 1% of households took home nearly 9% of all income in 2009–10 compared with 3% in 1977.

www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn128.pdf