The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Income distribution
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01/05/2020
The coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a proportionally higher impact on the most deprived areas
A new Office for National Statistics release has compared the Covid-19 death rates in England and also in Wales finds that the mortality rate in the most deprived areas is around twice as high as in the least deprived areas.
Category: News stories -
25/11/2019
Benefit payments at historic low
Current benefit payments are at their lowest level since 1948, finds a new report from the IPPR. Further analysis suggest it could even be relatively lower than the Elizabethan Poor Laws.
Category: News stories -
01/02/2016
Books
OUT NOW - the two-volume study based on the findings of the Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK research. Volume 1 examines the extent of poverty and volume 2 the different dimensions of disadvantage. Published by Policy Press on November 29, 2017.
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06/05/2015
Talk is not enough: tackling inequality is now an economic imperative
It has long been recognised that extreme inequality has many serious social consequences, as well as causing economic fragility and weakness - now the time has surely come to act.
Category: News stories -
15/11/2013
Wealthy Scots see fastest income growth
Scotland’s top one per cent of income earners – about 25,000 people – have increased their wages and total income at a greater rate than the rest of the nation’s workers in the past decade, according to a new report by a team at Stirling University.
Category: Reports -
16/09/2013
How to boost the wage share
There has been much debate on the merits of tackling inequality by prioritising ‘pre-distribution` - of attempting to achieve a more equal distribution of the cake before turning to ‘redistribution’ through tax and benefits. Stewart Lansley examines the possible impact of a number of measures on wage levels and the wage share.
Category: Articles -
10/07/2013
Income inequality ‘lowest since 1986’
Income inequality in 2011-12 was at its lowest point since 1986, according to the Office for National Statistics. In its latest annual report on the impact of tax and benefits, it calculates that the Gini coefficient for disposable income in 2011-12 was 32.3 per cent, a fall from its 2010-11 value of 33.7 per cent.
Category: Reports -
01/07/2013
Call to boost wage share in economy
Policy-makers should aim to raise the share of wages in the economy as a key part of efforts to escape from the global economic recession, says a new pamphlet from the Trades Union Congress. It says there is growing evidence that increased wage inequality helped to cause the global crash in the first place, as well as hindering recovery subsequently. It provides estimates of the impact of a range of ‘pre-distribution’ type measures from raising the wage floor to reducing unemployment.
Category: Reports -
29/06/2013
Labour’s record on poverty and inequality
The last Labour government made 'considerable' progress on its chosen objectives of reducing child and pensioner poverty, but had little impact on overall inequality, according to a major study of its time in office (1997–2010).
The 'Social Policy in a Cold Climate' project, being carried out at the London School of Economics, aims to chart developments on a wide range of social issues since 2007 – eventually allowing a detailed comparison between the Labour and coalition governments. A new report from the project summarises five separate studies of the Labour period, including one focusing on poverty and inequality.
Category: Reports -
13/06/2013
Absolute poverty up nearly a million under coalition
The percentage of people living in households with an 'absolute' low income was 17 per cent (before housing costs) in 2011-12 – nearly a million higher than when the coalition government took office in 2010-11 – according to the latest official Households Below Average Income (HBAI) statistical report.
The HBAI report uses three main measures of low income/inequality:
Relative low income – where someone lives in household that receives less than 60 per cent of the average (median disposable) income in the year in question.
Absolute low income – where someone lives in household that receives less than 60 per cent of average (median disposable) income in 2010-11 adjusted since then by inflation.
Income inequality – measured by the Gini coefficient, on a scale from zero (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality).Category: Reports
