Accounting for changes in income inequality: decomposition analyses for the UK, 1978-2008

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

June 15, 2016

Summary:

We analyse income inequality in the UK from 1978 to 2009 in order to understand why income inequality rose very rapidly from 1978 to 1991 but then remained broadly unchanged. We find that inequality in earnings among employees has risen fairly steadily since 1978, but other factors that caused income inequality to rise before 1991 have since gone into reverse. Inequality in investment and pension income has fallen since 1991, as has inequality between those with and without employment. Furthermore, certain household types – notably the elderly and those with young children – which had relatively low incomes in the period to 1991 have seen their incomes converge with others.

Published in

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 78 , p.289 -322

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/obes.12113

ISSN

3059049

Subjects

Notes

Open Acess article

© 2015 The Authors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Related Publications

#523305

News

Latest findings, new research

Publications search

Search all research by subject and author

Podcasts

Researchers discuss their findings and what they mean for society

Projects

Background and context, methods and data, aims and outputs

Events

Conferences, seminars and workshops

Survey methodology

Specialist research, practice and study

Taking the long view

ISER's annual report

Themes

Key research themes and areas of interest