Country case study - UK

Published on 1 September 2011

The UK recently experienced its deepest recession since the Second World War, during which GDP fell by over 6 per cent between the first quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009. We would naturally expect these falls in national income to have consequences for UK households' living standards. In this chapter, we examine how earnings, employment and household incomes evolved immediately before, during and after the Great Recession in the UK.

The UK recently experienced its deepest recession since the Second World War, during which GDP fell by over 6 per cent between the first quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009. We would naturally expect these falls in national income to have consequences for UK households' living standards. In this chapter, we examine how earnings, employment and household incomes evolved immediately before, during and after the Great Recession in the UK.

Authors

Luke Sibieta

Research Fellow

Luke is a Research Fellow at the IFS and his general research interests include education policy, political economy and poverty and inequality.

Robert Joyce

Deputy Director

Robert is a Deputy Director. His work focuses on primarily on the labour market, income and wealth inequality, and the design of the welfare system.