Trends

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.

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred since 1997, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data (2009-10).

We estimate that households are about 6% worse off than they might have expected had incomes risen in the normal way.

Current and future governments are committed to reducing the rate of relative income child poverty in the UK to 10% by 2020-21. This paper looks in detail at the progress made towards this goal under the previous Labour administrations.

In this Commentary, we assess the changes to average incomes, inequality and poverty that have occurred since 1979, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred in the latest year of data (2008-09) and since 1996-97.

This election briefing note finds strong evidence of an increase in the rate of severe poverty since 2004-05, mirroring a rise in the official poverty rate, although the rate of persistent poverty does seem to have fallen under Labour, at least until 2007.

This report aims to assess the relative importance of the (many) factors influencing changes in income inequality between 1968 and 2006-07.