Should we care about inequality? This short film shows the differences between rich and poor in the UK and how this has changed over the past 50 years. The film is produced by Econ Films for the Centre for Economic Performance. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and uses data from the Office for National Statistics, British Household Survey and Institute for Fiscal Studies. For more explanation, see the follow-on film: http://tinyurl.com/m9m4234 For more details, please visit: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/ Selected sources: -A recent survey asked a group of over 3,000 British citizens how they think income is divided in the UK [SOURCE: British Social Attitudes Survey] -When asked, three out of every four people said they thought inequality was too high [SOURCE: British Social Attitudes Survey] -Total household income of the UK -- that's around £900 billion [Based on 29.5 million taxpayers in the UK. SOURCE: 'Racing away? Income inequality and the evolution of high incomes', http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn76.pdf] -Based on the latest data for the year 2012, once taxes have been paid, benefits added, and adjustments made for whether people live alone or as part of a family, this is how income is divided. This is the actual inequality of household income in the UK [For details on how inequality is calculated, see: http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/about.php] - We can now show how the UK's wealth of around £10 trillion is shared. [SOURCE: Chapter 2, 2012 report, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/was/wealth-in-great-britain-wave-2/2008-2010--part-2-/report--chapter-2--total-wealth.html.] -Data on social mobility. SOURCE: Blanden, J, A Goodman, P Gregg, and S Machin (2004), 'Changes in Intergenerational Mobility in Britain' - Data on income and wealth inequality is combined from the Office for National Statistics and the Institute for Fiscal Studies [Living standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK:2013http://www.ifs.org.uk/comms/r81.pdf ]

• published: 13 May 2014
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