In the 2023/24 financial year, various measures of inequality in the United Kingdom are higher than in the late 1970s. The S80/20 ratio increased from ****to ***, the P90/10 ratio from ****to ***, and the Palma ratio from *** to ***.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the wealthiest one percent of people in the United Kingdom controlled 71 percent of net personal wealth, while the top ten percent controlled 93 percent. The share of wealth controlled by the rich in the United Kingdom fell throughout the twentieth century, and by 1990 the richest one percent controlled 16 percent of wealth, and the richest ten percent just over half of it.

This GLA Intelligence Update takes a brief look at evidence around the wealth gap in London and examines how this has changed in recent years. Key Findings There is a significant gap between the rich and poor in London, both in terms of their wealth and their income. A higher proportion of the wealthiest households are in the South East of England than in London. Pension wealth accounts for more than half the wealth of the richest ten per cent of the population. In London, the tenth of the population with the highest income have weekly income after housing costs of over £1,000 while people in the lowest tenth have under £94 per week. The gap between rich and poor is growing, with the difference between the average income for the second highest tenth and second lowest tenth growing around 14 per cent more than inflation since 2003.

The overall wealth of households in the United Kingdom was **** trillion British pounds in the period between 2020 and 2022. Of this overall wealth, the top ten percent of households had over *** trillion pounds of wealth, compared with **** billion owned by the lowest wealth decile.

Percentage of total wealth owned by households in each decile for London and Great Britain. Data extracted from the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) microdata. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more.

Dataset of long-run data on wealth inequality drawn from existing sources and compiled into a single country-year dataset.

Ratio of household equivalised income of the top 10 per cent of households to the income of the bottom 10 per cent of households. Ratio calculated using weekly household income adjusted to take account of differences in numbers and ages of residents. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Development strategy. Click here to find out more.

The attached file includes data and code used to analyse population scaling and house size in the ancient Near East.

Historical dataset showing U.K. income inequality - gini coefficient by year from N/A to N/A.

Proportions and numbers of children, working age adults and pensioners in Scotland in absolute and relative poverty. Also contains figures on the distribution of household income. Source agency: Scottish Government Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Poverty and Income Inequality in Scotland

In 2024, the United Kingdom's Gini coefficient score was 34.1, an increase when compared with the previous year. The Gini coefficient is a measurement of inequality within economies, a lower score indicates more equality while a higher score implies more inequality.

Average UK household incomes taxes and benefits by household type, tenure status, household characteristics and long-term trends in income inequality.

This article provides an initial insight into key measures of household income and inequality, along with analysis of how these measures have changed over time. Source agency: Office for National Statistics Designation: National Statistics Language: English

Between 2019 and 2023, people living in households in the Asian and ‘Other’ ethnic groups were most likely to be in persistent low income before and after housing costs

What does the data show?

The data shows the S80/S20 income quintile ratio from the UK Climate Resilience Programme UK-SSPs project. The data is available for each ONS NUTS3 shape simplified to a 10m resolution.

The S80/S20 ratio is a measure of the inequality of income distribution. The ratio is the total income received by the 20% of the population with the highest income (the top quintile) against the total income received by the 20% of the population with the lowest income (the bottom quintile).

The data is available for the end of each decade. This dataset contains SSP1, SSP2, SSP3, SSP4 and SSP5. For more information see the table below.

Indicator

Inequality

Metric

S80/S20 income quintile ratio

Unit

Ratio [unitless]

Spatial Resolution

NUTS 3

Temporal Resolution

Decadal

Sectoral Categories

N/A

Baseline Data Source

OECD 2011

Projection Trend Source

Stakeholder process

What are the naming conventions and how do I explore the data?

This data contains a field for the year at the end of each decade. A separate field for 'Scenario' allows the data to be filtered, e.g. by scenario 'SSP3'.

To understand how to explore the data, see this page: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/457e7a2bc73e40b089fac0e47c63a578

Please note, if viewing in ArcGIS Map Viewer, the map will default to 2020 values.

What are Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)?

The global SSPs, used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, are five different storylines of future socioeconomic circumstances, explaining how the global economy and society might evolve over the next 80 years. Crucially, the global SSPs are independent of climate change and climate change policy, i.e. they do not consider the potential impact climate change has on societal and economic choices.

Instead, they are designed to be coupled with a set of future climate scenarios, the Representative Concentration Pathways or ‘RCPs’. When combined together within climate research (in any number of ways), the SSPs and RCPs can tell us how feasible it would be to achieve different levels of climate change mitigation, and what challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation might exist.

Until recently, UK-specific versions of the global SSPs were not available to combine with the RCP-based climate projections. The aim of the UK-SSPs project was to fill this gap by developing a set of socioeconomic scenarios for the UK that is consistent with the global SSPs used by the IPCC community, and which will provide the basis for further UK research on climate risk and resilience.

Useful links: Further information on the UK SSPs can be found on the UK SSP project site and in this storymap.Further information on RCP scenarios, SSPs and understanding climate data within the Met Office Climate Data Portal.

Individual-level estimates of total wealth (July 2010 to March 2020) and regression estimates for the latest survey period.