Department for Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 6 June 2019.
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Buscombe on 21 May (HL Deb, col 1858), on what evidence they base their statement that “inequality has fallen”; and whether they will publish that evidence.
National statistics on income inequality are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication using the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient is an international standard technical measure of how incomes are distributed across all individuals. It ranges from 0% (when everyone has identical incomes) to 100% (when all income goes to only one person).
From 2009/10 to 2017/18 income inequality, measured using the before housing cost Gini coefficient, has fallen by 2 percentage points. See the table below for the annual statistics from 2009/10 to 2017/18.
This data is published annually on the “Households Below Average Income” website on gov.uk.
Year | Income inequality (Gini Coefficient. %) |
2009/10 | 36 |
2010/11 | 34 |
2011/12 | 34 |
2012/13 | 34 |
2013/14 | 34 |
2014/15 | 34 |
2015/16 | 35 |
2016/17 | 34 |
2017/18 | 34 |
Yes2 people think so
No1 person thinks not
Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.