The richest members of our society get a lot of attention. Much of the public conversation about economic inequality is concerned with, loosely, the top 1%, how different they are from the rest, how they got to where they are, and what, if anything, policy should do about it. It is also a fact that this group is extremely important for the funding of our public services and welfare system, because it pays a large portion of our tax revenues.
The highest-income 1% of adults receive around 14% of national income (see the graph). This share increased significantly in the 1980s as overall inequality increased, but the group pulled further away from the rest throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s (until the financial crisis), even though income inequality across most of the population was actually stable or falling over that period.
But the picture we have of this group is often rather patchy or anecdotal. In part, this is because the types of household surveys on which we typically rely for data on economic inequality, while providing broadly representative samples of most population groups, are known to be unreliable when it comes to capturing data on the very richest. In this note, we use data from HMRC’s income tax records to document some key facts about the highest-income people in the country.
Some key findings:
Robert Joyce, Thomas Pope & Barra Roantree, Institute for Fiscal Studies
(For the IFS’s full report, see bit.ly/30vkCnM.)
The richest members of our society get a lot of attention. Much of the public conversation about economic inequality is concerned with, loosely, the top 1%, how different they are from the rest, how they got to where they are, and what, if anything, policy should do about it. It is also a fact that this group is extremely important for the funding of our public services and welfare system, because it pays a large portion of our tax revenues.
The highest-income 1% of adults receive around 14% of national income (see the graph). This share increased significantly in the 1980s as overall inequality increased, but the group pulled further away from the rest throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s (until the financial crisis), even though income inequality across most of the population was actually stable or falling over that period.
But the picture we have of this group is often rather patchy or anecdotal. In part, this is because the types of household surveys on which we typically rely for data on economic inequality, while providing broadly representative samples of most population groups, are known to be unreliable when it comes to capturing data on the very richest. In this note, we use data from HMRC’s income tax records to document some key facts about the highest-income people in the country.
Some key findings:
Robert Joyce, Thomas Pope & Barra Roantree, Institute for Fiscal Studies
(For the IFS’s full report, see bit.ly/30vkCnM.)