Monday, June 22, 2020

Inequality and the Pandemic

Lower-income households are using savings and borrowing more during the coronavirus lockdown, while richer families are saving more as eating out and trips abroad are banned.
That's according to research from the Resolution Foundation, a think tank.
Lower-income households are twice as likely as richer ones to have increased their debts during the crisis, it said.
"Pre-coronavirus Britain was marked by soaring wealth and damaging wealth gaps between households," said George Bangham, economist at the Resolution Foundation. "These wealth divides have been exposed by the crisis. While higher-income households have built up their savings, many lower-income households have run theirs down and had to turn to high-interest credit."
Wealth gaps across the country have also grown, with London and the South East accounting for 38% of all wealth between 2016 to 2018, up from 32% a decade earlier. Wealth inequality remains almost twice as high as income inequality, it adds.

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