Inequality in the UK

 The wealth of the richest one per cent of households is more than 230 times that of the poorest 10 per cent.

The top 1 per cent of households have wealth of more than £3.6m each, while the top 10 percent hold 43 per cent of all the wealth in Great Britain.

This is compared to the household wealth of £15,400 or less for the poorest 10 per cent. 

Among the poorest 10 per cent of households, almost half held more financial debt than they did assets.

The figures according to new analysis from the Office of National Statistics reveal that the richest people in the UK have household wealth that is around 233 times higher than the wealth of some of the poorest in society.

Krishan Shah, a researcher at the Resolution Foundation, reacted to the figures, saying: “With wealth inequality remaining high and unchanged, this means that Britain’s huge absolute gaps in wealth have continued to grow.

The UK’s household wealth found that the median wealth in the South East was the highest in the country, at £503,400. This figure – once adjusted for inflation – has risen by 43 per cent since 2006. Comparatively median household wealth in the northeast stood at £168,500.

Some regions, such as the northeast and Scotland, have seen a decrease in wealth compared to the previous period of April 2016 to March 2018. They both experienced an inflation-adjusted fall in wealth of 7 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.

London also experienced a large decrease of 8 per cent, while the east of England and the west Midlands saw the largest growth – of 14 per cent and 13 per cent for each. 

Households whose ‘household reference person’ [main respondent to the survey] is of white ethnicity are four times more likely to have wealth in excess of £500,000 than households with a black African reference person. Pakistani and Indian households are less likely to hold pension wealth, with home ownership being more important in their asset holdings.

Total net wealth was calculated using four main components. These were “net property” (the value of your house or flat minus mortgage debt), “physical” (household contents, vehicles etc), private pension, and “net financial” (sum of your total savings or investments).

Researchers at the London School of Economics, Arun Advani and Hannah Tarrant, argued that the ONS figures had underestimated the share of wealth going to the richest households and that the analysis failed to account for business wealth.

Wealth of the richest 1 percent more than 230 times that of the poorest 10 percent, ONS says | The Independent