In UK wealth gap 'widest in 40 years'

The gap between rich and poor in the UK is as wide as it has been for 40 years, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns
BBC News Service

The JRF found that households in already wealthy areas had become "disproportionately" richer compared with society as a whole.
But the social policy think tank said the number of "poor" households had risen over the past 15 years.

Since the 1980s, wealthier people have moved to the suburbs while the poor remain in inner cities, the JRF added.

Society polarised
Looking at wealth patterns over the past four decades, the JRF found that the gap between rich and poor actually narrowed in the 1970s. But during the 1980s and 1990s inequality had increased, as a "polarisation" in British society had occurred.

As for the decade beginning in 2000, the report said the picture was "less clear", with some initiatives such as tax and pension credit helping the poor while wealthier people were gaining from a property market boom.

Rich and poor are also less likely to be living next door to one another than in the 1970s, it was reported. See: News - Wealth gap 'widest in 40 years'