Research Digest #3:The lives of the other four fifths—out now

Submitted by Hector Rufrancos on 12 October 2011

Today marks the third release of our Research Digest series. Unlike previous releases this is comprised of original research done by freelance researcher Anna Barford.

This digest deals on how living standards, education, health and social mobility vary across quintiles (fifths) of the income distribution in the UK.

Read the Research Digest

Some of the key points from the Digest are:

• Social gradients: incremental increases in income correspond to incremental improvements in outcomes.
• Distribution: households in the richest quintile earn almost 15 times more than those in the poorest quintile. Tax and benefits reduce this difference to just over 4 times more.

• Perceptions: people tend to misperceive which income group they are in.

• Health: richer groups have a lower risk of mental illness. Poorer groups have higher prevalence of obesity and eat less fruit and fewer vegetables.

• Possessions: as groups get richer they have more and bigger cars. Better off groups also have more household insurance than their poorer counterparts.

• Education: as parents become more professional, their children have more academic qualifications.

• Gender: when individuals’ rather than household incomes are compared, women are disproportionately found in poorer income groups whereas there are more men in richer groups.

• Social mobility: over a 10-year period very few people moved between the top and bottom income quintiles.

Read the rest of the digest PDF

There are wide disparities on living conditions across the income distribution. In particular this research shows that there has been very little social mobility in the last decade.

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As always we welcome all feedback on the digests.

The lives of the other four fifths by Anna Barford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at equalitytrust.org.uk/digest3-launch.