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The Changing Picture of Earnings Inequality in Britain and the Role of Regional and Sectoral Differences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Mark B. Stewart
Mark B. Stewart*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
*
E-mail: Mark.Stewart@warwick.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This paper examines differences in inequality between regions and between sectors of the economy. The growth in overall inequality since the mid-1990s is found to have been driven primarily by that in London (with a smaller difference for the South East and East Anglia) and by that in the financial sector (with a smaller difference for the business activities sector). While these differences for London and the financial sector overlap to some extent, they also have significant separate influences once each other is controlled for. The changes in inequality in the rest of Britain and in the other sectors of the economy are numerically small and statistically insignificant.

Keywords

Earnings inequalitywage inequalityregional wage differencessectoral wage differencesinequality trendsJ31D31C31
Type
Research Article
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 218 , October 2011 , pp. R20 - R32
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

The author is grateful to the Office for National Statistics for permission to use the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data, made available through the Low Pay Commission. Responsibility for the analysis and interpretation of the data rests with the author and not the ONS or the LPC. Helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper were received from two anonymous reviewers and Rebecca Riley.

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