Achieving a more evenly distributed standard of living across the UK will require difficult decisions and face political challenge.
As we identified, these choices cover complex relationships between the most challenging aspects of our policy landscape, including between our political structures, labour market and tax system.
This work also surfaced the positive – there is no inevitability to the current state of income and wealth inequality in the UK. In the recent past there are examples of policy choices that make the UK more equal: the next government could make similar strides, should it choose to tackle the problem head on.
The UK 2040 Options project will be tackling some of these choices and debates, through considering policy options in more depth, in the next phases of our work.
Roundtable participants
We sincerely thank our workshop participants for their time and contributions. Please note that not all participants will have agreed with all the discussion points above.
- Alex Beer – Nuffield Foundation
- Alfie Stirling – JRF
- Ashwin Kumar - Manchester Metropolitan University
- Baroness Louise Casey
- Carys Roberts – IPPR
- David Halpern – the Behavioural Insights Team
- Karen Rowlingson – University of York
- Michael Vaughan – the London School of Economics and Political Science
- Mike Brewer – Resolution Foundation [Chair]
- Mubin Haq – Abrdn Financial Fairness
- Professor Kate Pickett – University of York
- Will Snell – Fairness Foundation
Particular thanks goes to Mike Brewer for his comments and input on this report, and assistance throughout, as well as Esiri Bukata and William Barlow (Resolution Foundation).
