Bankers' pay and extreme wage inequality in the UK

Bell, Brian and Van Reenen, John ORCID: 0000-0001-9153-2907 (2010) Bankers' pay and extreme wage inequality in the UK. Centre for Economic Performance special papers (CEPSP21). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

It is well known that the distribution of income in the United Kingdom has widened considerably in the last three decades. This rise has been a result of a widening at both the top and bottom of the wage distribution. More recently, most of the action appears to have occurred at the top of the distribution with lower wage workers keeping pace with the median. This paper explores this increased dispersion at the very top of the wage distribution. We show that the growth has occurred primarily within the top few percentiles and that the rise in inequality in recent years is much more pronounced when we focus on annual earnings as opposed to weekly wages (where most work has concentrated). This is because annual wages include bonuses. By the end of the decade to 2008, the top tenth of earners received £20bn more purely due to the increase in their share (it would have been only £173bn had their share of the pie remained the same as 1998), and £12bn of this went to workers in the financial sector (almost all of which was bonus payments). We consider various reasons why the bankers have managed to capture an increasing share of the wage bill over the last decade.

Item Type:	Monograph (Report)
Official URL:	http://cep.lse.ac.uk
Additional Information:	© 2010 The authors
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
Date Deposited:	22 Jul 2010 14:54
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 22:13
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/28780

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