Consider this: 1 per cent of adults own 14 per cent of the nation’s assets. That’s some 488,000 people in ownership of about £11 trillion. At the other end of the financial scale, 15 per cent – 7.3 million people – either own no assets at all, or are in debt. It’s safe to say this throws the UK’s wealth inequality into stark relief.
These new figures come courtesy of the Resolution Foundation thinktank which attributes them to a reversal of the spreading of property wealth across Britain in the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. Essentially, the fall in home ownership is fuelling the return of increasing wealth inequality across the country.
Conor D’Arcy, policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said: ‘The accumulation of wealth over the course of our lives is arguably the most important driver of lifetime living standards, and yet it has been largely ignored in the public debate.
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