IFS report shows income inequality falling

The ever excellent Richard Kemp highlights a new report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies - Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2012 - which shows that income inequality is falling under the coalition.

The salient passage is:

Income inequality in the UK fell sharply in 2010–11. The widely-used Gini coefficient fell from 0.36 to 0.34. This is the largest one-year fall since at least 1962, returning the Gini coefficient to below its level in 1997–98. Although this reverses the increase in this measure of income inequality that occurred under the previous Labour government, it still leaves it much higher than before the substantial increases that occurred during the 1980s.

Driving this drop in income inequality, the falls in real incomes in 2010–11 were smallest towards the bottom of the income distribution and largest towards the top. In the UK, real incomes fell by 1.1% at the 10th percentile, 3.1% at the median and 5.1% at the 90th percentile.

So there you have it - income inequality rose under Labour - and is falling under a Liberal Democrat influenced government.

Given the lack of any government minister publicising the fact one can only assume this is a source of embarrassment for the more strident Conservatives in the coalition.  But you would have thought that Lib Dem ministers might wish to highlight the fact.  But perhaps reducing inequality is just too left wing for a party committed to 'governing from the centre' (whatever that is)...