The UK's wealth distribution and characteristics of high-wealth households

Arun Advani, George Bangham and Jack Leslie

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We show that wealth inequality in the UK is high and has increased slightly over the past decade as financial asset prices have increased in the wake of the financial crisis. But data deficiencies are a major barrier in understanding the true distribution, composition and size of household wealth. The most comprehensive survey of household wealth in the UK does a good job of capturing the vast majority of the wealth distribution, but nearly £800 billion of wealth held by the very wealthiest UK households is missing. We also find tentative evidence that survey measures of high-wealth families undervalue their assets – our central estimate of the true value of wealth held by households in the UK is 5 per cent higher than the survey data suggest.

Keywords: inequality; survey under-coverage; wealth distribution; ES/L011719/1; ES/V012657/1; International Inequalities Institute AFSEE COVID‐19 fund; and from the Standard Life Foundation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2021-10-25
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Published in Fiscal Studies, 25, October, 2021, 42(3-4), pp. 397 - 430. ISSN: 0143-5671

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112698/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The UK's wealth distribution and characteristics of high‐wealth households (2021)
Working Paper: The UK's wealth distribution and characteristics of high-wealth households (2021)
Working Paper: The UK’s wealth distribution and characteristics of high-wealth households (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112698

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