{"id":16640,"date":"2012-07-31T13:53:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=16640"},"modified":"2012-07-31T13:53:36","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:53:36","slug":"real-income-per-head-is-falling-steadily-if-youre-lower-earning-that-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/07\/31\/real-income-per-head-is-falling-steadily-if-youre-lower-earning-that-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Real income per head is falling steadily. If you&#8217;re lower earning, that is."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/business\/economics-blog\/2012\/jul\/31\/household-income-figures-gdp\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Elliott has noted in the Guardian<\/a> within the last hour, referring to statistics out this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the first three months of 2012, the real spending power of households fell by 0.6% because incomes did not keep pace with prices. That followed a drop of 0.8% in the final quarter of 2011 and a flat picture in the quarter before that. Real income per head in the first quarter of 2012 was 0.9% lower than in the same period of 2011 and at its lowest level since early 2005.<\/p>\n<p>Britain, in other words, is two-thirds of its way through a lost decade of declining real incomes. And since real incomes are the main driving force behind consumer spending \u2014 which accounts for around two-thirds of GDP \u2014 you don't need to be Adam Smith or John Maynard Keynes to work out that the economy is going to struggle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These figures are, however,\u00a0generalities. I am sure they are true for most households. But for the top earning I doubt it very much. The following wa<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hmrc.gov.uk\/stats\/income_tax\/liabilities-april2012.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">s said in an HMRC document recently<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The income share for the richest 1% of taxpayers rose by 0.5 percentage points between 2007-08 and 2009-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>HMRC tried to claim this was due to tax avoidance in the last of those years. I doubt it. \u00a0I think the trend will have continued. This is a recession for the poor, not the rich. And the rich are undoubtedly winning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Larry Elliott has noted in the Guardian within the last hour, referring to statistics out this morning: In the first three months of 2012,<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/07\/31\/real-income-per-head-is-falling-steadily-if-youre-lower-earning-that-is\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}