Identifying and mitigating the risks of wealth inequality in the UK
This is a report of an expert roundtable held at King’s College London on 1 November 2024.
Overview from the Fairness Foundation, the Future Threats Lab at the Department of War Studies, and the Policy Institute at King’s College London:
Britain is a wealthy country, but its wealth is increasingly concentrated in few hands. While wealth inequality has remained high but fairly stable in relative terms over recent decades (with the richest 10% owning about 60% of the UK’s wealth), substantial rises in the value of assets led to a 50% increase in the size of the absolute wealth gap between the richest and poorest households between 2011 and 2019. As a result, wealth – or its absence – has a bigger impact on people’s lives than ever before, from their housing to their health. The fact that much wealth is unearned raises serious questions of fairness, but the size of the wealth gap also has demonstrably negative impacts on our economy, society, democracy and environment. The Fairness Foundation’s Wealth Gap Risk Register documents 41 negative impacts of wealth inequality in the UK (alongside 29 policy responses), and suggests that these existing impacts will worsen in the future as the wealth gap continues to increase, unless action is taken to mitigate them.
On 1 November 2024 the Fairness Foundation, the Future Threats Lab at the Department of War Studies, and the Policy Institute at King’s College London convened a one-day workshop for 25 senior stakeholders from the worlds of politics, government, academia, business and civil society. Its purpose was to examine the evidence for the risks posed by wealth inequality in the UK to our society, economy, democracy and environment, and for the ways in which those risks can be mitigated through government policy.
A specific aim was to explore to what extent this diverse group of people had a shared diagnosis of the risks and shared views on the most effective and realistic mitigation strategies. Participants were invited to evaluate three possible futures for the UK when thinking about risks and mitigation strategies, with a particular focus on the impacts of wealth inequality on the fabric of British society:
- Future 1: Stabilisation Wealth inequality is reduced, and social cohesion improves
- Future 2: Decline Wealth inequality is maintained, and social cohesion gradually worsens
- Future 3: Collapse Wealth inequality increases, contributing to societal dysfunction, unrest or conflict
We followed up the report in January 2025 with some polling with Opinium, to explore how the British public feels about the influence of the very wealthy on politics. The polling found that 63% of Britons think that the very rich have too much influence on politics in the UK (compared to 40% who think the same about businesses and religious organisations, and 38% for international organisations like the EU and UN). The view that the very rich have too much influence on UK politics was most widely held by people who voted Lib Dem at the 2024 general election (78%), followed by Labour (67%), Reform (65%) and Conservative (56%).
