Everyone’s getting poorer. Isn’t that what we’re all told? There have been years of economic crises, we’re all tightening our belts, trimming that fat, living within our means. But I’ve got good news for you! That is, if you happen to be a wealthy white man. Changes to tax and benefits since 2015 mean that men in the richest ten per cent of households are in fact, better off. Excellent news; looser belts all round.
But 2015 was a less positive year for, well, pretty much everyone else. Analysis by the House of Commons library found that 81 per cent of cuts between 2010 to 2015 had fallen on women. This was bad enough, but by 2017 they had revised the figure to 86 per cent. The Women’s Budget Group (WBG) explains that austerity policies planned for the 2015-20 Parliament are, in fact, “even more regressive” than those implemented from 2010-15, with living standards for those in the poorest 10 per cent of households cut by five times more than for those in the top 10 per cent of households.
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