[PEN-L:5077] Re: Brits, USA, inequality

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 12:36 PM 5/13/95, Robert Peter Burns wrote:

>Doug Henwood provides some figures on income inequality
>and poverty rates.  However, I am a little concerned
>about the dates for those figures.  Britain experienced a
>whopping recession in 1980-1981, and by the mid 80s was having
>a fairly rapid recovery.  But there was another helluva recession
>at the beginning of the 1990s.  If you compare stats from just
>before the Tories came to power in 1979 to the latest
>date for which reliable figures are available, you'll find
>a substantial jump in the poverty rate, I think.  Maybe choosing
>this time interval isn't entirely fair to the Tories.  But the
>Tories adopted recessionary policies both times, and since when were
>those rascals ever bothered about fairness anyway? :-)

What can I say? It's the LIS's choice of years, not mine. To mitigate this
problem somewhat, the US was also in recession then, and both countries
were mid- to late-bizcycle in the later years.

I think wave 3 - late 1980s - LIS data will start trickling out soon.

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
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