Jonathan Cribb

Two decades of income inequality in Britain: the role of wages, household earnings and redistribution

We study earnings and income inequality in Britain over the past two decades, including the period of relatively “inclusive” growth from 1997-2004 and the Great Recession. We focus on the middle 90%, where trends have contrasted strongly with the “new inequality” at the very top. Household earnings inequality has risen, driven by male earnings – although a ‘catch-up’ of female earnings did hold down individual earnings inequality and reduce within-household inequality. Nevertheless, net household income inequality fell due to deliberate increases in redistribution, the tax and transfer system’s insurance role during the Great Recession, falling household worklessness, and rising pensioner incomes.

How does increasing the early retirement age for women affect the labour supply of (women and) their husbands

In 1995, the UK government legislated to increase the earliest age at which women could claim a state pension from 60 to 65 between April 2010 and March 2020. This paper uses data from the first two years of this change coming into effect to estimate the impact of increasing the state pension age from 60 to 61 on the employment of women and their partners using a difference-in-differences methodology. Our methodology controls in a flexible way for underlying differences between cohorts born at different times. We find that women’s employment rates at age 60 increased by 7.3 percentage points when the state pension age was increased to 61. This implies the early retirement age explained almost all excess retirements at age 60 before 2010. Their probability of unemployment increased by 1.3 percentage points. The employment rates of the male partners also increased by 4.2 percentage points. The magnitude of these effects, and the results from subgroup analysis, suggest they are more likely explained by the increase in the state pension age being a shock or through it having a signalling effect rather than them being due to either credit constraints or the effect of individuals responding to changes in their financial incentives to work. Taken together, our results suggest that the fiscal strengthening arising from a one-year increase in the female state pension age is 10% higher than a costing based on no behavioural change, due to additional direct and indirect tax revenues arising from increased earnings.

Can't wait to get my pension: the effect of raising the female early retirement age on income, poverty and deprivation

We estimate the impact of increasing the female early retirement age (ERA) on household living standards. Examining the increase in the female ERA from 60 to 63 in the UK, we find increased earnings only partially offset lost public pension income, leaving affected womens household incomes £32 per week lower on average. The proportional effect was substantially larger for women in lower income households. This increased the income poverty rate among affected women by 6.4 percentage points. We find no evidence of an increased inability to afford important material items, potentially suggesting that material deprivation has been avoided through smoothing of consumption.