Social Inequality and The Sunday Times Rich List

The Sunday Times Rich List has been tracking and ranking the wealth of the United Kingdom  since 1989 and has consequently provided over 30 years of data for Tippet and Wildauer (2023) to analyse.

The research findings are presented in two ways, both of which are highly teacher and student friendly.

Firstly, they enumerate half-a-dozen “Key Findings” which throws-up a number of interesting titbits about the nature and extent of wealth inequality in the UK. You probably won’t be too surprised to learn it’s:

• Pervasive: “if we continue at the current rates, the wealth of the richest 200 families will be larger than whole UK economy by 2035.

• Increasing at a staggering rate: “in 1989 a rich person had 6000 times the average person. Today it is 18,000 times”.

• Extensive: “the richest 50 families (my emphasis) have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the UK population.

Secondly, each of the Key Findings is developed in a paragraph or two if you or your students need to understand the underlying reasons for the Findings, as opposed to just the Findings themselves.

The use of this particular List, compiled by a National Newspaper, is not without it’s methodological problems, of course, and it you want to expand the utility of the research into the realm of research methods there are plenty of opportunities to do this.

Reference

Tippet, Ben and Wildauer, Rafael (2023) “The good life at the top: analysing The Sunday Times Rich List 1989-2023“