Matt Whittaker

Using freshly released ONS data, it plots local areas by their average real gross disposable household income (horizontal axis) and healthy life expectancy at birth (vertical axis) across 2011–13 and 2021–23. We see a clear and persistent pattern: areas with higher incomes tend to have longer healthy life expectancies. Worryingly, that link is strong (though not linear) and could be getting stronger. What’s more, healthy life expectancy has dropped almost everywhere since 2011–13, even as inflation-adjusted incomes have risen slightly. In some areas, healthy life expectancy has fallen dramatically: at just 52 years, Blackpool has the lowest figure, 4 years less than a decade ago. The inequality is both staggering and growing: as well as substantially more income, residents of Richmond get 18 years more healthy life than those in Blackpool, up from 15 years a decade ago.

For this week's TOTC, @teraallas.bsky.social has stepped in as guest editor - pondering productivity, wellbeing and... our potential future robot overlords?

COTW assesses how disposable incomes are related to healthy life expectancy around the UK ⤵️

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this is a superb Top of the Charts email. Treasury of productivity information. Subscribe! And follow @teraallas.bsky.social first!

Mmm, this IS a tasty gag

Happy to report the Spurs version updates itself every year.

"Auto-synced calendars
You'll never sing that"

Not just ‘beyond GDP’ but ‘beyond just GDP’  | PBE Nancy Hey, for Economics to Improve Lives series  The path to moving beyond GDP as the central measure of societal progress is all too often presented as a choice between finding a single new metric –...

Pro Bono Economics have a great series on Economics to Improve lives. Here’s my article.

I’m speaking on this and chairing a debate session at #isqols2025 on multi-dimensional vs single metrics later today which draws on this for understanding public and charity impact

pbe.co.uk/insights/not...

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Pie Factory Music  | PBE Pie Factory Music is a youth charity in East Kent offering free programmes in youth work, music, arts, and counselling. Each year, it supports nearly 1,000 young people—especially those facing challen...

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All the best kids are born there

Chart showing the evolution of UK wealth taxes as a proportion of total wealth in the period from 1965 to 2020. On broad measure that includes inheritance tax, capital gains tax, stamp duty, council tax and business rates, the proportion fell sharply over the course of the 1980s. Now stands a little over half the level prevailing in the 1970s.

Not yet found a clear chart, but this paper from @arunadvani.bsky.social et al (one of many brilliant pieces!) is a great primer. Shows the importance of definitions, with the UK quite high up the league table on some measures. This chart is revealing though static1.squarespace.com/static/5ef4d...

Relatively quick look, but turns out a lot of the action is indeed on VAT/duties, with a big jump in the share of gross income allocated to these taxes at the lower end of the income distribution following the increases introduced by the incoming Thatcher government in 1979

This stuff is complicated by the need to adjust for household size ('equivalisation'). For a couple, disposable household income (after direct tax, but not indirect) thresholds are: Q1 <£21,749; Q2 <£30,160; Q3 <£39,542; Q4 <£54,277; Q5 >£54,277. Thresholds rise for bigger families, fall for smaller

Yes. Will feature on the income side and in terms of some of the taxes paid (capital gains)

Those payments are already in there

Not included because that line comes not from me but my old @resfoundation.bsky.social colleagues, but will dig out in due course

Away from the spreadsheet today... but will come back to you

I'll look at the breakdown when I can get in front of the data again, but my guess is there's a compositional element to this. The poorest group used to contain lots of retired folks (no NI) and unemployed. More now will be working age and in jobs. Will check though

Definitely worth exploring. But do it properly and with a clear sense of motive (revenue raising vs fairness vs market readjustments) rather than trying to make it all things to all people. Go for tried and tested broad based taxes to bring in £ and create space for wealth tax development

Yep, they're in there.

Interesting thought. Even in isolation it would be interesting to see how the wedges have evolved over time

No, just taxes that can be separately identified. Will miss things like Corporation Tax too. And no account for housing costs either (though Council Tax is in there). All derived from the Household Finances Survey

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

Hard agree on lots of this. Average tax rates are well down for the middle of the income distribution - using some of that space has to be part of the solution bsky.app/profile/matt...

I agree with this but - as Giles' post effectively goes on to say - there *is* a way out of this fiscal corner, it's called raising taxes, and I don't think it's as politically impossible as people make out

Hard (by Labour's own doing) but not impossible

First, welfare revolts tells us nothing...

Bar chart showing rise in share of people aged 16-64 with a mental health condition from 15% in 1993 to 23% in 2023/24

Last month, a new detailed survey of mental health amongst adults in England came out. Headline result is that more 16-64-year-olds have a common mental health conditions than in any previous wave of the survey over last 30 years. A brief thread...

The public wouldn't like it bsky.app/profile/luke... and it would break manifesto pledges, but that might be less damaging than is thought www.politicshome.com/news/article.... Raise the money and invest it supporting a happier country and votes should follow www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Line chart showing trends in the shares of gross income being paid in total tax by those living in five equally sized income groups, from the richest fifth (quintile 5) to the poorest fifth (quintile 1). Covers the UK and the years 1980 to 2022-23. Shows shares falling then rising among the richest 20%; rising, plateauing, then rising again among the poorest 20%, and falling, plateauing and then falling again among the middle three groups. By 2022-23, average effective tax ‘rates’ (measured as four-year averages) were 37.5% among the poorest, 29.7% among quintile 2, 30.6% among quintile 3, 31.9% among quintile 4, and 37% among the richest 20%.

Go back to the original chart, and surely there's room for something more broad-based on income tax? Better than cruel/unworkable cuts to disability payments; better than fiscal rule fiddling; and better than pinning it all on new approaches that double down on a narrowing (& somewhat volatile) base

Wealth inequality has jumped in recent years too, and our assets are relatively lightly taxed compared to other rich economies, so there are good reasons for exploring options in this space. But that needs doing properly, not as a knee-jerk reaction to a fiscal hole...

Chart showing shares of different forms of income coming from or flowing to five equally sized income quintiles in 1977 and in 2022-23. For each group it shows changes in shares of original income (i.e. market income before any benefits or state pension payments), taxes (direct and indirect) and post-tax income (i.e. income left after paying direct and indirect taxes).

Overall, changes in the tax shares of each income quintile have largely tracked their shares of original income (before benefit or State Pension payments). Means we’ve simultaneously drawn in more tax from the richest, but still ended up with rising post-tax income inequality

Stacked area chart showing trends in the proportion of total UK gross income accounted for by five equally sized income groups, from the richest 20% (quintile 5) to the poorest 20% (quintile 1). It shows a steady increase in the share flowing to the richest group, alongside steady declines for all other quintiles. By 2022-23, the shares for each group stood at: Q1, 7%; Q2, 11.7%; Q3, 16.1%; Q4, 22.3%; and Q5, 42.8%.

Of course, the other factor behind this rebalancing of the tax base is income inequality, with a rapidly growing share of gross income flowing to the richest fifth ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. This group accounted for 42.8% of all gross income in 2022-23, up from 35.4% in 1977