PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

As many reports have noted during the last few years, achieving gender equality between men and women can make a real difference to economic prosperity across the World. One of the most important studies in this area is the Global Gender Gap Index from the World Economic Forum which annually benchmarks 156 countries across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment) and tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time. Whilst it would be natural to expect this gap to close every year, the 2022 report suggest that there has been slowing down in the achievement of equality across the World and this has been driven largely by a decline in large countries. This means that, given this data, it will take over 135 years to close the gender gap worldwide. Of course, this gap is not the same everywhere with Iceland yet again leading the way as the most gender-equal country in the world. Indeed, the othe...

Over the last seventeen months, the closure of the UK economy which resulted in the largest economic slump for over 300 years should, by all logical assumptions of the impact of such events, have resulted in massive negative changes in household incomes and unemployment. Yet the annual report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies on “Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK” shows that contrary to expectations, unemployment, real earnings growth, arrears on household bills and the use of foodbanks were actually at similar overall levels as compared to the pre-pandemic situation for the UK as a whole. As the authors note, this is an “astonishing outcome” given what has happened to national income since March 2020 but also highlights the positive impact of government policies such as the furlough scheme and the uplift in Universal Credit during this period.  For example, there has been very little rise in those out of work with only 300,000 more people being unemployed or ec...