Spending Review: All in it together? Not according to the data

During his Spending Review speech George Osborne made much of the fairness of his announcements. He also repeated what has now become a cringing cliche: that we are "all in it together".

During his Spending Review speech George Osborne made much of the fairness of the government’s announcements. He also repeated what has now become a cringing cliche: that we are “all in it together”.

As well as being a cliche, looking at the figures (chart 2E) it’s also demonstrably not true. Below is the chart detailing the overall distributional analysis of the changes announced today.

As you can see, while top earners are hit more than other groups, they are only hit fractionally more so than the very poorest in society.

In terms of the Spending Review being fair, from quintile four downwards households are hit progressively more severely as they get poorer.

So rather than the impact of the Spending Revue being felt evenly, apart from at the very top low earners and the poor are going to take the hit to a far greater extent than middle to higher earners.

According to the figures, then, we’re not, by any stretch, all in it together.

Click the graph to enlarge

Distributional analysis spending review

One Response to “Spending Review: All in it together? Not according to the data”

  1. Anthony Masters

    Government policies usually benefit people in the middle, rather than poor or rich people.

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