ABSTRACT
Seventy years later, despite the playing field remaining deeply uneven, the life chances of working-class children had been transformed, with a reduction in income inequality and the development of a welfare state that provided financial support to those in need, plus a range of services, from housing to education. The authors then review changes in living standards and related issues such as social mobility, equality of opportunity, and poverty. Finally, they examine whether changes in inequality and living standards are driven primarily by long-run technological change or the ebb and flow of globalisation. However, UK income inequality in 1949 was still greater than that for France and the United States, as it had been in 1911 and 1937. Britain's unusually high pre-1914 income inequality meant that its high GDP per capita was not reflected in working-class living standards.
