Britain: An official handbook > 1977

The Economic
and Social
Pattern
BRITAIN 1977: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
such as the National Trust and the Council for the Protection of Rural England,
are being supplemented to a growing extent by those of groups formed expressly
to safeguard the amenities of a particular area and to give publicity to the views
of the people they represent.
Growing public concern about the dangers both to health and to the natural
environment which can be caused by the disposal of industrial and human
waste, by exhaust fumes and by the rising volume of noise is reflected in the
appointment by the Government of a standing Royal Commission on Environ¬
mental Pollution, a Clean Air Council and an Advisory Council on Noise.
Voluntary societies include the National Society for Clean Air, the Noise
Abatement Society and the Council for Nature.
The working population comprises nearly half the total population. About
35 per cent of employees work in manufacturing industries and slightly more
(36 per cent) in professional and government (including local government)
services, 12 per cent in the distributive trades, 8 per cent in public utilities,
6 per cent in the construction industry and less than 3 per cent in agriculture.
For a long period an increase in real earnings was a principal factor in British
working and social life. Between 1950 and 1974 real personal disposable
income1 more than doubled to £41,150 million, an average annual rise of 4-6 per
cent. It is estimated to have fallen by between a half and one per cent in I975>
the first year to show a fall since the official series was started in 1948.
Although the progressive effect of direct taxation on the degree of inequality
of income distribution is largely offset by the regressive effect of indirect
taxation, the combined effect of the tax system, the receipt of transfer pay¬
ments and direct and indirect benefits in kind is a major redistributive one.
The Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, in a report
published in 1975, showed that, on the basis of the latest available figures,
changes in the distribution of income between the late 1950s and 1972-73
were not very pronounced, but there had been a continuing decline in the
share of the top 5 per cent of income recipients from about 20 per cent of
income before tax in 1959 to 17 per cent in 1972-73, accounted for largely by
the drop in the share of the top 1 per cent from about 8 per cent to 6 per cent
over the same period. (The fall in the share of the top 1 per cent since i93^_39
had been about two-thirds.) The share of the bottom 20 per cent had increased
between 1959 and 1972-73 from 5-3 to 5-8 per cent.
There is very little knowledge about long-term trends in the distribution
of wealth, but such estimates as there are show a substantial fall in the
share owned by the richest people in the community. The Royal Commission
found that in 1972 about 28 per cent of personal wealth was owned by the
top 1 per cent of the adult population, and over 82 per cent by the top 20 per
cent. The value of state pension rights has a marked effect on these figures;
in particular the share of the top 1 per cent falls by a third while the share
of the bottom 80 per cent of the adult population is more than doubled.
The proportion of personal wealth held in the form of physical assets rose
from less than a third in i960 to a half in 1973, reflecting especially the in¬
creasing importance of dwellings. There has been a marked decline in the
relative importance of company securities in the composition of personal
wealth.
The pattern of expenditure has been changing. Expenditure on food now
1 Total personal income less taxes on income, national insurance contributions, transfers
abroad (net) and taxes paid abroad.