Freezing of thresholds since has somewhat reversed this but in 2020 average tax rates including Plan 2 student loan repayments (the loans that will mostly never get paid off and so more plausibly defined as taxes) were lower for the median employee than at any point in history even before loans

Between country inequality is stark but I don't think there's evidence it has risen in the last 40-50 years wir2022.wid.world/chapter-2/

14 years of the triple lock

Income tax rises are always more progressive. Even freezing thresholds (the most regressive way of increasing income tax) is progressive

14 years of the 'triple lock' looks like this in spending terms (in Jan 2024)

Think your argument is strengthened by the fact there has been a less significant change in the number of women having no children and a larger shift in favour of smaller families (1 child rather than 2 or 3). That feels very much tied to the actual challenges of parenting.

Up until the financial crisis this is right but the upper half (of employees) have actually done worse since (apologies for the dodgy graph)

This is the graph if you ignore student loans and employer NICs

The tax part only really true for the top 25% of earners. But clearly housing and childcare is a huge part of the story

Average tax rates if you treat Plan 1 and 2 repayments as taxes (and even include employer NIs). Plan 2 average taxes in 2025 across the board lower than Plan 1 in 2010. And everyone below the the 75th percentile paid less in 2025 than someone not even paying a student loan did in 2007!

True even if you include employer NI contributions! (For all below the 90th percentile and assuming 5% nominal wage growth this year)

The distribution visualised through pirate plots instead

The box plots by nation

Another way of putting it: In October 1974 95% of constituencies were within 3% of the mean swing. This year it was 31%

Looking at it mean-centred across elections more clearly shows just how much greater the variance was in 2024 (as well as the general trend towards greater variance over time)

Was 2024 the final death of Uniform National Swing?