IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v16y1998i6p659-680.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Polarisation and Inequality in London: The Earnings Evidence, 1979–95

Author

Listed:
  • C Hamnett
  • D Cross

Abstract

The last few years have seen a major debate on the scale, extent, and causes of social polarisation in global cities and in Western societies in general. But the debate has often been characterised more by theoretical assertion than by empirical analysis. In particular, the concept of social polarisation has often been confused with inequality. The authors use General Household Survey data and New Earnings Survey data from 1979 to 1995 to examine the existence and extent of polarisation in London. It is argued that the evidence for polarisation is relatively weak, and that to the extent that polarisation exists it is asymmetric, with much greater growth in the size of groups at the top of the earnings distribution than at the bottom. But it is also argued that both London and Great Britain as a whole have seen a marked increase in earnings inequality over the last twenty-five years. Although most groups have improved earnings in real terms, the increase has been much greater at the top end of the earnings scale. As a result, the interquartile and interdecile earnings ratios have risen sharply. It is concluded that London has seen an increase in earnings inequality rather than growth of social polarisation.

Suggested Citation

  • C Hamnett & D Cross, 1998. "Social Polarisation and Inequality in London: The Earnings Evidence, 1979–95," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 16(6), pages 659-680, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:16:y:1998:i:6:p:659-680
    DOI: 10.1068/c160659
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/c160659
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/c160659?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chris Hamnett, 1976. "Social Change and Social Segregation in Inner London, 1961-71," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 13(3), pages 261-271, October.
    2. Chris Hamnett, 1996. "Social Polarisation, Economic Restructuring and Welfare State Regimes," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 33(8), pages 1407-1430, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chris Hamnett, 2011. "Urban Social Polarization," Chapters, in: Ben Derudder & Michael Hoyler & Peter J. Taylor & Frank Witlox (ed.), International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, chapter 32, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Scott Baum, 1999. "Social Transformations in the Global City: Singapore," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(7), pages 1095-1117, June.
    2. Chris Hamnett, 2021. "The changing social structure of global cities: Professionalisation, proletarianisation or polarisation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(5), pages 1050-1066, April.
    3. Chris Hamnett, 2003. "Gentrification and the Middle-class Remaking of Inner London, 1961-2001," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(12), pages 2401-2426, November.
    4. Thomas Maloutas, 2009. "Urban Outcasts: A Contextualized Outlook on Advanced Marginality," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 828-834, September.
    5. M Lyons, 1999. "Professionalisation, Feminisation, and Sociospatial Polarisation in London, 1971–1991," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(3), pages 493-506, March.
    6. Jonathan Pratschke & Enrica Morlicchio, 2012. "Social Polarisation, the Labour Market and Economic Restructuring in Europe: An Urban Perspective," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(9), pages 1891-1907, July.
    7. Zwiers, Merle & Kleinhans, Reinout & van Ham, Maarten, 2015. "Divided Cities: Increasing Socio-Spatial Polarization within Large Cities in the Netherlands," IZA Discussion Papers 8882, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Chris Hamnett, 2011. "Urban Social Polarization," Chapters, in: Ben Derudder & Michael Hoyler & Peter J. Taylor & Frank Witlox (ed.), International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, chapter 32, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Chakravarty, Dwarka & Goerzen, Anthony & Musteen, Martina & Ahsan, Mujtaba, 2021. "Global cities: A multi-disciplinary review and research agenda," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(3).
    10. Lincoln Quillian & Hugues Lagrange, 2016. "Socioeconomic Segregation in Large Cities in France and the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 1051-1084, August.
    11. Bingqin Li & Zhonglu Zeng, 2015. "Economic Structure, Social Risks and the Challenges to Social Policy in Macau, China," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(2), pages 383-398, May.
    12. Neil Lee & Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, 2013. "Innovation and spatial inequality in Europe and USA," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-22, January.
    13. Ian Richard Gordon & Ioannis Kaplanis, 2014. "Accounting for Big-City Growth in Low-Paid Occupations: Immigration and/or Service-Class Consumption," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 90(1), pages 67-90, January.
    14. Gila Menahem & Nelly Elias, 2007. "Gendered Occupational Differences and Earnings Gaps in Globalising Urban Economies: The Case of Tel-Aviv," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(11), pages 2211-2229, October.
    15. Rowland Atkinson, 2000. "Measuring Gentrification and Displacement in Greater London," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 37(1), pages 149-165, January.
    16. Judith Watson & Andrew Church, 2009. "The Social Effects of Travel to Learn Patterns - A Case Study of 16-19 Year Olds in London," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 24(5), pages 389-414, August.
    17. Richards, Greg, 1999. "Vacations and the Quality of Life: Patterns and Structures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 189-198, March.
    18. Thomas Maloutas & Hugo Botton, 2021. "Trends of Social Polarisation and Segregation in Athens (1991–2011)," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(2), pages 117-128.
    19. Jacqueline Borel-Saladin & Owen Crankshaw, 2009. "Social Polarisation or Professionalisation? Another Look at Theory and Evidence on Deindustrialisation and the Rise of the Service Sector," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(3), pages 645-664, March.
    20. Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 73-95, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:16:y:1998:i:6:p:659-680. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.