Review of periodical literature for 2020: (vi) Since 1945

Abstract

Long-term changes to political economy and social structures as well as growing inequalities across and within generations were dominant features of British economic and social history research published in 2020. Brexit also provided an important looming backdrop for explaining societal conflicts as well as the importance of political and business relationships during earlier experiences of European integration. Statistical studies have unveiled disquieting long-term health trends. Jivraj et al's research on postwar age cohorts revealed a prolonged tendency towards longer but less healthy lives since the 1990s. Increasing morbidity has accompanied rising life expectancy, with working-age people more likely to report ill health. Grundy et al shed further lights on how health and socioeconomic circumstances interrelate by using the English Longitudinal Study. Their findings reveal relationships between deprivation earlier in life and depression later, demonstrating how health trends are interrelated with rising economic inequalities. Schaefer and Singleton's study of wages within large firms suggest that when occupation effects are controlled for, inequality within, rather than between, enterprises are the lead factor in explaining income inequality. Dagdeviren et al's study of welfare retrenchment revealed that for those at the sharp end of these developments, credit has become a means of obtaining necessities rather than socially pressured consumption as it had been in the past. Since 2010, benefit cuts and the growing use of sanctions have increased the tendency for low-income borrowers to turn to unorthodox lenders and contributed to higher levels of debt owed to non-financial creditors such as utilities companies. At the opposite end of the class spectrum, Willman and Pepper's study of FTSE 100 pay practices illuminates the transition from 'administrative' inequality governed through salaries set by boards to 'outsourced' (p.516) inequality determined by compensating executives with capital market assets.