Can household debt influence income inequality? Evidence from Britain: 1966–2016

Abstract

The various processes of financialisation widen inequalities by increasing incomes for financial sector employees and shareholders, as well as affluent households who hold the concentrated ownership of financial assets. Although interest payments provide a flow of revenue from indebted households to financial institutions, the distributional consequences of such debt-based systems of financialisation remain an under-explored research area. As the financialisation of the British economy has been driven by the widespread adoption of private debt, this econometric analysis examined the effects of changes in household debt on income inequality in Britain between 1966 and 2016. These results demonstrate household debt increases the share of income captured at the top of the income distribution, while increasing inequality between the top and the middle of the income scale. Therefore, the mundane decision to take on household debt has significant distributional consequences, specifically entrenching pre-existing disparate social relations between affluent and less-affluent households in Britain.