Category Archives: Inequality

Bay Area’s poverty soared, data shows, as California’s top earners saw windfalls

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Poverty rate jumped from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023 in state, Tipping Point Community report finds

Newly released data found that the San Francisco Bay Area’s poverty rate soared from 12.2% to 16.3% in 2023, with an approximate total 1.02 million residents in this six-county region considered impoverished by year’s end.

Another 12.5% of residents – about 790,000 people – hovered on the brink of poverty, meaning that about three in 10 Bay Area residents struggled to cover basic expenses.

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UK to reconsider decision to deny Waspi women pension payouts

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Millions born in 1950s lost out because of government failings over changes to state retirement age, campaigners say

Millions of “Waspi women” have been given fresh hope that they might receive compensation after the UK government announced it would revisit a decision to deny them payouts.

As many as 3.6 million women born in the 1950s are said to have lost out because of government failings in the way changes to the state pension age were made, prompting the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaign to launch in 2015.

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Centrelink threatening payment suspensions at rate of five a minute, new analysis suggests

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Exclusive: As jobseekers continue to have payments suspended, advocates call for the regime to be stopped until it’s proven to be lawful

Centrelink has been issuing payment suspension notices to jobseekers and those on disability support pensions at a rate of more than five a minute, new analysis suggests, amid concerns over the legality of the troubled system.

In total, government data collated by the Antipoverty Centre shows there were 2,683,605 suspension actions between June 2024 and July 2025.

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America’s super-rich are running down the planet’s safe climate spaces, says Oxfam

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Exclusive: Data shows wealthiest 0.1% of the US burn carbon at 4,000 times the rate of the world’s poorest 10%

The US’s super-rich are burning through carbon emissions at 4,000 times the speed of the world’s poorest 10%, according to an analysis provided to the Guardian.

These billionaires and multimillionaires, who comprise the wealthiest 0.1% of the US population, are also running down our planet’s safe climate space at 183 times the rate of the global average.

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Revealed: some Australians have overpaid their Centrelink debt by more than $20,000

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Exclusive: Services Australia spokesperson says automatic BPay payments and Centrelink being unable to contact customers may be to blame

Approximately 44,000 Australians who have a debt with Centrelink have overpaid it, some by $20,000 or more, Guardian Australia can reveal.

It is the latest in a string of scandals to hit Centrelink after hundreds of thousands of people had their payments illegally cancelled, with several reviews concluding the welfare system is not working legally and the government announcing plans to undertake at least three remediation processes for separate issues – the robodebt class action, income apportionment and overpaid debts.

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Lifetime of earnings not enough for UK workers to join wealthiest 10%, report says

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Research finds it would take average worker saving all their earnings for 52 years to match wealth of richest 10th of society

It would take the average earner in the UK 52 years’ worth of earnings to become as wealthy as the richest 10%, according to new research by the Resolution Foundation.

In a new report, the influential thinktank analyses the Office for National Statistics’ latest wealth and assets survey, which covers the Covid pandemic period of 2020-22.

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New UK civil service internship scheme open only to working-class students

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Minister says programme will help ensure Whitehall has ‘broadest range of talent and truly reflects the country’

A new civil service internship scheme will be open only to working-class students as part of a drive to make Whitehall better reflect the country, the government has said.

The programme will give students from lower-income backgrounds the chance to apply for paid government placements. The definition of working class will be based on what jobs were held by their parents when the applicant was 14 and replaces an existing programme open to all.

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Training organisation criticised for using chatbots to run job seeker course

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Duke Education says their course uses ‘chat-style delivery’ to deliver classes on writing emails and identifying hazards but does not utilise artificial intelligence

A training organisation co-run by a vice-president of the Collingwood football club has been criticised for using chatbots to help teach a course to adult job seekers.

Duke Education, a registered training organisation (RTO), offers a certificate III in community services. A chatbot takes students through some of the coursework, such as how to write an email and recognise hazard signs.

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Minority ethnic and deprived children more likely to die after UK intensive care admission

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Study shows such young people have higher risk of arriving at paediatric ICU severely ill and have worse outcomes

Minority ethnic children and children from deprived backgrounds across the UK are more likely to die following admission to intensive care than their white and more affluent counterparts, a study has found.

These children consistently had worse outcomes following their stay in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU), the research by academics at Imperial College London discovered.

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More trials with no jury will disadvantage people of colour, campaigners warn

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Charities say more judge-only trials in England and Wales could lead to more miscarriages of justice

Removing the right to a jury trial for more offences would disadvantage people of colour and other minorities and lead to more miscarriages of justice, reformers have warned.

Sir Brian Leveson’s independent review of the criminal courts in England and Wales is expected to be published this week and recommend the creation of intermediate courts, sitting without a jury, to try some offences.

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Australia’s life expectancy gap narrows but men in disadvantaged areas dying almost seven years earlier

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Major causes of death contributing to inequality are lung cancer, respiratory illness and heart disease, ANU researchers say

Australia has made progress in reducing socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy but men living in disadvantaged areas are still dying almost seven years earlier, a new report from the Australian National University has found.

The study’s lead author and ANU demographer, Sergey Timonin, said the gaps in life expectancy between the most advantaged and disadvantaged areas stopped widening just before the Covid pandemic began and did not significantly worsen during the lockdown years.

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Number of vape shops in England rises by almost 1,200% in a decade

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Research also shows deprived areas have up to 25 times as many bookmakers and pawnbrokers as affluent high streets

The number of vape shops on high streets across England has increased by almost 1,200% over the past decade, while deprived areas have up to 25 times as many bookmakers and pawnbrokers as affluent ones, according to research.

In 2014, only 33.8% of 317 local authorities in England had a vape shop, rising to 97.2% in 2024. Similarly, in 2014 less than 1% of local authorities in England had 10 or more vape shops, rising to 28% in 2024.

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London dominates England’s social mobility league with top 20 places

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Sutton Trust ‘opportunity index’ measured factors such as children on free school meals passing key GCSEs

The top 20 constituencies with the best social mobility in England are all in London, according to research from a leading education charity that underscores the stark regional divide in children’s life chances.

In a report published on Thursday, the Sutton Trust has put together an “opportunity index” by analysing six measures of mobility. These include the share of children on free school meals who achieve passes in GCSE maths and English; who complete a degree by age 22; and who make it into the top 20% of earners by age 28.

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‘The posh areas get cleared’: bin strikes illustrate Birmingham’s wealth gap

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People in poorer areas feel frustrated rubbish piles up during strikes, while wealthy households pay for removal

“It’s very frustrating that the posh areas get cleared and we’re just left, very frustrating but we expect it,” said Peter Thomas, outside his home in Ladywood, against a backdrop of overflowing bins.

Across neighbouring postcodes in Birmingham, the gap between wealthy and deprived parts of the city has been noticeable for residents ever since the bin strikes began last month.

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One in four women in England have serious reproductive health issue, survey finds

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Exclusive: Racial disparities highlighted as researchers estimate 10 million women have conditions such as fibroids or endometriosis

More than a quarter of women in England are living with a serious reproductive health issue, according to the largest survey of its kind, and experts say “systemic, operational, structural and cultural issues” prevent women from accessing care.

The survey of 60,000 women across England in 2023, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and analysed by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, found that 28% of respondents were living with a reproductive morbidity, such as pelvic organ prolapse, uterine fibroids, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or cervical, uterine, ovarian or breast cancer.

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Doctors urge government to fight poverty after rise in patients with Victorian diseases

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Survey finds vast majority of doctors are concerned at impact of health inequalities on their patients

Doctors have reported a rise in the number of patients with Victorian diseases such as scabies, as the Royal College of Physicians urged the government to do more to fight poverty.

The survey of 882 doctors found 89% were concerned about the impact of health inequalities on their patients, while 72% had seen more patients in the past three months with illnesses related to poor-quality housing, air pollution and access to transport.

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Proposal to automatically give babies mother’s surname ignites row in Italy

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Politician says idea would be ‘compensation for centuries-old injustice’ of children being assigned father’s name

An Italian politician has proposed a law that would make it automatic for babies to be assigned their mother’s surname at birth, a step that would mark a rupture with a centuries-old tradition and has sparked a fiery debate.

Dario Franceschini, a former culture minister from the centre-left Democratic party, argues that such legislation would “right a historic wrong”.

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More than 10,000 jobseeker payments may have been wrongfully reduced or cancelled, government says

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Australia employment department announces more payment system pauses due to it not ‘operating in alignment with the law’

Thousands of people may have had their social security payments wrongly reduced or cancelled because the mutual obligations system was not “operating in alignment with the law”.

On Friday, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) announced it had paused more payment reductions and cancellations, with more than 10,000 people understood to be affected.

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Only 5% of UK medical school entrants are working class, data shows

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Sutton Trust says underrepresentation of poorer students is ‘outrageous’ but number has doubled in 10 years to 2022

Students from working class backgrounds still only make up 5% of entrants to medical schools across the UK, a proportion that has doubled over the past decade, analysis has found.

The research, conducted by the Sutton Trust and University College London (UCL), looked at almost 94,000 applicants to UK medical schools between 2012 and 2022, which represent almost half of all UK medical applicants.

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‘Wilful acts of bastardry’: former Treasury secretary says young Australian workers ‘robbed’ by tax system

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Ken Henry made comments at a tax summit in Melbourne, arguing fiscal drag is seeing taxes go up while real incomes fall

Recent governments have carried out “wilful acts of bastardry” and created intergenerational inequality and environmental destruction that will leave younger voters worse off, the former Treasury secretary Ken Henry has said, urging tweaks to Australia’s tax system to bridge the growing divide.

Henry, who worked under both the Howard and Rudd governments, used a speech at the Per Capita tax summit in Melbourne on Thursday morning to argue the country’s tax settings since the Howard government have fuelled inequality and left further generations and young workers “to pick up the tab”.

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