Poverty And Inequality In London

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With an annual GDP of around $732 billion, London is not only the wealthiest city in England, but also one of the wealthiest cities in the world (Said, 2013). This mere fact, however, fails to recognize the growing inequality that has surfaced London over the years as a consequence of the rapid growth and development that took place in the city from the years 1990 to 2008. Affluent neighborhoods situated in and around London have flourished economically over these past two decades, whereas lower income neighborhoods have stagnated. Concentrated neighborhood poverty has restructured neighborhoods and given rise to crime rates. It has also limited the social mobility of people that are confined to these neighborhoods. According to the ‘Trust …show more content…
The total household wealth for the bottom 10 percent in London is a mere $9500, and that for the top 10 percent is an astounding $1.5 million. Professor Ruth Lupton of the London School of Economics and Political Science, in his research paper titled ‘Prosperity, Poverty, and Inequality in London’, highlights that the net income of the bottom tenth of Londoners plummeted by 24 percent following the recession of 2008 (Lupton, 2013). But perhaps the most astounding of these findings is that of a report done by London’s Child Poverty Commission, which found that 592,000 children, or 37 percent of all children in the capital, are living below the poverty line. Due to the fact that most of these children are born into poverty, they also do not have available to them the adequate resources or good schools required for a reputable …show more content…
Housing prices in London, and of central London in particular, have sky rocketed as a result of the recession and increased population growth. A quarter of all households in London rely on housing benefits to meet housing costs (Trust for London WEB). These housing benefits paid by the government are starting to have a lesser impact after the induction of the Local Housing Allowance reform, which I talk about later on in the essay. A combination of the recession and population growth has forced many people out of inner London and to the less economically developed areas of Croydon and Enfield in the East of London. East London, which was once a rather prosperous area of London, has seen a massive shift in its structure. Unemployment and a diverse population of illegal immigrants has caused gangs to develop in the region, giving rise to crime rates in the area. The Increase in housing costs, and the consequential residential segregation that follows, highlights a key determinant in understanding inequality and how borders are drawn in neighborhoods, separating the rich from the
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