Categories: FinanceNews

Women barely figure as part of UK’s super-rich

There are 53,000 super wealthy people in the UK who are in the prestigious top 0.1 per cent of earners.

These are people who make more money in a month than most make in a number of years. Probably a nice place to be, if you are part of this elite group.

However, for everyone else these super rich people live in a world we can only imagine, and it is also a male dominated social strata.

A report by the London School of Economics has found that out of these 53,000 people only nine per cent are women. There is a ‘glass ceiling’ that means that women are only a tiny fraction of the super rich.

The proportion of the wealthiest 10% and 1% who are women has actually increased though.

They used tax data and looked at income from work and other investment sources, to understand how many of the top 1% and top 10% are female in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and the UK.

A co-author of the report, Alessandra Casarico, said women were “rarer the higher one climbs”.

Professor John Hills, co-director at the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute, said: “Women have managed to increase their representation in the top 10% because of their success in the professions and business, but few of them are among the very wealthiest.”

In the UK, using 2013 figures, women made up:

  • 28% of the top 10% income group, which covers those on annual pre-tax incomes of over £40,400
  • Women made up 18% of the UK’s top 1%, those on £119,000 or more.
  • 9% of the top 0.1%, who are on £456,000 or more
Joe Mellor

Head of Content

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