Since the 1980s, there has been a major shift in responsibility for welfare from the state to the individual, driven by both Conservative and Labour governments. During this same period, there has also been a major shift in the distribution of income and wealth such that the gap between the rich and poor has grown steadily wider. The two trends are linked together as policy changes which have reduced the role of the state have favoured the better off. This book has explored these trends and presented new evidence and arguments in relation to them. But our main conclusion is that there has been insufficient thinking, empirical research and policy discussion in this field. We need a major review of wealth and the wealthy, a new Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth as took place in the 1970s. In the meantime, this book serves to highlight some key issues and policy ideas.

A major mechanism for achieving a shift from collective to individual welfare has been a range of government policies which have encouraged people to build up their own personal assets in the form of financial savings (‘asset-based welfare policies’ and financial inclusion policies), housing wealth and private pension wealth. ‘Asset-based welfare’ for those on lower incomes has been much discussed, but the two flagship policies, the Child Trust Fund and the Saving Gateway, were fairly small scale in practice and, indeed, the Saving Gateway was extensively piloted but then abandoned before it was introduced nationwide. The Child Trust Fund has also been abolished by the Coalition government. And although various financial inclusion policies have increased the number of people with bank accounts and provided more advice to people with debt problems, the number of people on low incomes who have savings to fall back on remains very small.

There has been greater success, it seems, in relation to housing wealth, where more and more people have become owner-occupiers. Some have benefited greatly from this and seen their housing wealth soar, up to 2007 at least. However, the outlook is not so positive as the economic situation and related job losses may cause increasing numbers of owner-occupiers to struggle with their mortgages, and negative equity may become an increasing problem if house prices continue to fall.