1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats.
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm.
3. N. Crafts (1995), ‘The Golden Age of Economic Growth in Western Europe, 1950–73’, Economic History Review 48, 429–47. In later work Crafts does note that whilst growth was relatively high in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s compared to later decades, the country fell behind competitor nations which grew much faster in the golden age period – see N. Crafts (2012), ‘British Economic Decline Revisited: The role of competition’, Explorations in Economic History 49, 17–29; N. Crafts and G. Toniolo (2010), ‘Aggregate Growth, 1950 to 2005’ in S. Broadberry and K. O’Rourke (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press.
4. See P. Armstrong, A. Glyn and J. Harrison (1984), Capitalism Since World War Two, Fontana.
5. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=7468.
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen_(Sex_Pistols_song).
7. Based on Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings numbers deflated by the consumer price index, used in P. Gregg, S. Machin and M. Fernandez-Salgado (2014), ‘Real Wages and Unemployment in the Big Squeeze’, Economic Journal 124, 408–32.
8. S. Machin (2010), ‘Changes in UK Wage Inequality Over the Last Forty Years’ in P. Gregg and J. Wadsworth (eds.), The Labour Market in Winter, Oxford University Press.
9. See C. Belfield et al. (2016), ‘Two Decades of Income Inequality in Britain: The role of wages, household earnings and redistribution’, Economica 84, 157–79.
10. Based on Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings numbers deflated by consumer price index used in Gregg, Machin and Fernandez-Salgado (2014).
11. R. Blundell, C. Crawford and W. Jin (2014), ‘What Can Wages and Employment Tell Us about the UK’s Productivity Puzzle?’, Economic Journal 124, 377–407; J. Pessoa and J. Van Reenen (2014,) ‘The UK Productivity and Jobs Puzzle: Does the answer lie in wage flexibility?’, Economic Journal 124, 433–52.
12. Trades Union Congress (2014), ‘UK Workers Suffering the Most Severe Squeeze in Real Earnings Since Victorian Times’; https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-workers-suffering-most-severe-squeeze-real-earnings-victorian-times.
13. Gregg, Machin and Fernandez-Salgado (2014); http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2016/02/now-a-lost-eleven-years-on-pay-never-before-know-in-history/.
14. Data taken from Office for National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/ukproductivityintroduction/jantomar2016.
15. Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings numbers deflated by consumer price index (CPIH from ONS), updated from Gregg, Machin and Fernandez-Salgado (2014).
16. Our own calculations – using data from the Family Expenditure Survey and Labour Force Survey.
17. A. Heath and C. Payne (2000), ‘Social Mobility’ in A. Halsey (ed.) Twentieth Century British Social Trends, Macmillan; J. Goldthorpe (1987), Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain, Clarendon Press; G. Marshall, A. Swift and S. Roberts (1997), Against the Odds? Social class and social justice in industrial societies, Clarendon Press; J. Goldthorpe and C. Mills (2004), ‘Trends in Intergenerational Class Mobility in Britain in the Late Twentieth Century’ in R. Breen (ed.), Social Mobility in Europe, Oxford University Press.
18. J. Goldthorpe and C. Mills (2008), ‘Trends in Intergenerational Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Evidence from national surveys, 1972–2005’, National Institute Economic Review 205, 83–100.
19. E. Bukodi, J. Goldthorpe, L. Waller and J. Kuha (2015), ‘The Mobility Problem in Britain: New findings from the analysis of birth cohort data’, British Journal of Sociology 66, 93–117.
20. Numbers taken from S. Clarke, A. Corlett and L. Judge (2016), ‘The Housing Headwind: The impact of rising housing costs on UK living standards’, Resolution Foundation.
21. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/22/mike-ashley-running-sports-direct-like-victorian-workhouse.
22. Good Work: The Taylor review of modern working practices; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-work-the-taylor-review-of-modern-working-practices.
23. Sutton Trust (2013), ‘Real Apprenticeships’; https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/APPRENTICESHIPS.pdf.
24. Sutton Trust (2017), ‘The State of Social Mobility in the UK’; https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BCGSocial-Mobility-report-full-versioN_WEB_FINAL.pdf.
25. Sutton Trust (2017), ‘Social Mobility and Economic Success’; https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Oxera-reporT_WEB_FINAL.pdf – This estimated an annual increase in the country’s GDP of 2 per cent, equivalent to £590 per person or worth £39 billion to the UK economy as a whole; another report estimated that failing to improve low levels of social mobility would cost the UK economy up to £140 billion a year by 2050 – or an additional 4 per cent of GDP – http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/140-billion-year-cost-low-social-mobility/.
26. The Gini coefficient measuring income inequality in Britain is 0.38, higher than the coefficient for Canada, at 0.34. On the other hand, were social mobility to worsen, and inequality fall to levels seen in the United States, the Gini coefficient would rise from 0.38 to 0.41; GDP per head would be lowered by 3.3 per cent.
27. http://voxeu.org/article/effects-income-inequality-economic-growth.
28. J. Stiglitz, (2013), The Price of Inequality, Penguin Books.