Starting in the late 1970s and gathering pace in the 1980s, the gaps between rich and poor in the United Kingdom have widened. This book contains results from a major research program that investigated the varied factors that led to this major social and economic change. Aspects covered include the changing shape of the income distributions as a whole, the rising earnings differentials between high paid and low paid, the changing contribution of women's earnings to family incomes, spatial polarization between rich and poor neighborhoods, and the links between income and wealth distributions.