Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Paragraph: 79
The crisis has hit different groups of people unequally.
Recommendation
The crisis has hit different groups of people unequally. It is also likely that the differences in hours of paid work carried out between men and women observed during the lockdown may lead to a widening of the gender pay gap, especially if the differences in hours worked persist in the months ahead. We recommend that the Treasury publishes an updated version of its distributional analysis in the Plan for Jobs in the next fiscal event, alongside an equality impact analysis of how the recession is impacting different groups (e.g. gender, race, region and socioeconomic status) and the extent to which Government measures are mitigating falls in incomes for those hardest hit. This analysis should also include a breakdown of how unemployment rates of these different groups have been impacted by the crisis.
Paragraph Reference:
79
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
On your recommendation on publishing an updated version of our COVID-19 distributional analysis (published alongside Plan for Jobs), we have taken note and will consider doing so at an appropriate point. The modelling underpinning this analysis was designed to illustrate the extent to which cumulative government measures are mitigating falls in incomes across households of different income levels. It would be very challenging to produce this analysis to the same quality across a range of wider characteristics. Firstly, many of the characteristics we are interested in are held by individuals (e.g. gender), whereas government support, and living standards more generally, tend to be determined at household level. On gender, for example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said “because most people live in households with others, and we don’t know how incomes are shared, it is very hard to look at effects separately for many men and women.” Secondly, even where assumptions on income sharing within households are less important (e.g. for regional breakdowns), data availability and survey sample sizes can limit how meaningful and representative these results are, concealing a very wide range of outcomes within broad averages. With regards to the recommendation to “include a breakdown of how unemployment rates of these different groups have been impacted by the crisis”, the Office for National Statistics already publish labour market data by various protected characteristics, including gender, age, ethnicity and disability.