4.4. Inequality growth in the UK from 1979 to 1996
Let us now summarize the overall densities and their decomposition into sub-groups by means of inequality indices. Table 6 gives the posterior mean for the Generalized Entropy index (GE) for α=0.5, the Theil index, the Mean Logarithmic Deviation (MLD) index, the Atkinson index for ϵ=0.5 and the Gini index, with their posterior standard deviations between brackets. There is a considerable increase in all the inequality indices from 1979 to 1992, a fact that should be related to the period 1979–1990 when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. This inequality growth is slowing down between 1988 and 1992. And from 1992 to 1996, all these inequality measures decrease, going back to their levels of somewhere between 1988 and 1992. These results are in lines with the annual report of the Department of Social Security (1998), see Jenkins, 1996 and Jenkins, 2000.