Since the late 1970s, Britain has become a more unequal society. This book analyzes the dramatic widening of the income distribution, the growth of poverty, and the factors that have driven them. It examines how government spending and the taxes that pay for it affect people's incomes, why they take the forms they do, what we think of them, how things have changed since New Labour came to power in 1997, and the future pressures that any government will face as the population ages.