Less than a fifth of UK’s top 1% of earners are women
Women make up just 18% of the top 1% of UK earners – those earning annual pre-tax incomes of £119,000 or above – according to new research from the London School of Economics. The study also revealed the same pattern in the other seven countries studied – Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and Spain. In each of these countries, fewer than a third of the top 10% of earners were women. In the UK, 28% of the top 10% - those earning £40,400 or above – were women. 

Fewer than one in five of the UK’s top 1% of earners are women, according to a study that highlights a stubborn gender divide among the super-rich.

Researchers writing for the London School of Economics found the UK picture was replicated in all seven other countries they studied, with men always making up a majority of the top income groups.



Women accounted for less than a third of those in the top 10% in all the countries. Higher up the income distribution, the proportion was lower still, with women constituting between 14% and 22% of the top 1%, according to the study published by the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute on Tuesday.

“Women now make up more of the top income groups, but they still are a distinct minority and they become rarer the higher one climbs,” said co-author Alessandra Casarico, a professor at Bocconi University in Italy.

“Composition of income is important. In the old days, the rich were those with property; they have been replaced by CEOs and entrepreneurs, among whom women are not well represented.”

The researchers used tax data and looked at income from work and other sources, such as investments, to see how many of the top 1% and top 10% were women in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and the UK.

They found the presence of women in the top income groups had generally increased over time, except in Australia. But the growth in the proportion of women had been faster for the top 10% than among the very richest, or top 0.1%. “In this sense, there appears to be something of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women,” the report said.

In the UK, women made up 28% of the top 10% income group, which covers those on annual pre-tax incomes of £40,400 or more, using 2013 figures.

Women made up 18% of the UK’s top 1%, those on £119,000 or more. They were just 9% of the top 0.1%, who are on £456,000 or more. That was the lowest female representation among the six countries where comparable data was available on the 0.1%. The highest was 16.6% in Spain.

“In the UK while the share of women in the top 10% and top 1% has risen since the 1990s, the share of women in the top 0.1% was little changed,” said the authors.

The researchers also found that investment played a more important role as a source of income, via payouts such as interest and dividends, for women than for men in the top income groups. Possible reasons include households seeking to minimise their tax liabilities by transferring investment income from the higher earner to the lower one, and in most cases that was the woman.



They also put forward another, rather unromantic, theory. “It could also be the result of positive assortative mating in the marriage market, whereby women at the top marry men with similar characteristics and are in a position to share assets and their return.”