Measures of inequality, assortative matching in the UK & the effect on within & between household inequality of increased marital sorting by education

Inequality is measured at the household level and public policy is based on these measures. If
households pool their resources entirely then this measure will accurately identify disparities
between groups in society. If not, current measures of inequality could understate the problem by

ignoring disparities within households. Participation in UK university education has increased
substantially from 30% in the early 1990s to 48% in 2014/15, the largest increases being among
women (House of Commons Library 2016). It is possible that more people are finding partners with
similar levels of education to themselves. This could have caused inequality within households to
decrease as earning potential of both partners is similar, which though reducing the disparity
between measures is still worth investigating.