Recession has brought loss and deprivation but inequality has fallen.

THE PROFOUND impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s on poverty drove the subsequent expansion of social protection systems and welfare states in the richer countries after the second World War. The international economic crisis since 2007 has been widely labelled as the “Great Recession”, but the effects on poverty and income inequality have been much more muted so far, as shown in a new study of 21 OECD countries…