Modern Growth and Development in the UK

We may still be coming through the deepest recession in living memory, but we are for the most part incomparably better off than we were in the Silver Jubilee year [1977]. Incomes have doubled on average. We need devote much less of our spending to necessities such as food, leaving us free to spend more on leisure pursuits. As a nation, we are vastly better educated. We have moved decisively away from a manufacturing economy towards one based on services. Many more of us work in professional and whitecollar occupations. Women are much more established in the labour market and have made particularly substantial strides in educational attainment.

From IFS, Jubilees compared: incomes, spending and work in the late 1970s and early 2010s