FOI REF: FOI-2023-1129
You asked
I would like to know the ethnic breakdown of the top 1% of earneres in Greater London. As a proxy, I would be interested to understand the ethnic breakdown of those residents of Greater London who, according to the latest available income tax data, earn £300,000 or more per year.
We said
Thank you for your request for the ethnic breakdown of Greater London residents who earn more than £300,000 per year.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis specifically showing an ethnic breakdown of those earning 300,000 per year or more in Greater London. This information would need to be created in order to respond to this request, involving statistical expertise and experience to manipulate and interpret the raw data we hold to produce the information requested. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), public authorities are not obliged to create new information to respond to FOI requests.
We have not undertaken this analysis previously, as breaking down the data we hold showing earners over £300,000 (which is already a small percentage of our information) in a specific location by ethnic group as well would produce very small figures. Such analysis would therefore pose confidentiality and statistical quality concerns.
However, we hope the following publications will help with your area of interest.
We have published insight in to Ethnicity pay gaps, most recently updated in 2019; the headline measure for the ethnicity pay gap uses Annual Population Survey data and is calculated as the difference between the median hourly earnings of the reference group (White or White British) and other ethnic groups as a proportion of average hourly earnings of the reference group. The ethnicity pay gap differs across regions and is largest in London (23.8%), compared to an average across England and Wales of 2.3%.
You might also be interested in the latest update on our research into the feasibility of producing estimates of income by ethnic group as part of our wider research into the feasibility of producing subnational multivariate statistics. This includes income percentiles for ethnic groups at different levels of geography in England and Wales, including national figures, regional figures, and figures for local authorities and lower layer super output areas (LSOAs). Statistical disclosure control (SDC) means that some of the figures have been suppressed. This research forms part of our population and social statistics transformation programme, which aims to provide the best insights on population, migration, and society, using a range of data sources.
If you have any queries about the published information provided, please feel free to contact our teams at admin.based.characteristics@ons.gov.uk.
Given that your request relates to income tax data, you may find that HMRC would be able to assist you further. Their FOI team can be contacted at foi.request@hmrc.gov.uk