Two separate reports have highlighted the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots in this country. While the number of people earning six-figure salaries has risen, poverty has also risen in the UK when compared to other countries.

The Inland Revenue has reported that over the last four years, the number of workers in the UK earning six figure-salaries has risen by nearly fifty percent. They estimate that around 326,000 people will earn at least £100,000 before tax this year, compared to just 220,000 in 1998-99. Of these, 285,000 will be men, and only 41,000 women.

Last year, the UK's average national wage, calculated as a mean of overall salary data, was £23,607, according to the Office for National Statistics. But the spiralling salaries of the top earners has meant that 60 percent of workers earn less that the national average salary.

Alastair Hatchett, of Incomes Data Services, said: " It's in the City where this money is being earned, as well as by directors. This has been a tendency over the last two decades. It has meant that the overall distribution of earnings has stretched further. And it means that the number of people earning below the average wage has grown slightly."

Perhaps more worrying is the fact that an eminent professor has reported a dramatic increase in the level of poverty in the UK, compared with other industrialised nations.

Professor Lars Osberg has shown by his research that there has been a big increase in both the "depth" of poverty and the number of people who are below the poverty line. This is something that he attributed to a sharp rise in the number of workless households, coupled with a decline in the level of benefit payments to the poor.