Large and persistent losses of low-income groups following recessions underline the importance of well-targeted income-support policies during economic slumps, as well as during the recovery. In restoring incomes at the bottom, a key challenge for policy is to facilitate and encourage employment and earnings growth that benefits low-income groups in particular. The relative stability of higher incomes after recessions, as well as their longer-term trends, are important to bear in mind in policy debates that seek to define a response to growing inequalities.