  Journal articles
In a world of declining state pension provision, it is becoming increasingly important that individuals are able to understand the financial choices they face and can choose savings products, portfolios and contribution rates accordingly.
This paper presents an overview of the beginnings of a research agenda targeted towards increasing the empirical evidence on economic issues related to ageing in England and providing extensive data for subsequent research.
This articles sets out to assess the relative heath status of older individuals in England and the United States, especially how their health status varies by important indicators of socioeconomic position.
We examine the possible consequences of the increasing shift from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution arrangements for private pensions.
This paper examines the effect of reforms to the public pension programme in the United Kingdom on the state retirement incomes of current generations of pensioners and on the prospective state incomes of future generations of pensioners.
The adequacy of household saving for retirement has become a policy issue all around the world.
Orazio Attanasio and Susann Rohwedder
Using three major UK pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings.
In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes.
Tom Clark and Carl Emmerson
This paper analyses the thrust of the UK Government's pension reforms in the context of the system they inherited.
Using a sample of individuals from the UK Retirement Survey, the paper models the probability of retirement in terms of the incentives underlying the individual's pension plan as well as other socio-economic factors.
This paper surveys the issue of public spending on pensions.
Carl Emmerson and Sarah Tanner
The UK government is planning to introduce stakeholder pensions from April 2001 as an alternative to existing personal pensions for people on moderate earnings.
Books, reports and briefing notes
This report is the fifth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
This paper is intended to aid discussion about ways in which the proposals produced by the Dilnot Commission on the Funding of Care and Support could be funded.
James Banks, Carli Lessof, James Nazroo, Nina Rogers, Mai Stafford and Andrew Steptoe (eds)
This report covers the fourth wave of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
This Briefing Note describes state pension provision in the United Kingdom from the inception of the basic state pension in 1948, following the Beveridge Report, to Pensions Act 2007 and the plans of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government.
The tables in this paper present a description of the distribution of wealth amongst those aged 50 and over in England in 2002/3, with the analysis split by a series of different factors.
James Banks, Elizabeth Breeze, Carli Lessof and James Nazroo (eds)
This report covers the second wave of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
This report provides new empirical evidence on the level and distribution of retirement saving in England.
David Wise (eds)
Contributions from each country involved in the NBER network for research into the economics of ageing.
Jonathan Gruber and David Wise (eds)
Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World represents the second stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security and labour.
This paper was presented at a seminar organised by the Economic and Social Research Council. It asks whether it is possible to design a pension system that can guarantee financial security to individuals, employers and to the state simultaneously.
On 6 October 2003, the pension credit replaced the minimum income guarantee as the principal means-tested benefit for families containing an individual aged 60 or over. This Briefing Note examines the impact of this reform.
Alissa Goodman, Michal Myck and Andrew Shephard
This commentary reviews the government's tax and benefit reforms affecting pensioners to date, and examines the evidence from the latest official low income figures on the government's record on pensioner poverty so far.
This briefing note assembles the existing microeconomic evidence and sets out economic arguments relating to the current debate on the ageing population, the timing of retirement, and the adequacy of financial provision for retirement in the UK.
Tom Clark and Carl Emmerson
This briefing note looks at the interaction of the tax and benefit system with stakeholder pensions. In particular, it asks how, in the light of recent reforms to the system of state pension provision, the welfare system differentially affects the incentive to invest in a stakeholder scheme for various groups in the population.
Tom Clark
In Autumn 2001, the government finalised its proposals for the introduction of the Pension Credit in 2003. Since the initial plans, the Government has significantly changed the way in which pensioners' savings will be treated by the new benefit, and has also decided to couple the reform to significant increases in the generosity of housing benefit for pensioners. This paper updates earlier IFS research evaluating these modified proposals, asking who is likely to gain, and assessing the likely effect on pensioner poverty, on savings incentives and on the public finances. We conclude that modifications to the reform leave the policy better able to reward saving and fitting in better with the rest of UK pension policy. In the longer-term, however, there large questions about the eventual cost and effects of the reform that remain unanswered.
Tom Clark
In the November 2000 Pre-Budget Report, the government announced a major range of measures for pensioners. Some come into operation in April 2001, while others follow in 2002 and 2003. The most important aspects of the package comprised: above-inflation increases in the retirement pension; substantially above-inflation increases in the means-tested minimum income guarantee (MIG); and the introduction of a new element into the means-tested benefit system for pensioners, known as the pension credit. Overall, the package means the government will pay over 4 billion a year extra to pensioners (2000 prices) by 200304. It represents a very substantial redistribution in favour of pensioners, and particularly those on low incomes.
Sarah Tanner
This note looks at the kind of information people have on saving and how this effects their decisions to invest in the future. We also ask what policies could be used to provide people with clear information which they trust.
In this briefing note we add to the current debate on UK annuity markets by providing some simple descriptive analysis from household survey data. In particular, using data from recent waves of the Family Resources Survey, we consider how the current population of (elderly) annuitants differs from the elderly population at large, and describe differences in the characteristics of the group holding voluntary, as opposed to mandatory annuity policies.
Carl Emmerson and Sarah Tanner
The government published its first plans for stakeholder pensions in December 1998. Since then more flesh has been put on the bones with the publication of six disussion papers each focusing on a different aspects of stakeholder pensions -the minimum standards, the employer access requirement, the clearing arrangements, regulation, advice and information, governance and the tax regime. This note summarises - and critically appraises - the government's proposals
Working papers
This paper examines changes in health and disability related transfers in the UK over the last thirty years, and describes how they are related to changes in labour force participation.
This paper tries to assess whether or not we have any empirical evidence of links between early retirement and youth unemployment.
This paper looks at the value of pension rights in the context of the Teachers' Pension Scheme.
We examine the impact of recent reforms on private pension coverage and on contributions to personal pension accounts.
We describe the trajectory of pension reform in the United Kingdom.
We summarise what economic theory predicts about how retirement savings decisions are affected by marginal withdrawal rates created by the tax, tax credit and benefit system, and by the information individuals are provided with.
In this paper we look at numerical ability and other dimensions of cognitive function in a sample of older adults in England and examine the extent to which these abilities are correlated with various measures of wealth and retirement saving outcomes.
This paper provides a detailed analysis of individuals in households in England aged between 50 and the State Pension Age in terms of their private pension arrangements and current non-pension assets alongside their expectations of future economic circumstances.
This paper explains the methodology used for calculating pension wealth for all individuals in the first wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).
The fiscal and distributive impacts of three reforms to the social security pension system in the UK are evaluated.
We examine the role of ill-health in retirement decisions in Britain, using the first eight waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-98).
This paper examines the choice of pension scheme and job mobility in Britain.
Steve Bond and Jason Cummins
We consider to what extent the empirical failings of the Q model of investment can be attributed to the use of share prices to measure average q.
Orazio Attanasio and Susanne Rohwedder
Using three major UK pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings.
In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socio-economic status and health outcomes.
James Banks, Richard Blundell and James P. Smith
In this paper we describe the household wealth distribution in the US and UK, and compare both wealth inequality and the form in which wealth is held.
James Banks and Tanner, S
This paper presents a detailed analysis of the composition of household portfolios, using both aggregate and micro-data.
Richard Disney and Sarah Tanner
Using data from the Family Expenditure Survey we show that the abolition of the earnings rule in the UK increased the number of hours worked by men.
Richard Disney and Edward Whitehouse
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