PLEASE NOTE: On 23 April 2007, the Department for Work and Pensions announced that an error had occurred when producing the latest Households Below Average Income publication. The analysis presented at this briefing was based on the same dataset and therefore suffers from similar errors. Full details can be found in our press release.

The Government's latest figures on the distribution of income and the extent of relative poverty in the UK will be released by the Department for Work and Pensions on Tuesday 27 March. The IFS will be releasing a report on the latest figures and recent trends, which will be presented on Wednesday 28 March.

This briefing will assess:

- How average incomes in Britain have continued to change;

- What has been happening to the gap between rich and poor;

- What has happened to child poverty in the year after the Government missed its target for child poverty to have fallen by a quarter since 1998/9;

- The latest trends in pensioner poverty;

- What has happened to poverty amongst groups less favoured by Government tax and benefit policies.

This report will be launched on Wednesday 28 March at the IFS offices in Ridgmount Street, London. The briefing will start at 11am and is expected to conclude by 12.30pm.

Places at this briefing are free of charge and will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

The IFS will also be issuing a press release commenting on the official Households Below Average Income report, and this will be available from the morning on Tuesday 27 March.