As a result of methodological developments in the measurement of wealth pioneered by IFS researchers using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the Office for National Statistics established the Wealth and Assets Survey in order to provide a detailed picture of the assets and debts of the British household population.

Centre co-Director James Banks was one of two external scientific advisors to the survey and, along with IFS researchers Rowena Crawford and Gemma Tetlow, was also involved in processing and analysing the early waves of data. The resulting data are now used by officials in government departments as well as external researchers and were also heavily used in the recent report of the National Equality Panel.