 Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Income distribution, poverty and inequality.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
Analysis of the fiscal choices an independent Scotland would face.
Case studies that give a flavour of the areas where IFS research has an impact on society.
Reforming the tax system for the 21st century.
A peer-reviewed quarterly journal publishing articles by academics and practitioners.
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We study how family networks affect informal insurance and investment in poor villages. We use panel data from the randomized evaluation of PROGRESA in rural Mexico and exploit the information on surnames to identify extended families. Using exogenous income variations, we show that members of an extended family (connected) share risk with each other but not with households without relatives in the village (isolated). In addition, connected households invest more in their children’s human capital when hit by a positive income shock, the PROGRESA transfer, and disinvest less when hit by a negative health shock. Such a higher level of investment is long-lasting, and increases long-term consumption. At the same time connected households achieve almost perfect insurance against idiosyncratic risk. These findings suggest that anti-poverty policies should take into account the familial structure of village economies. Search |
 View all IFS Working Papers in the series
Recent IFS Working Papers
Identifying the drivers of month of birth differences in educational attainment
This paper is the first to apply the principle of maximum entropy to the month of birth problem.
The drivers of month of birth differences in children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills: a regression discontinuity analysis
This paper uses data from a rich UK birth cohort to estimate the differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills between children born at the start and end of the academic year.
The impact of age within academic year on adult outcomes
We provide the first evidence on whether differences in childhood outcomes translate into differences in the probability of employment, occupation and earnings for adults in the UK.
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