The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has commissioned a longitudinal evaluation

"Our historic ain will be for ours to be the generation that ends child poverty forever", proclaimed Prime Minister tony Blair in his 1999 Beveridge Lecture.

Before the 2001 election the Treasury said that `tax and benefit reforms announced in this Parliament will lift over 1.2 million children out of relative poverty. But official figures released on 11 April show a smaller fall in child poverty, of only 0.5 million since 1996-97. This commentary attempts to explain the discrepancy.

This IFS book (March 2002) reveals that mothers still face substantial hurdles in undertaking paid employment. For those who do manage to work, childcare arrangements are a diverse mixture of carers, cost and quality. Government initiatives to increase the availability of childcare places have a substantial shortfall to address while measures to increase the

A new IFS book published today, Monday 25th March, reveals that mothers still face substantial hurdles in undertaking paid employment. For those who do manage to work, childcare arrangements are a diverse mixture of carers, cost and quality. Government initiatives to increase the availability of childcare places have a substantial shortfall to address while measures to increase the \"affordability\" of care, such as the Working Families Tax Credit, may have limited impact on the work choices of mothers.

Slides from book launch.

The principal of horizontal equity can be interpreted as requiring that households with the same pre-transfer incomes and the same consumption needs should receive the same post-transfer incomes.

This Commentary looks at two asset-based welfare policies and asks how they might work and what rationale lies behind them.

New work published by IFS looks at two asset-based welfare policies and asks how they might work and what rationale lies behind them.