How can countries support a rising proportion of pensioners without putting an intolerable burden on taxpayers? What changes need to be made to the state pension, the health service, and the age at which pensioners can retire?

This presentation at the festival of science by IFS researchers documents the pressures for change on retirement and pensioner income in Britain and examines their implications for future generations of pensioners.

IFS analysis of the Chancellor's 2004 spending review.

A recent research project undertaken by the Centre for the Economics of Education has found that how well you do in school, whether you get a degree or not and how much you subsequently earn in the labour market, has become more closely linked to the prosperity of your parents. The children of richer parents have always done better in school, have always been more likely to get a degree and have always gone on to earn more once they enter the world of work. However, this is truer now than in the past, despite decades of government initiatives designed to promote equality of opportunity in education.

New research on measuring living standards has cast doubt on the increasing use of lists of goods people cannot afford to measure poverty.

New IFS research examines the extent to which Government tax and benefit policies have contributed to the significant rise in income inequality seen in Britain since 1979.

A new report sheds light on how the gap between the rich and the poor changed over the 1990s and early 2000s, comparing patterns in household incomes and spending.

Research published in the forthcoming March issue of Fiscal Studies shows that the debt problem is a little different from that portrayed in some parts of the media: consumer debt is expanding rapidly on the back of a growth in real living standards and rising house prices but it is not homeowners who face difficulties in paying back debt; rather it is people with low incomes, typically without a job or their own property, who report problems with debt arrears.

IFS analysis of the Budget 2004.

The IFS Green Budget examines the options open to the Chancellor in the his March Budget.