 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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The unexpectedly rapid ageing of the population makes it urgent that we design a system that will encourage those who can provide for their own retirement while helping those who reach the end of their working lives with insufficient wealth to sustain what society regards as an acceptable standard of living. These objectives frequently - and perhaps inherently - conflict. In dealing as best they can with the inevitable trade-offs, policymakers need to have three important questions (among many others) in mind.
First, is the financial support offered to pensioners by the state in retirement sustainable in terms of the burden it places on the working population, who pick up most of the bill in the form of taxation? Second, are the mechanisms by which the private financial sector helps people save for retirement sustainable in the sharing of risk between employers and employees? And, third, is the way in which the state and private systems interact sustainable in the sense that the combination promises people a reasonable degree of financial security without creating unduly powerful disincentives for them to work and save? Research in this area looks at these questions. We look in detail at the impact of various government reforms and proposals for reform to the pension system. Search
On Monday the Government published its long advertised Green Paper on state pension reform. Much press speculation has suggested that this would lead to a flat rate pension of £140 a week for all new pensioners from 2015. But the commitments that the Government have made not to increase public spending on pensions and to honour pension rights that have already been accrued means that introducing such a pension will not be possible on anything like this timetable.
The final report of Lord Hutton's Independent Public Service Pensions Commission has been published today. The proposed reforms would improve the structure of public service pensions considerably and some elements would certainly lead to some public sector workers receiving substantially less generous pensions. But the overall generosity of the schemes, and therefore the cost to the taxpayer, will depend on key decisions left for the Government to make.
We use a unique dataset to construct measures of lifetime earnings and examine how these relate to financial resources in retirement.
These slides were delivered at the IFS Green Budget 2011.
This presentation was delivered on November 23rd at University College Dublin.
James Banks, Carli Lessof, James Nazroo, Nina Rogers, Mai Stafford and Andrew Steptoe (eds)
This report covers the fourth wave of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
Lord Hutton's interim report on public service pensions recommended an increase in employee contributions in the short term. Suggestions for more fundamental reforms of the pensions will be made in the Commission's final report next spring. Any such recommendations should consider how cost effectively public service pensions attract and retain the desired calibre of staff in the public sector and whether any reforms to the structure of the schemes should be accompanied by reductions to the average generosity.
This is a chapter of the wave 4 analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
This paper adds to the evidence base on retirement income adequacy and how retirement incomes relate to lifetime earnings.
Most families accumulated very little liquid wealth between 2000 and 2005 according to new research published today by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and funded by the IFS Retirement Saving Consortium.
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 Started: 01 February 2012
Started: 01 January 2012
Started: 11 April 2011
Started: 01 May 2004
Started: 01 May 2004
   Past research into pension reform has contributed to evidence given to government on public service pensions.
Reform of the complex French state pension system was informed by recommendations by IFS researchers.
IFS researchers present and discuss new research on retirement saving with a group of business leaders and policy makers.
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