Facts and figures about UK taxes, benefits and public spending.
Income distribution, poverty and inequality.
Analysing government fiscal forecasts and tax and spending.
 | ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy. |
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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Centre for Economic Research on Ageing
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Date started: 01 May 2004
The issues raised by ageing populations, and in particular the topics of retirement, saving and pension provision, are some of the most important policy issues currently facing the government. Increasingly, economists are developing new techniques and collecting new data designed to understand such issues, and researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have been at the forefront of these activities in the UK.
The centre for economic research on ageing gathers together IFS research in these areas and will take it forward on a coherent basis, targeting the research towards the big policy questions in the economics of ageing. At the heart of the centre is the analysis, and design, of individual level data on all aspects of later life, including economic and social position, health and cognitive function. Such data is becoming increasingly available in many countries and cera researchers are working actively with economists and non-economists both nationally and internationally to bring the analysis of such data to the forefront of the policy debate.
All available publications
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This report is the fifth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
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Raising revenue to pay for the proposals suggested by the Dilnot Commission on Funding of Care and Support offers an opportunity for the government to rationalise the tax and benefit system for those above State Pension Age, Paul Johnson, the director of the IFS, will say at a seminar on social care funding today.
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This paper is intended to aid discussion about ways in which the proposals produced by the Dilnot Commission on the Funding of Care and Support could be funded.
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This paper examines changes in health and disability related transfers in the UK over the last thirty years, and describes how they are related to changes in labour force participation.
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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.
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This paper tries to assess whether or not we have any empirical evidence of links between early retirement and youth unemployment.
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We review recent major reforms to the UK pension system with an eye for whether there are any lessons for Canada. The two key reform features they focus on are the introduction of Personal Accounts for retirement saving for workers who are not eligible for employer-provided pension plans, and the incorporation of
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The tables in this paper present a description of the distribution of wealth amongst those aged 50 and over in England in 2002/3, with the analysis split by a series of different factors.
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We examine the impact of recent reforms on private pension coverage and on contributions to personal pension accounts.
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In a world of declining state pension provision, it is becoming increasingly important that individuals are able to understand the financial choices they face and can choose savings products, portfolios and contribution rates accordingly.
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We describe the trajectory of pension reform in the United Kingdom.
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This paper presents an overview of the beginnings of a research agenda targeted towards increasing the empirical evidence on economic issues related to ageing in England and providing extensive data for subsequent research.
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The Pensions White Paper set out the Government's proposed reforms to pension provision in the UK in light of the Pensions Commission's recommendations.
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This report covers the second wave of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, a survey of people of 50 and over in England.
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This articles sets out to assess the relative heath status of older individuals in England and the United States, especially how their health status varies by important indicators of socioeconomic position.
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Middle-aged English people are healthier than their American counterparts, according to a collaborative study issued today by English and US researchers.
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We summarise what economic theory predicts about how retirement savings decisions are affected by marginal withdrawal rates created by the tax, tax credit and benefit system, and by the information individuals are provided with.
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New research examines what is known about how the tax and benefit system influences retirement saving decisions.
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In this paper we look at numerical ability and other dimensions of cognitive function in a sample of older adults in England and examine the extent to which these abilities are correlated with various measures of wealth and retirement saving outcomes.
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Initial analysis of the Turner report on pension provision.
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The aim of this analysis was to establish whether self-reported disability in walking medium distances (a quarter of a mile) in an English ageing study (ELSA) was comparable to similar self-reports in the US (NHANES) studies.
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This report provides new empirical evidence on the level and distribution of retirement saving in England.
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The vast majority of the next generation of pensioners will have resources in excess of the adequacy benchmarks typically used in the policy debate but many may not get as much private pension income as they expect.
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This paper provides a detailed analysis of individuals in households in England aged between 50 and the State Pension Age in terms of their private pension arrangements and current non-pension assets alongside their expectations of future economic circumstances.
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This paper explains the methodology used for calculating pension wealth for all individuals in the first wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).
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The Conservatives have announced that, if elected, they would cut taxes by £4.0 billion in 200708. Of this they have allocated £1.7 billion to increasing support for individual contributions to private funded pension schemes where these contributions attract relief at the basic rate of income tax.
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We examine the possible consequences of the increasing shift from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution arrangements for private pensions.
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This paper examines the effect of reforms to the public pension programme in the United Kingdom on the state retirement incomes of current generations of pensioners and on the prospective state incomes of future generations of pensioners.
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The Government's Stakeholder Pension reform has improved incentives for some groups to save in private pensions, and this has offset a general downwards trend in private pension coverage.
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The adequacy of household saving for retirement has become a policy issue all around the world.
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Contributions from each country involved in the NBER network for research into the economics of ageing.
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Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World represents the second stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security and labour.
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This paper was presented at a seminar organised by the Economic and Social Research Council. It asks whether it is possible to design a pension system that can guarantee financial security to individuals, employers and to the state simultaneously.
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Using three major UK pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings.
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On 6 October 2003, the pension credit replaced the minimum income guarantee as the principal means-tested benefit for families containing an individual aged 60 or over. This Briefing Note examines the impact of this reform.
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The fiscal and distributive impacts of three reforms to the social security pension system in the UK are evaluated.
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These slides were presented at a SEDAP conference on the 10-11 April 2003.
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This commentary reviews the government's tax and benefit reforms affecting pensioners to date, and examines the evidence from the latest official low income figures on the government's record on pensioner poverty so far.
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The Economics of Public Spending investigates the extent of government involvement in the economy, details its rational, and traces its historical record.
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From 1998 Q4 to 2002 Q4, employment among people aged 50 and over
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We examine the role of ill-health in retirement decisions in Britain, using the first eight waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-98).
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Using a sample of individuals from the UK Retirement Survey, the paper models the probability of retirement in terms of the incentives underlying the individual's pension plan as well as other socio-economic factors.
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This briefing note assembles the existing microeconomic evidence and sets out economic arguments relating to the current debate on the ageing population, the timing of retirement, and the adequacy of financial provision for retirement in the UK.
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This briefing note looks at the interaction of the tax and benefit system with stakeholder pensions. In particular, it asks how, in the light of recent reforms to the system of state pension provision, the welfare system differentially affects the incentive to invest in a stakeholder scheme for various groups in the population.
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This paper examines the choice of pension scheme and job mobility in Britain.
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In Autumn 2001, the government finalised its proposals for the introduction of the Pension Credit in 2003. Since the initial plans, the Government has significantly changed the way in which pensioners' savings will be treated by the new benefit, and has also decided to couple the reform to significant increases in the generosity of housing benefit for pensioners. This paper updates earlier IFS research evaluating these modified proposals, asking who is likely to gain, and assessing the likely effect on pensioner poverty, on savings incentives and on the public finances. We conclude that modifications to the reform leave the policy better able to reward saving and fitting in better with the rest of UK pension policy. In the longer-term, however, there large questions about the eventual cost and effects of the reform that remain unanswered. |
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We consider to what extent the empirical failings of the Q model of investment can be attributed to the use of share prices to measure average q.
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Using a sample of individuals aged 55 and over from the UK Retirement Survey, this paper models the probability of retirement in terms of the incentives underlying the individual\'s pension plan as well as other socio-economic factors.
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Using three major UK pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings.
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In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socio-economic status and health outcomes.
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In the November 2000 Pre-Budget Report, the government announced a major range of measures for pensioners. Some come into operation in April 2001, while others follow in 2002 and 2003. The most important aspects of the package comprised: above-inflation increases in the retirement pension; substantially above-inflation increases in the means-tested minimum income guarantee (MIG); and the introduction of a new element into the means-tested benefit system for pensioners, known as the pension credit. Overall, the package means the government will pay over 4 billion a year extra to pensioners (2000 prices) by 200304. It represents a very substantial redistribution in favour of pensioners, and particularly those on low incomes.
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In this paper we describe the household wealth distribution in the US and UK, and compare both wealth inequality and the form in which wealth is held.
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This paper presents a detailed analysis of the composition of household portfolios, using both aggregate and micro-data.
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Using data from the Family Expenditure Survey we show that the abolition of the earnings rule in the UK increased the number of hours worked by men.
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This paper surveys the issue of public spending on pensions.
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The UK government is planning to introduce stakeholder pensions from April 2001 as an alternative to existing personal pensions for people on moderate earnings.
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This note looks at the kind of information people have on saving and how this effects their decisions to invest in the future. We also ask what policies could be used to provide people with clear information which they trust.
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In this briefing note we add to the current debate on UK annuity markets by providing some simple descriptive analysis from household survey data. In particular, using data from recent waves of the Family Resources Survey, we consider how the current population of (elderly) annuitants differs from the elderly population at large, and describe differences in the characteristics of the group holding voluntary, as opposed to mandatory annuity policies.
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The government published its first plans for stakeholder pensions in December 1998. Since then more flesh has been put on the bones with the publication of six disussion papers each focusing on a different aspects of stakeholder pensions -the minimum standards, the employer access requirement, the clearing arrangements, regulation, advice and information, governance and the tax regime. This note summarises - and critically appraises - the government's proposals
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