This presentation was delivered to delegates attending the conference, "Household Wealth Data and Public Policy", organised by IFS and Public Economics UK, which took place on 9-10 March 2015.
Event
9 March 2015 at 09:00<p>20 Moorgate London ECR 6DA</p>
A conference to consider the link between household wealth and both long-run and short-run policy questions. Jointly organised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Public Economics UK, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, the Bank of England and the ESRC.
Ed Miliband and Ed Balls today announced that a Labour Government would significantly reduce the generosity of the income tax treatment of private pensions. Those with incomes above £150,000 a year would only be able to receive income tax relief at a rate of 20% (rather than the 50% marginal rate of income tax they would face under Labour), the annual pension contribution limit would be reduced by a quarter from £40,000 to £30,000 and the lifetime limit would be cut by one-fifth from £1.25m to £1m. This observation explains that, while there is a case for making some elements of tax-relief on pensions saving less generous, these reforms would be a step in the wrong direction.
Following David Cameron's announcement that universal pensioner benefits will again be protected, should the Conservative Party win the election, Andrew Hood examines the support given to pensioners in an article published in the Daily Telegraph. Over the past 30 years, pensioner incomes have caught up with those of non-pensioners. The data show very clearly that pensioners are now no more likely to be in poverty than the rest of the population. And after accounting for housing costs, the typical pensioner is now better off than the typical non-pensioner.
Chapter 10 in 'Social insurance, informality, and labor markets: how to protect workers while creating good jobs', edited by Markus Frölich, David Kaplan, Carmen Pagés, Jamele Rigolini and David Robalino.
This briefing provides an overview of the evolution of the British benefits system over the last half-century, describing both long-run trends and more recent changes.
Event
9 September 2014 at 15:00<p>12 Great George Street, Parliament Square, London, SW1P 3AD</p>
At this event, IFS researchers will draw together the conclusions of a number of pieces of work carried out over the last three years, which shed light on how financial preparedness for retirement differs across cohorts and important differences within cohorts.
This paper received the 2017 Atkinson Award. The award is named Tony Atkinson, who was the founding editor of JPubE in 1972 and served as editor for 26 years, and is given every other year to the best paper published in the Journal of Public Economics.
In this paper, we use detailed data on households’ histories of employment, earnings and contributions to the National Insurance (NI) system to examine the degree of intragenerational redistribution achieved by the UK state pension system for the cohort born in the 1930s.
Event
26 June 2014 at 10:00<p>Staple Inn Hall</p>
<p>High Holborn</p>
<p>London</p>
<p>WC1V 7QJ</p>
On 26 June a new IFS report, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the IFS retirement saving consortium and the Economic and Social Research Council, will present new projections of the changing shape of the population aged 65 and over through to the early 2020s.
This paper sets out the methodology, assumptions, and modelling specifications used to produce the report The changing face of retirement by Emmerson, Heald and Hood (2014)
This report presents projections of mortality, family composition, health, care receipt, care provision, labour supply and receipt of disability benefits for people aged 65 and over from 2010–11 through to 2022–23.
This paper uses data from the first two years after the change to the female state pension age to estimate the impact of increasing the state pension age from 60 to 61 on the employment of women and their partners.
