Briefing notes
We produce short briefing notes on current policy issues, drawing on our expertise and research findings.
Briefing note
The Chancellor is yet to confirm how much money will be made available to departments at the 2019 Spending Review. To meet his promise to end austerity, Phillip Hammond will need to find billions of extra funding.
Briefing note
Pupils benefit from a large amount of state funding for education in the 12+ years they spend in formal education, about £73,000 on average for pupils aged 16 in Summer 2010 in England. The total amount they experience is shaped by their education choices (e.g. whether to stay on post 16 and/or go ...
Briefing note
English local government finance is part way through a series of major changes that will see its focus shift from being based on redistribution according to spending needs, towards more emphasis on providing financial incentives to tackle needs and boost local revenue-raising capacity. However, ...
Briefing note
Analysis of how council spending on adult social care and other services changed between 2009-10 and 2017-18.
Briefing note
In this briefing note, we examine how individuals’ financial wealth evolves as they age through retirement.
Briefing note
The extent to which people draw on their housing wealth in later life is an important issue, with implications for the living standards of current older individuals and their use of other financial resources, the likely bequests that will be received by younger generations, and policymakers’ ...
Briefing note
There has been lots of recent research and debate on individuals’ accumulation of wealth for retirement, driven by the concern that younger generations are not saving enough. Much less attention, however, has been paid to how individuals use their wealth once in retirement. In this note, we ...
Briefing note
Since 2007 it has not been permitted to advertise food and drink that is high in fat, salt or sugar during children's television programmes. Evidence from Ofcom suggests that in 2016 children spent 64% of their viewing time watching programmes outside children’s programming. Recent discussion ...
Briefing note
High quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) are critical to children’s development and their success in adult life. Ghana has shown substantial commitment to improving ECCE, with one of the highest pre-school enrolment rates in Sub Saharan Africa. However despite this, significant ...
Briefing note
Over the past 40 years, the UK has seen an almost continual rise in the proportion of women in employment. The employment rate among women of ‘prime working age’ (aged 25-54) is up from 57% in 1975 to a record high of 78% in 2017.
Briefing note
The business rates retention scheme (BRRS) means that councils bear a proportion of the real-terms change in business rates revenues in their areas. When the BRRS was introduced in 2013–14, this proportion was up to 50%. However, since April 2017, the government has been piloting 100% retention ...
Briefing note
Eligibility for a free lunch was recently extended to all state school children in England and Scotland who are in Year 2 or below (i.e. up to age 6 or 7). For all other state school pupils in the UK, eligibility remains restricted by a means test so that free school meals (FSMs) go to a relatively ...
Briefing note
This note summarises ongoing work being undertaken by Lucie Gadenne, Tushar Nandi and Roland Rathelot on the scale and nature of supply chain distortions in West Bengal. Earlier work examined the effects of reforms to West Bengal’s simplified tax schemes on revenues.
Briefing note
As in many high income countries, VAT systems in low and middle income countries (LMICs) are often characterised by different tax treatments for different types of goods and services. Often, reduced rates of VAT and exemptions (“preferential rates”) are granted on equity grounds, for goods and ...
Briefing note
There are longstanding concerns about the recruitment and retention of teachers in the UK . In recent years there has also been much debate about the extent to which changes to the initial teacher education system have affected the recruitment and retention problem. These concerns are most acute in ...
Briefing note
This paper, written collaboratively by IFS researchers and policy-makers from Ethiopia and Ghana, has multiple and interlinked objectives: (i) to provide an overview of tax incentives and best practices for their design grounded in economic principles, and assess how these apply to the case studies ...
Briefing note
This report argues that ongoing reforms to local government finance risk a growing funding gap for adult social care and conflict with efforts to provide consistent and high-quality care services across the country.
Briefing note
This short briefing note summarises what the newly released HBAI data tell us about how living standards have changed after five years of recovery from the Great Recession, how this differs between different groups, and the implications for inequality and poverty.
Briefing note
Once again, a rancorous debate has flared over whether the UK should remain within ‘a’ or ‘the’ customs union with the EU following Brexit. Leaving the EU Customs Union would likely create additional costs for UK firms trading with the EU. However, it would also give the UK greater freedom ...
Briefing note
The falls in the proportion of young adults owning their own home have been documented in previous work. In this briefing note, we provide up-to-date analysis of these falls in homeownership, and which groups of young adults have seen the sharpest falls.