A special issue of Fiscal Studies published today looks at patterns of individual level health spending across a range of countries, and finds some important similarities. It shows how health spending is concentrated in the last years of life, how significantly more is spent on the poor than on the rich and how health spending tends to be concentrated on a relatively small number of people with high needs.
This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that CPI inflation rose to 0.9% in the year to October, down from an inflation rate of 1.0% in the year to September but still substantially up from 0.6% in the year to August. The Bank of England expect inflation to rise further, to 2.4% in 2017 and 2.8% in 2018 – considerably higher than the 1.5% and 2.1% expected back in May. Most of this forecast increase is driven by the recent devaluation of the pound, which pushes up the price of imports. In this Observation we look at how the overall 2.5% increase in the price level which is likely to result from sterling’s decline since the June referendum will affect the prices of different goods. We then look at whether this is likely to have a bigger effect on poorer or richer households.
A lower cap on the total amount of benefits that households can receive comes into force tomorrow, affecting four times as many households as the previous benefit cap. Like the previous cap it will apply to out-of-work households of working age (with some exemptions, mainly due to disability). The cap will now be £23,000 a year in London and £20,000 elsewhere (there are lower caps for single adults without children set at £15,410 in London and £13,400 elsewhere). This compares to £26,000 nationwide under the previous cap, which has been in place since 2013. In this observation we look at the implications of a lower cap for government spending, the impact on the households affected, and how they might respond.
New IFS research finds that providing school breakfasts free to all children in disadvantaged English primary schools helps pupils to make two months’ additional progress over the course of a year. These gains seem to be driven by better behaviour and concentration in the classroom, meaning that even students who don’t eat breakfast at school can benefit from the improved learning environment. These benefits come at a low cost relative to other programmes with a similar impact on attainment.
We examine the impact of increasing the early retirement age (ERA) for women in a context where the financial incentive to retire at the ERA is very limited.
Community-based interventions, particularly group-based ones, are considered to
be a cost-effective way of delivering interventions in low-income settings. However,
design features of these programs could also influence dimensions of household and
community behaviour beyond those targeted by the intervention. This paper studies
spillover effects of a participatory community health intervention in rural Malawi,
implemented through a cluster randomised control trial, on an outcome not directly
targeted by the intervention: household consumption smoothing after crop losses.
This morning the Office for National Statistics announced that inflation, as measured by the CPI, was 0.9% in the year to September. This is only slightly higher than the 0.6% the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast in the March Budget. But since then many forecasters – including the Bank of England – have revised up their forecasts for future inflation as the sharp drop in the value of the pound since the referendum is expected to push up prices. This observation focuses on one consequence that higher inflation would have: the fact that it would reduce the real incomes of working age families receiving benefits that the Government has frozen in cash terms through to March 2020.
