Poverty, inequality and social mobility

This paper considers the impact on households of imposing VAT on domestic energy, and the extent to which the social security system will safeguard poorer households against the additional tax burden.

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro-level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand.

Aggregation and consumer behaviour: some recent results

A survey of the main issues involved in using equivalence scales to estimate the costs of children for policy purposes: the authors estimate a range of scales for the UK and examine the impact of varying scales on official statistics.

Intertemporal consumption, durables and liquidity constraints: a cohort analysis

This paper sets out to explore theoretically how a change in the distribution of disposable income affects the market demand for a good or service.

The purpose of this Commentary is to evaluate the merits of different methods of measuring low income, and to comment on the results of two main sets of UK low income statistics.

The annual exercise of revising excise duties has become part of Budget Day tradition.

This commentary analyses three seperate studies which attempt to assess the extent of poverty in the UK and asks why these studies produced apparently different results.

These two reports form the latest in a series of IFS studies on poverty and low incomes in the United Kingdom.

This commentary concentrates on the particular issues raised by environmental taxation, in the form of the additional tax burden and its distribution accross households.