Tax Fairer by design: efficient tax reform for those on low to middle incomes 31 July 2012 by Paul Johnson The current system of redistribution through taxation and welfare is inefficient and could be reformed to give more support to those on low and middle incomes whilst reducing economic costs according to a new report for the Resolution Foundation Commission on Living Standards. The report, written by Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal … Continued READ MORE
Housing Making Institutional Investment in the Private Rented Sector Work 19 July 2012 by Vidhya Alakeson With one low to middle income family in four shut out of home ownership, there is an urgent need for high quality purpose-built rental homes offering more secure tenancies than typically found in today’s buy to let sector. In a context of significant cuts to public investment in housing, the Resolution Foundation proposes that new … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Up-skilling the middle 5 July 2012 by Anna Vignoles Professor Anna Vignoles looks at skills policy in her report to the Commission on Living Standards. She examines what skills policy can do to help those on low to middle incomes boost their earnings potential. The paper highlights that those in the low to middle income group generally hold low and intermediate skills, which are not in … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Economic growth Time for a Plan C? Slow growth and living standards 28 June 2012 by Gavin Kelly There is an increasingly rich intellectual debate about the risks, or for some the reality, of an extended period of low growth; a so called great stagnation. But, for all this intellectual ferment, there is, alas, only a stunted discussion about what we can do to overcome this challenge, and even less of one about … Continued READ MORE
Welfare Creditworthy: Assessing the impact of tax credits in the last decade and considering what this means for Universal Credit 27 June 2012 by Paul Gregg and Alex Hurrell and Matthew Whittaker Creditworthy assesses the direct and indirect impacts of tax credits, finding that there is no evidence that tax credits hold down low wages. The analysis discredits the assumption that tax credits, available to low and middle income families, enable employers to pay lower wages. Tax credits reach around six million families, providing substantial support for … Continued READ MORE
Housing Housing in Transition: Understanding the dynamics of tenure change 8 June 2012 by Christine Whitehead and Chihiro Udagawa and Peter Williams and Connie Tang England, traditionally seen as a nation of homeowners, is experiencing significant change in the types of housing tenure in which people live. The first part of this report looks back at tenure change between 1993/94 and 2009/10, using the Government’s Survey of English Housing and its successor the English Housing Survey. This historical look breaks the … Continued READ MORE
Household debt· Wealth & assets Inequality, debt and growth 14 May 2012 by Salvatore Morelli and Paolo Lucchino Inequality, debt and growth shows that low to middle income households were reliant on borrowing to fund much of their spending for more than a decade before the financial crisis. This report reveals the full extent of the increase in borrowing and deterioration in household savings rates in the run up to the 2008/09 crisis, … Continued READ MORE
Pay· Living Wage What price a living wage? 7 May 2012 by Matthew Pennycook Paying a living wage is affordable for big companies in UK banking, construction, computing and food production sectors, according to this new report jointly published by the think tanks Resolution Foundation and IPPR. This new analysis shows that the average increase in the wage bill for listed companies in these sectors would be about 1 … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Minimum Wage: Maximum Impact 17 April 2012 by Alan Manning This paper steps back from the current annual debate about the appropriate but small rise in the value of the minimum wage to ask a bolder question: are there more radical reforms of the minimum wage that could raise living standards in the years ahead? In part, we are interested in learning what happens in … Continued READ MORE
Incomes· Living standards· Inequality & poverty· Welfare Life on a low income 5 April 2012 by Katherine Green In April 2011 Resolution Foundation started following 7 low to middle income families across England to track their financial and economic position and how their lives changed over the course of 12 months. This report summarises their experiences over the year and the key challenges faced by the families. READ MORE
Labour market· Low pay· Intergenerational Centre No snakes, but no ladders: Young people, employment, and the low skills trap at the bottom of the contemporary service economy 27 March 2012 by Steven Roberts In recent years, research and policy activity has primarily been concerned with the numbers, experiences and trajectories of apprentices and university students, or with the lives of ‘spectacular’, more obviously economically marginalised groups of young people who are entrenched in issues of social exclusion and deprivation. Many young people with level two and level three … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances Detailed post-2012 Budget analysis 25 March 2012 by Matthew Whittaker Detailed analysis of the 2012 Budget by the Resolution Foundation. It includes: the impact of the main upcoming changes to tax, tax credits and benefits compares the impact of changes to the personal tax allowance and tax credits the impact on four different families. READ MORE
Labour market The Changing Shape of the UK Job Market and its Implications for the Bottom Half of Earners 1 March 2012 by Craig Holmes and Ken Mayhew Oxford academics Craig Holmes and Professor Ken Mayhew, investigate the idea that in recent years the UK labour market has split into high-wage “lovely” jobs and low-wage “lousy” jobs, while jobs in the middle have disappeared. They find that while many middle level ‘routine’ occupations such as process operators in industrial plants have indeed disappeared, … Continued READ MORE
Productivity & industrial strategy· Economic growth Decoupling of Wage Growth and Productivity Growth? Myth and Reality 16 February 2012 by John Van Reenen and João Paulo Pessoa A closer look at the decoupling of wage growth and productivity growth: Pessoa and Van Reenen distinguish between ‘gross’ and ‘net’ decoupling and examine the trends of both in the US and the UK. This report forms part of the Resolution Foundation’s work for its Commission on Living Standards. Visit the Commission’s website www.livingstandards.org to find … Continued READ MORE
Labour market The price of motherhood: women and part-time work 9 February 2012 by Vidhya Alakeson British women are paying a shockingly high price for motherhood as they are forced into lower-skilled, part-time work after having children, according to the findings of our new survey with Netmums. The poll of over 1,600 part-time working mothers revealed almost half (48%) of mothers on low to middle incomes take a lower-skilled part time … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Inequality & poverty Squeezed Britain 26 January 2012 by Matthew Whittaker and Jess Bailey Squeezed Britain reveals what life is really like for families who are in work but on a low to middle income. Facing a new tax credits squeeze on top of a continued fall in real wages and a growing chance of a lifetime in renting, this group’s household finances are increasingly precarious. READ MORE
Tax 2012 Personal Allowance Tax Changes 27 December 2011 by Matthew Whittaker The income tax personal allowance is set to increase to £8,105 in April 2012, rather than the £7,900 it would have been if increased in line with September’s RPI. But small changes across tax credits mean losses for many low to middle income households. Read our analysis of the changes to the personal allowance and … Continued READ MORE
Housing Priced Out 27 December 2011 by Donald Hirsch and James Plunkett and Jacqueline Beckhelling New analysis shows that the rising cost of essentials had already wiped out most of the gains in living standards made in the early 2000s by families on low and modest incomes, even before the recession began, with increases in the price of food, fuel and other basics greatly outstripping general inflation in recent years. READ MORE
Childcare· Welfare On your marks: Measuring the school readiness of children in low-to-middle income families 14 December 2011 by Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook The extent to which children start school ready and able to learn can have a long-term impact on their likelihood of success in education and employment. It is well known that children from the poorest backgrounds are already falling behind their more affluent peers at the start of school. But little is known about the … Continued READ MORE
Labour market The Missing Million: The potential for female employment to raise living standards in low to middle income Britain 10 December 2011 by James Plunkett The rise of female employment has been a central chapter of the story of living standards in the past 40 years. Yet even while reliance on women’s work has grown, the absolute pace of growth has faltered. After rising 7.4 percentage points in the 1980s, the UK female participation rate rose just 1.4 percentage points … Continued READ MORE
Housing Renting in the dark 8 December 2011 by Louisa Darian Tenants are being let down by an unregulated lettings market, with significant upfront costs, variable fees and a lack of transparency around charges. In a mystery shopping exercise of letting agents in three cities, the range and type of fees charged varied significantly; for example, administrative fees ranged from £95 to £375. Unlike estate agents, letting … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Inequality & poverty Why did Britain’s households get richer? Decomposing UK household income growth between 1968 and 2008–09? 6 December 2011 by Mike Brewer and Liam Wren-Lewis Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis for the Resolution Foundation Commission on Living Standards. Average UK household income has almost doubled in real terms over the past forty years. This report asks ‘From where has the growth in household income come?’ and answers this by analysing the various factors that have contributed to this growth. Although many … Continued READ MORE
Economic growth When does economic growth benefit people on low to middle incomes – and why? 21 November 2011 by Lane Kenworthy For many of the world’s rich countries, the most important challenge at the moment is returning to robust economic growth. At the time of writing, there remains great uncertainty about the pace and path of recovery. Eventually, though, growth will return. This report asks a longer term question: when growth does return, to what degree … Continued READ MORE
Childcare· Welfare Childcare support and the hours trap: the Universal Credit 14 November 2011 by Donald Hirsch The Government recently announced the terms under which childcare costs will be supported as part of Universal Credit from 2013. It has made an extra £300m available, compared to present spending levels. This briefing updates the earlier briefing Childcare support and the hours trap, published in May 2011, to show the impact of the government’s … Continued READ MORE
Incomes· Living standards· Inequality & poverty Why did Britain’s households get richer? 6 November 2011 by Mike Brewer and Liam Wren-Lewis This analysis by the IFS for Resolution Foundation is concerned with decomposing UK household income growth between 1968 and 2008–09. It seeks to investigate the sources of the rise in average household income that has occurred in the UK over the last four decades and finds that there are several important sources of this growth, and that these sources … Continued READ MORE
