Analysis and action on living standards
The start of April marks the beginning of the new tax year, meaning households will face a wide range of tax, benefit and utility bill changes. We put the new tax and social security changes in the context of rising energy bills.
This briefing explores Britain’s recent baby bust and whether it should be a cause for concern for policymakers. Most developed countries are grappling with a falling birth rate, and the UK is no different. There have always been a range of reasons that people postpone having children or choose not to have them at all – some reflecting preferences (such as prioritising education, careers or simply not wanting children), and some driven by constraints (from fertility difficulties to economic pressures).
The Resolution Foundation is an independent think-tank dedicated to lifting living standards in the UK. We focus particularly on households with low and middle incomes; those on low pay or in precarious work; and those vulnerable to financial shocks.
This briefing note examines how being in deep poverty in childhood – proxied by eligibility to free school meals at age 16 – continues to shape graduates’ earnings long after university. Graduates who experienced deep poverty in childhood still face a significant earnings gap after a decade in work post graduation. But even as the OBR’s projections were being published, fast‑moving global events had already begun to make key assumptions out of date.
This briefing note considers the distributional impact of the post-financial-crisis tightening of Britain’s mortgage lending rules on aspiring homeowners and assesses how policy could respond to help poorer families unable to get on the housing ladder today.
The Resolution Foundation calculates the real Living Wage – a voluntary hourly pay rate that is based on what families need to get by. The current national rate is:
Explore our interactive housing indicators or read about our alternative estimate of UK employment.
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Resolution Ventures exists to back innovative start-ups seeking to change the world of work for the better, and early-stage ventures seeking to improve the prospects of low-to-middle income Britain.
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