Matthew Whittaker
Pay

Could we be set for two decades of lost pay growth?

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Rarely have questions of household living standards and the shape of the public finances been so interwoven. The Autumn Statement – or, more specifically, the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – identified a £25bn shortfall in tax revenues by 2018-19 relative to the projections in place at the time of Budget 2014. This is a … Continued

Households have been coping remarkably well with high housing costs, but interest rate rises lurk just around the corner

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The lack of affordable housing, particularly in London and the South East, is one of Britain’s most-told misery stories. But less is known about how these challenges differ for various household types and, perhaps more importantly, how people cope with them. New research by the Resolution Foundation seeks to deal with both of these questions. … Continued

Matthew Whittaker
Public spending
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Economy and public finances
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Political parties and elections

Assessing the post-election implications of the parties’ different fiscal stances

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Our recent briefing note In The Balance set out some indicative figures for public finances in the next parliament based on our interpretation of each of the three main parties’ highly sketchy (to date) outlines of their preferred trajectories. This note updates this work based on the new OBR figures released alongside the Autumn Statement. … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

The drama of the Commons took a back-seat to the economic musings of the OBR today

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Unusually for a fiscal event so close to an election, today’s Autumn Statement was never expected to be about giveaways and grand schemes. Indeed, the politics in the Commons took a back-seat to the economic musings of the OBR. The two key questions we wanted answered? First, how would the outlook for public finances – … Continued

Will the Chancellor still be aiming for an overall budget surplus in 2018/19 after the Autumn Statement?

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In tomorrow’s Autumn Statement, the Chancellor is expected to announce an updated Charter for Budget Responsibility, which would formally commit the government to a balanced cyclically-adjusted current budget by 2017-18. By forcing a vote in parliament, the Chancellor is thought to be drawing Labour out on their potentially looser fiscal policy. Yet this move also … Continued

Stuck or just passing through: how can policy-makers improve social mobility?

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One of the recurring fixtures of British political life is a bout of soul-searching about social mobility. Depending on the point of view of the pundit, this tends to involve a nostalgic backward glance to an era when things were supposedly better (cue unevidenced claims about the mobility-boosting virtues of grammar schools) or, less commonly, … Continued

Pay

Why hasn’t 2014 been the year of the pay rise?

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Next month we will be treated to the familiar spate of end of year reviews. Amid all that copy we can expect a regular theme to be that this was (another) year in which all the forecasts of a rise in earnings for workers were proved wrong. Inaccurate economic forecasts, especially when it comes to … Continued

Living standards
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Political parties and elections

What’s in store for the 2015 victor: winner’s curse or a steady recovery?

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One of the laziest lines in politics is that there are good elections to lose: five years in opposition are rarely rewarding. But it’s certainly true that there are less attractive elections to win and for many 2015 falls into this category. As others have said: beware of the winner’s curse. This pessimism is increasingly … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

In the balance: public finances in the next parliament

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Having assured us in recent weeks that we are better together, we can expect the three main parties to provide somewhat more discordant visions of the future over the coming conference season. And, with the Coalition expected to have delivered just over half of its intended fiscal consolidation programme by the end of the current … Continued

Pay

Where next for the minimum wage?

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Today marks the first real terms rise in the minimum wage in six years. It speaks volumes about the convulsions in our labour market that something that was once taken completely for granted is now viewed as a significant and welcome departure. And the rise occurs at a time when there is something of a competitive … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

Crisis and consolidation in the public finances – reflections on our seminar with the OBR

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An exciting morning at RF-HQ. In one room, the first of our Universal Credit expert panel meetings, starting the process of reviewing the current design of UC and thinking about changes that would make the policy more likely to support people to get into and progress in work. In another, the OBR arrived to launch … Continued

A fair deal for tenants and landlords

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For a government that emphasises rights and responsibilities, housing seems to have been left out. The government’s largest investment in housing – housing benefit – requires landlords to do nothing for their share of the £20 billion. Regardless of the quality of the home they let or the management they provide, the amount of housing … Continued

The ‘housing pinched’: Which UK households are most at risk of falling over the edge?

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Reading the housing headlines recently you could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief. House prices have showed signs of cooling in recent months, thought to be partly down to tighter mortgage lending rules that have dampened down demand. In addition, at least outside of the South, private rents have been through a year of below-inflation increases on both government and many commercial indices. … Continued

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