Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending A healthy State? Putting the 2025 Spending Review into context 12 June 2025 by Camron Aref-Adib and Mike Brewer and Tom Clark and Alex Clegg and Adam Corlett and Ruth Curtice and Emily Fry and Zachary Leather and Charlie McCurdy and Felicia Odamtten and Simon Pittaway and James Smith and Greg Thwaites Yesterday saw the Chancellor reveal the results of the first ‘zero-based’ review since 2008, the first stand-alone Spending Review since 2019, and the first three-year plan since 2021. It was the Government’s chance to say what its priorities are after painful announcements on higher taxes and borrowing, and then welfare cuts, at the Autumn Budget … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Welfare Renew and improve Setting up the Household Support Fund for the future 22 May 2025 by Alex Clegg and Ruth Patrick and Jed Meers and Mike Brewer and Uisce Jordan and Millie Light and Rhiannon Simms and Hayley Bennett and Beth Watts-Cobbe and Joe Pardoe This briefing note, part of the Safety Nets project, assesses how the Household Support Fund could be improved in a longer-term settlement, through analysis of administrative data and interviews with local authorities and recipients of the scheme. READ MORE
Living standards· Budgets & fiscal events· Welfare Unsung Britain bears the brunt Putting the 2025 Spring Statement in context 27 March 2025 by Camron Aref-Adib and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Alex Clegg and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Ruth Curtice and Emily Fry and Zachary Leather and Jonathan Marshall and Cara Pacitti and Simon Pittaway and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Imogen Stone and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try This briefing note analyses the choices the Government has made in the context of an awkward backdrop to the 2025 Spring Statement. READ MORE
Universal Credit· Wellbeing and mental health A dangerous road? Examining the ‘Pathways to Work’ Green Paper 19 March 2025 by Mike Brewer and Alex Clegg and Louise Murphy Yesterday’s Green Paper marks a serious attempt by the Government to tackle two major concerns: the growing spend on disability benefits, and the large number of people who are not working through ill-health. [1] The proposals to tackle the former go much further than reforms suggested by the previous Government; between 800,000 and 1.2 million … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay Unstable Pay New estimates of earnings volatility in the UK 4 March 2025 by Mike Brewer and Nye Cominetti and Stephen P. Jenkins This report uses a newly available dataset – payroll data held by HM Revenue and Customs on over 250,000 working-age people covering April 2014 to March 2019 – to look at monthly and weekly volatility in employee pre-tax earnings. It is one of a very few UK studies to look at high-frequency earnings volatility on … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Inequality & poverty Working poverty out The role of employment and progression in a child poverty strategy 6 January 2025 by Mike Brewer and Alex Clegg The Government is committed to releasing a child poverty strategy later this year. As part of this, Ministers will want to consider how best parental employment can help boost family incomes. But the mid-2020s present a different landscape for child poverty and parental employment from when the last Labour Government crafted its child poverty strategy. … Continued READ MORE
Unsung Britain· Living standards· Demographics Unsung Britain The changing economic circumstances of the poorer half of Britain 13 November 2024 by Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Cara Pacitti and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Lalitha Try This report marks the launch of Unsung Britain, a one-year research programme designed to understand the economic circumstances of today’s low-to-middle income families and how these have changed in recent decades, with support from JPMorganChase. READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances· Tax More, more, more Putting the Autumn Budget 2024 decisions on tax, spending and borrowing into context 31 October 2024 by Camron Aref-Adib and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Tom Clark and Alex Clegg and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Emily Fry and Sophie Hale and Lindsay Judge and Zachary Leather and Jonathan Marshall and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Felicia Odamtten and Cara Pacitti and Simon Pittaway and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try This has been the most anticipated Budget of modern times. It had to wrestle with profound – and sometimes conflicting – challenges: fixing the strained public services; repairing failing public services; and breaking with the UK’s dire record on public investment. And all of this had to be squared with pre-election pledges not to raise … Continued READ MORE
Welfare Cutbacks ahead Considering the impact of proposed changes to disability benefits on living standards and the public finances 13 October 2024 by Mike Brewer and Louise Murphy The Chancellor has already come under pressure for making one welfare cut to help her address the challenging fiscal outlook in the run up to her first Budget – but there are more in store due to spending commitments inherited from the previous Government. Specifically, if the Government goes ahead with changes to the Work … Continued READ MORE
General Election 2024 The economic battle lines of the general election Analysing the Conservative and Labour party manifestos 14 June 2024 by Mike Brewer The manifestos are out; the serious wonk business can begin. If you haven’t had a chance to digest the fine detail of the parties’ manifestos, you’re in luck. We had a go for you. This spotlight parcels up the main takeaways. For reasons of length, we’re focusing on the main two parties, but obviously other … Continued READ MORE
Universal Credit· General Election 2024· Welfare Ratchets, retrenchment and reform The social security system since 2010 13 June 2024 by Mike Brewer and Alex Clegg Spending on social security as a share of GDP has risen slightly since the financial crisis, but the system in Great Britain has undergone profound change over the same time. Large-scale structural reforms have fundamentally altered the system’s rules for working-age families, while working-age benefits have been both cut back and then not fully indexed … Continued READ MORE
General Election 2024· Pensions & savings· Tax Under triple lock and key What would a ‘triple-lock-plus’ policy look like? 29 May 2024 by Mike Brewer and Alex Clegg The Conservative Party has announced that, if re-elected, it intends to increase the personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock – a policy which has been referred to as ‘triple lock plus’, or the ‘quadruple lock’. We’ve had a look at the costs and impacts of such a policy, and how it … Continued READ MORE
Tax· Welfare Pensioner progress The impact of personal tax and benefit changes since 2010 on pensioner families 12 March 2024 by Mike Brewer and Alex Clegg and Lalitha Try Tax-paying pensioners did not gain anything from the Chancellor’s Budget last week, and policies announced since 2019, including the six-year freeze to tax thresholds, will cut the incomes of pensioners by an average of £900 a year, with the largest losses felt by pensioners on the highest incomes. This has prompted accusations that the Government … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances· Tax Back for more? Putting the 2024 Spring Budget in context 7 March 2024 by Camron Aref-Adib and Torsten Bell and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Alex Clegg and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Emily Fry and Jonathan Marshall and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Felicia Odamtten and Cara Pacitti and Simon Pittaway and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try In this briefing note, we put the decisions in the Spring Budget 2024 in context, discussing how the economic outlook has changed, what that means for the public finances, and how the policy decisions taken at the Budget will affect living standards in both the short and the medium term. READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption· Pay· Housing· Wellbeing and mental health Pressure on pay, prices and properties How families were faring in October 2023 14 December 2023 by Mike Brewer and Felicia Odamtten and Hannah Slaughter and Hannah Slocombe and James Smith Two years into the cost of living crisis, inflation has finally turned a corner. The headline rate of CPI inflation has fallen from its October 2022 peak of 11.1 per cent to 4.6 per cent in October 2023, and the Prime Minister has been able to say that his target of halving inflation in 2023 … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Economy and public finances A pre-election Statement Putting the Autumn Statement 2023 in context 23 November 2023 by Camron Aref-Adib and Torsten Bell and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Alex Clegg and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Sophie Hale and Lindsay Judge and Jonathan Marshall and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Felicia Odamtten and Cara Pacitti and Simon Pittaway and Hannah Slaughter and James Smith and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try In this briefing note, we put the decisions in the 2023 Autumn Statement in context, discussing how the economic outlook has changed, what that means for the public finances, and how the policy decisions taken will affect living standards in both the short and the medium term. READ MORE
Economy 2030· Living standards· Incomes· Economic growth From safety net to springboard Designing an unemployment insurance scheme to protect living standards and boost economic dynamism 21 September 2023 by Mike Brewer and Louise Murphy Losing your job in Britain is a very risky business. Low levels of out-of-work benefits are rarely an adequate safety net for those who experience job loss, and workers in the UK who move out of work are at greater risk of experiencing a large income loss than those in most other OECD countries. Some … Continued READ MORE
Economy 2030 A tale of two cities (part 2) A plausible strategy for productivity growth in Greater Manchester and beyond 19 September 2023 by Paul Brandily and Mike Brewer and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Lindsay Judge and Felicia Odamtten and Henry G. Overman and Cara Pacitti and Krishan Shah and Lalitha Try Few would disagree that the UK has a significant productivity problem, or fail to recognise that the poor performance of the nation’s largest cities outside the capital contribute to that situation. As the Economy 2030 Inquiry has made clear, the productivity of our largest cities lags the UK average, bucking the global trend for bigger … Continued READ MORE
Economy 2030 A tale of two cities (part 1) A plausible strategy for productivity growth in Birmingham and beyond 14 September 2023 by Paul Brandily and Mike Brewer and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Lindsay Judge and Felicia Odamtten and Henry G. Overman and Cara Pacitti and Krishan Shah and Lalitha Try After the success of the Commonwealth games in 2022, Birmingham is now in the news for the wrong reasons. Financial difficulties facing the City Council culminated in a formal declaration on 5 September 2023 that Britain’s largest local authority was, in effect, bankrupt. But the understandable short-term focus on the council’s financial woes must not … Continued READ MORE
Economy 2030 Sharing the benefits Can Britain secure broadly shared prosperity? 4 July 2023 by Mike Brewer and Karl Handscomb and Cara Pacitti and Lalitha Try The UK has been living through a period of relative decline that has proved toxic for those on low-to-middle incomes. Against that backdrop, this report examines whether there is still a plausible path to steadily rising shared prosperity and, if so, what does it look like. It does this as part of the Economy 2030 … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Economy and public finances We’re going on a growth Hunt Putting the 2023 Spring Budget in context 16 March 2023 by Torsten Bell and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Emily Fry and Sophie Hale and Karl Handscomb and Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy and Felicia Odamtten and Cara Pacitti and Simon Pittaway and Krishan Shah and James Smith and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try This report examines the economic backdrop to Budget 2023, and assesses whether the Chancellor has successfully delivered on his central objective of boosting growth through higher employment and business investment. READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption The Living Standards Outlook 2023 9 January 2023 by Mike Brewer and Emily Fry and Lalitha Try To deepen our understanding of where the cost of living crisis leaves Britain, our fifth Living Standards Outlook combines a new survey of 10,000 adults’ experience of the crisis with detailed modelling of household incomes and poverty this year and beyond. READ MORE
Universal Credit· Childcare· Welfare Inconsistent Incentives How the overlap between Universal Credit and the High Income Child Benefit Charge limits work incentives 28 December 2022 by Mike Brewer and Karl Handscomb and Gavin Kelly It is well known that some groups in the UK face high effective tax rates, but the most punitive rates of personal tax arise in a situation that has been almost completely overlooked. Families with an earner on £50,000 to £60,000, whose Child Benefit is withdrawn and who are also eligible for Universal Credit (UC), … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Economy and public finances Help today, squeeze tomorrow Putting the 2022 Autumn Statement in context 18 November 2022 by Torsten Bell and Mike Brewer and Molly Broome and Nye Cominetti and Adam Corlett and Emily Fry and Sophie Hale and Karl Handscomb and Jack Leslie and Jonathan Marshall and Charlie McCurdy and Krishan Shah and James Smith and Greg Thwaites and Lalitha Try This report presents Resolution Foundation’s analysis of the 2022 Autumn Statement. In the face of grim economic and fiscal forecasts, Jeremy Hunt announced energy support today but tougher times tomorrow, with stealth tax rises for the middle and top of the income distribution followed by spending cuts after the next election. READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Prices & consumption A chilling crisis Policy options to deal with soaring energy prices 25 August 2022 by Mike Brewer and Emily Fry and Karl Handscomb and Jonathan Marshall This briefing note, released just ahead of the announcement of the winter 2022 energy price cap level, looks at the implications of an unprecedented jump in energy costs on low-to-middle income households, stresses the need for urgent and novel policy thinking to lessen this blow, and outlines how this could take shape. READ MORE
