Alex Davenport

In this briefing note, we update and extend previous IFS analysis, to consider how employment, incomes, benefit claims and council tax payments have evolved over a longer period and have varied geographically, and draw out key implications for local government.

The pandemic has had profound consequences for incomes, spending, saving, and financial distress. In this event we brought together evidence from a number of recent pieces of research which use bank account data to shed light on these issues.

The past nine months have seen huge swings in households’ spending, both in total and across various goods and services. In this briefing note, we analyse the geographical patterns of these changes.

The measures taken to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, resulting from both policy and consumers’ changes in behaviour, have had major impacts on consumer spending patterns. In this briefing note, we explore how consumer spending has evolved, both during lockdown and in the recovery phase since.

At this event, IFS researchers presented the findings of two chapters of the 2020 IFS Green Budget, addressing the big questions around the 2020 Spending Review and ‘levelling up’.

European Structural and Investment (ESI) funds help to pay for initiatives supporting business development, research and development, investment in digital and green infrastructure, as well skills and training interventions and support for job-seekers. But with the UK having formally departed the European Union, the country will stop receiving new ESI funding at the end of 2020. Thus, for 2021 and beyond, the UK government faces choices over what to replace ESI funding with.