Ben joined the IFS in 2017. His work has three main strands. The first is detailed analysis of UK government fiscal policy, including the design of the fiscal framework, the choice of fiscal targets, and the impact of spending decisions. The second is research into the performance, productivity and distributional implications of the health and social care system. The third is research into the economics of the justice system and its wider impacts. He was previously an editor of the IFS Green Budget between 2021 and 2023. Before joining the IFS, Ben worked in the private sector as an actuarial consultant.
Education
MSc (Distinction) Economics, University College London, 2020
BA (1st Class) Economics and Management, University of Oxford, 2016
Providing equal access to healthcare to all solely on the basis of need was a founding principle of the NHS. Despite this, large differences persist in the amount of care used by people living in different areas and with different backgrounds. At this event we explored the findings of new IFS work outlining what has happened to educational inequalities in health care in England since 2002-03.
Expanding access to health care is once again high on the US political agenda, as is concern about those who are being “left behind.” But is universal health care that is largely free at the point of use sufficient to eliminate inequalities in health care use? To explore this question, we studied variation in the use of hospital care among education-level-defined groups of older adults in England, before and after controlling for differences in health status. In England, the National Health Service (NHS) provides health care free to all, but the growth rate for NHS funding has slowed markedly since 2010 during a widespread austerity program, potentially increasing inequalities in access and use.
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’.
This government has pushed geographic inequalities to the top of the policy agenda. In his very first speech as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson made clear his intent to boost economic performance outside of London and the South East, to ‘level up’ across the country and to revive the fortunes of the UK’s ‘left-behind’ towns and cities.
This paper discusses likely implications for healthcare delivery in the short and medium term of the responses to the coronavirus pandemic, focusing primarily on the implications for non‐coronavirus patients.
The coronavirus pandemic will have huge impacts on the National Health Service (NHS). Patients suffering from the illness are placing unprecedented demands on acute care, particularly on intensive care units (ICUs). This has led to an effort to dramatically increase the resources available to NHS hospitals in treating these patients, involving reorganisation of hospital facilities, redeployment of existing staff and a drive to bring in recently retired and newly graduated staff to fight the pandemic.
