Public spending in the UK in 2008/9 amounted to over £10,000 per person or about 43% of national income (Crawford, Emmerson and Tetlow 2009) while net receipts from tax and social security contributions exceeded £8,000 per person or about 35% of national income. These transfers of resources between individuals and the state, either as cash payments or as supply of goods, affect individual standards of living and do so in ways that differ markedly between different households. Assessing the impact of government activity on the distribution of household living standards is essential to the evaluation of public service provision but raises challenging conceptual issues that we discuss in this report.
Authors

Research Fellow University College London
Ian is a Research Fellow of the IFS and a Professor of Economics at UCL. He joined UCL in 1991 and has been attached to the IFS since 1990.

Research Associate Yale University
Cormac is a Research Associate of the IFS, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Yale University and Research Fellow at the NBER.
Report details
- Publisher
- 2020 Public Services Trust
Suggested citation
O'Dea, C and Preston, I. (2010). The distributional impact of public spending in the UK. London: 2020 Public Services Trust. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/distributional-impact-public-spending-uk (accessed: 15 February 2025).
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