Reports

This report provides new estimates of total spending by the government on children in England, including benefits, education spending,services for vulnerable children and healthcare. In the most recent year of data (2017–18), total spending was over £120 billion or over £10,000 per child under 18.

The extent to which people draw on their housing wealth in later life is an important issue, with implications for the living standards of current older individuals and their use of other financial resources, the likely bequests that will be received by younger generations, and policymakers’ assessment of the financial preparedness for later life of current younger individuals. Housing mobility at older age also has implications for the turnover and appropriateness of the housing stock.

In this briefing note, we examine how individuals’ financial wealth evolves as they age through retirement.

There has been lots of recent research and debate on individuals’ accumulation of wealth for retirement, driven by the concern that younger generations are not saving enough. Much less attention, however, has been paid to how individuals use their wealth once in retirement. In this note, we summarise the findings of recent and new IFS research addressing this omission and considering the use of different components of wealth in retirement.

The ageing of the population is one of the biggest changes facing society today. People are living longer, remaining healthier at older ages, and working and engaging in society for longer. This is an achievement that should be celebrated, both in its own right and for the opportunities it presents, with older generations able to provide assistance to younger generations and pass down their accumulated experience and wisdom. However, such changes are, of course, not without challenges.

It is well known that the average graduate earns more than non graduates, and that university graduates from certain subjects and from certain universities earn considerably more than others. For example, five years after graduation, men from the highest earnings universities earn almost 50% more than graduates from other Russell Group universities (30% for women), while male Russell Group graduates earn over 40% more than those who attended the average post-1992 institution (35% for women).

This note was submitted as evidence to the Education Committee Inquiry on School and College Funding.

Since 2007 it has not been permitted to advertise food and drink that is high in fat, salt or sugar during children's television programmes. Evidence from Ofcom suggests that in 2016 children spent 64% of their viewing time watching programmes outside children’s programming. Recent discussion around the possibility of a second wave of the Government’s childhood obesity strategy has included calls from health campaigners and leaders of all the main opposition parties to extend current restrictions on when food and drink products that are high in fat, salt or sugar can be advertised to cover all pre-watershed advertising.

On 5 July this year the NHS will be 70. In all its 70 years it has rarely been far from the headlines. It has been through more than its fair share of reforms, crises and funding ups and downs. Over that period, the amount we spend on it has risen inexorably. Yet, today, concerns about the adequacy of funding are once again hitting the headlines, as the health and social care systems struggle to cope with growing demand.

On 5 July this year the NHS will be 70. In all its 70 years it has rarely been far from the headlines. It has been through more than its fair share of reforms, crises and funding ups and downs. Over that period, the amount we spend on it has risen inexorably. Yet, today, concerns about the adequacy of funding are once again hitting the headlines, as the health and social care systems struggle to cope with growing demand.

This report presents a detailed overview of the baseline data collection activities as part of the project "Improving early childhood development in rural Ghana through scalable low-cost community-run play schemes''. The project is collaboration between The Institute for Fiscal Studies (UK), Lively Minds (UK, Ghana) and Innovations for Poverty Action (Ghana), and is funded by the Jacobs Foundation and Global Innovation Fund (GIF).

High quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) are critical to children’s development and their success in adult life. Ghana has shown substantial commitment to improving ECCE, with one of the highest pre-school enrolment rates in Sub Saharan Africa. However despite this, significant barriers to improvements in ECCE remain, especially in rural areas.

Increasing tax revenues is a priority in low-income countries, where governments collect much less revenue as a share of GDP than in middle- or high-income countries - about 15% on average.

We summarise the recent evidence produced by the IFS which relates to the post-18 funding review.

Over the past 40 years, the UK has seen an almost continual rise in the proportion of women in employment. The employment rate among women of ‘prime working age’ (aged 25-54) is up from 57% in 1975 to a record high of 78% in 2017.

The Scottish Parliament's Finance and Constitution Committee is seeking views on how EU funding for agriculture, economic development and innovation m

The business rates retention scheme (BRRS) means that councils bear a proportion of the real-terms change in business rates revenues in their areas. When the BRRS was introduced in 2013–14, this proportion was up to 50%. However, since April 2017, the government has been piloting 100% retention of real-terms changes in business rates revenues in a number of areas of England. From April 2018, a further 10 areas are piloting 100% schemes. In this briefing note, we examine two questions. First, what are the financial implications of the pilots for different councils? In particular, what is the financial benefit to councils taking part in the pilots, and what does this imply for those councils not in pilot areas? Second, what can be learnt from these pilots? The government has explicitly set out what it hopes to learn, but how informative are the pilots actually likely to be?

Eligibility for a free lunch was recently extended to all state school children in England and Scotland who are in Year 2 or below (i.e. up to age 6 or 7). For all other state school pupils in the UK, eligibility remains restricted by a means test so that free school meals (FSMs) go to a relatively narrow set of children in poor households. Around 1 million children currently receive means-tested FSMs: equivalent to 15% of those who are not entitled to universal FSMs. We estimate that around two-thirds of those children are in the lowest-income fifth of households with children.

This note summarises ongoing work being undertaken by Lucie Gadenne, Tushar Nandi and Roland Rathelot on the scale and nature of supply chain distortions in West Bengal. Earlier work examined the effects of reforms to West Bengal’s simplified tax schemes on revenues.

This paper, written collaboratively by IFS researchers and policy-makers from Ethiopia and Ghana, has multiple and interlinked objectives: (i) to provide an overview of tax incentives and best practices for their design grounded in economic principles, and assess how these apply to the case studies of Ethiopia and Ghana; and (ii) to understand more broadly the causal impacts of tax incentives on economic outcomes in developing countries by reviewing the relevant methodologies to conduct rigorous quantitative analysis and the existing empirical literature. Finally, we discuss the policy implications and avenues for research given the existing literature on the causal impact of tax incentives.