Reports

This report analyses the distribution of couple penalties and premiums in the tax and benefit system using a large, statistically representative sample of households.

This Election Briefing Note, drawing in part on past notes in this series, analyses the manifesto proposals of the three main political parties in the area of families with children.

In this election briefing note, we look at the environment policy proposals put forward by the three main UK political parties in their manifestos, as well as the current government's plans for the future.

This note discusses the tax and benefit proposals of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, looking at their economic and administrative merits, their distributional impact and their effect of incentives to work and save.

This Briefing Note examines what the parties have said (explicitly and implicitly) about the scale, timing and composition of the fiscal repair job ahead, teasing out the differences and similarities.

This note looks at trends in education spending under Labour and at the three main parties proposals for early years, schools and higher education.

In this Briefing Note we focus on changes to the corporate tax environment alongside direct policies that aim to correct market failures.

In this Briefing Note, we briefly describe trends in UK productivity over the recent recession and how they compare with those in the US.

IFS researchers highlight some of the trade-offs that would be involved in reforming the current system of fees and loans applying to full-time undergraduate study

Efficiency savings alone won't be enough to sort out the UK's massive deficit and there will have to be cuts in the quality and/or quantity of public services coupled with cuts to welfare benefits and increases in tax, write Rowena Crawford and Carl Emmerson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

This Briefing Note reviews developments in welfare policy under the current government and analyses the manifesto proposals of the three main political parties in this policy area.

In this note, we will examine Labour's record on environmental policy since 1997. We start with a broad overview of the environmental record, looking at key outcomes on environmental taxes, expenditures and emissions and continue by looking in detail at policy developments and outcomes.

This general election briefing note looks at how overall levels of borrowing and debt changed between 1997 and 2010.

This Commentary documents in some detail how children's cognitive and social development differs between married and cohabiting parents, and provides a preliminary assessment of the extent to which such differences might be due to a causal effect of marriage itself.

Even more than in previous elections, the appropriate size of the state - measured by public spending as a share of national income - is a key issue.

This election briefing note examines the evolution of the tax burden over the last 60 years.

This Election Briefing Note describes the main tax and benefit reforms since 1997, and shows how they have affected total government revenues.

In this Briefing Note, we assess the changes to living standards that have occurred under the first 11 years of the Labour government and compare these changes with what happened under previous governments.

This election briefing note finds strong evidence of an increase in the rate of severe poverty since 2004-05, mirroring a rise in the official poverty rate, although the rate of persistent poverty does seem to have fallen under Labour, at least until 2007.

This report examines the extent to which the aspirations, attitudes and behaviour of parents and children can help explain why poor children typically do worse at school than children from richer backgrounds. It is based on the analysis of a number of large-scale longitudinal data sources capturing groups of children in the UK from early childhood through to late adolescence.