IFS Senior Research Economist Ben Zaranko writes for The Conversation on how the UK's lower defence spending has allowed successive governments to pay for a growing welfare state without a higher tax burden.
In September, the government announced that it was introducing a cap on the lifetime social care costs faced by individuals. At the event a joint IFS-Health Foundation report was presented that looks at the implications of this change.
Areas with larger ethnic minority populations experienced greater reductions in emergency admissions during the first ten months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
What are the likely pressures on the NHS going forward - not just from COVID-19, but also from an ageing population? How much funding might be needed to meet these? And will the government's latest reforms really be enough to 'fix' social care?
