Poverty, inequality and social mobility

This report provides, for the first time ever, a consistently defined picture of living standards in the UK over the last three decades. Looking in detail at patterns in income inequality, and at the changing fortunes of the richest and the poorest, this report puts the trends of the 1980s into the context of 30 years.

We analyze how relative wage movements across birth cohorts and education groups during the 1980s affected the distribution of household consumption.

Very little is known about how households hold their savings, if they have any at all. This study shows how the amount and nature of household saving and wealth vary across different household types.

Measures of average inflation like the RPI cannot, by definition, capture the true cost-of-living increases faced by individual households. This report looks at the extent to which a range of households have had different experiences of inflation over the last 15 years.

The only circumstance under which one can speak accurately about <i>the</i> cost-of-living index is one in which household expenditure patterns do not vary.

This paper considers the impact on households of imposing VAT on domestic energy, and the extent to which the social security system will safeguard poorer households against the additional tax burden.

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro-level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand.

Aggregation and consumer behaviour: some recent results

A survey of the main issues involved in using equivalence scales to estimate the costs of children for policy purposes: the authors estimate a range of scales for the UK and examine the impact of varying scales on official statistics.

Intertemporal consumption, durables and liquidity constraints: a cohort analysis