This paper uses individual data on employment and wages to shed light on the UK's productivity puzzle. It finds that workforce composition cannot explain the reduction in wages and hence productivity that we observe; instead, real wages have fallen significantly within jobs. Why? One possibility...

In China, the employment rate among middle-aged and older urban residents is exceptionally low. For example, 27% of 55-64-year-old urban women were in work in 2013, compared to more than 50% in UK, Thailand and Philippines. This paper investigates potential explanations of this low level of...

Since the early-1990s the UK experienced an unprecedented increase in university graduates. The proportion of people with a university degree by age 30 more than doubled from 16% for born in 1965-69 to 33% for those born ten years later. At the same time the age profile of the graduate premium...

There are large socio-economic gaps in higher education participation. But returns to education in the UK derive largely from the attainment of qualifications rather than years of study, and additionally vary by institution, subject and degree class for graduates. This paper provides new...

It is well known that in the UK defined benefit pensions are more prevalent in the public sector than in the private sector. Furthermore, we find that the average value of accrual to members of both defined benefit pensions and defined contribution pensions is lower in the private sector than in...

This working paper describes how the IFS's model of the UK's long-run public finances (and those of its constituent nations) is constructed. Our model projects tax revenues, public spending and hence public borrowing and debt up to 2062-63. This is done for the UK as a whole and also separately...

We examine ill-health retirement of police officers in England and Wales between 2002-3 and 2009-10. Differences in ill-health retirement rates across forces are statistically related to area-specific stresses of policing and force-specific differences in human resources policies. Reforms to...

Using a model where households can save in either a safe asset or in an illiquid, tax-advantaged pension, we assess the extent to which those who recently reached the state pension age in the UK have saved optimally for retirement. The policy environment specified closely matches that prevailing...

Much of the focus of the UK pensions policy debate over the past decade has been on the adequacy (or otherwise) of private retirement saving. In this paper, we present the first assessment of the optimality of the retirement resources of English couple households born in the 1940s. Here,...

The redistributive objectives of the UK state pension system have often been somewhat ambiguous, and have changed over time as different governments have come and gone. In this paper, we use detailed data on households' histories of employment, earnings and contributions to the National...