This article outlines the recommendations of the UK Pensions Commission, and the data and analysis on which they were based, including projections of demographic change, trends in private pension saving, and evolution of the state pension system. The Commission concluded that without reform,...

Britain is an unequal country, more so than many other industrial countries and more so than a generation ago. This is manifest in many ways - most obviously in the gap between those who are well off and those who are less well off. But inequalities in people's economic positions are also...

This paper takes as its starting point Henry Neuburger's injunction that taxation must be seen as a contribution to the maintenance of the welfare state, not as a dead-weight burden. It sets recent developments in the UK tax ratio in the context of changes in public spending, particularly on...

Cash transfers (benefits and tax credits) are crucial to the way that inequalities develop over time. This paper looks at how Labour’s aims, policies and achievements on poverty and inequality related to its reforms of and spending on cash transfers. - Labour’s aims for poverty and...

This is the first major report in a wider programme assessing the impact of the recession, government policy reforms and public spending on poverty and inequality in the UK. Later work will assess the Coalition’s social policy record, in the very different economic and fiscal climate of...

This is the second research report in a series of papers which form the first stage of a programme of research, Social Policy in a Cold Climate, designed to examine the effects of the major economic and political changes in the UK since 2007, particularly their impact on the distribution of...

The combination of spending cuts, efforts to protect the poorest from some of their effects, and ‘localised’ decision-making are leading to an increase in the numbers of means tests designed by lower level institutions. This paper examines a case study of the effects of this, looking at the...

This paper examines New Labour's social security and related policies since 1997 in the light of evidence on public attitudes. The list of measures where policies have been in or have come into line with public attitudes is much longer than the list of measures where policies have been out of...

This article looks at the way in which the role of the state has evolved within different aspects of welfare activity (broadly defined) in the United Kingdom since 1979 and forward to the possible impacts of the plans of the Coalition government that took office in 2010 for changing that role...