Official data on the distribution of household incomes in the UK are available only with a significant lag: the latest statistics are for 2013-14. In this report, we use modelling techniques to provide a more up-to-date picture and to assess how things are likely to evolve in the coming years....

The focus of this report is the distribution of household income in the UK. We assess the changes to average incomes, income inequality and poverty that occurred in the latest year of data (2014-15), and put these in historical context using comparable data spanning the last 50 years. The...

If the result of the referendum on 23 June leads to the UK leaving the EU, there will be impacts on the UK public finances. This report aims to set out the possible impacts, focusing particularly on the short run, given that the Chancellor wishes to achieve a budget balance by the end of this...

This report examines how living standards - most commonly measured by households' incomes - have changed for different groups in the UK, and the consequences that these changes have for income inequality and for measures of deprivation and poverty. In this latest report, we focus in particular...

Education spending is the second-largest element of public service spending in the UK behind health, representing about £91 billion in 2018-19 in today's prices or about 4.2% of national income. The level of UK education spending has risen significantly in real terms over time, growing...

Funding the National Health Service is the biggest single thing the government does, so it is not surprising that it is at the forefront of the election campaign. In this report, we look at how health spending has changed over the last 70 years and place funding increases since 2010 in the...

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the question of whether additional taxes should be devolved to English local government. The past decade has seen a number of changes to how local government is funded, including the introduction of business rates retention. Broadly, these...

Education spending is the second-largest area of public service spending in the UK, representing about 4.5% of national income in 2015-16. Government spending on education grew by around 1.7% per year in real terms over the 1980s and 1990s, before increasing sharply over the 2000s by more than...

The local government finance system in England is undergoing genuinely revolutionary change. A highly-centralised system of funding, with central government grants allocated on the basis of councils' relative spending need, is set to be replaced by a system where councils as a group are...