As a result of the Child Poverty Act (2010), current and future governments are committed to reducing the rate of relative income child poverty in the UK to 10% by 2020-21. This paper looks in detail at the progress made towards this goal under the previous Labour administrations. Direct tax and...

This paper makes use of newly linked English administrative data to better understand the determinants of higher education participation amongst individuals from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It is unique in being able to follow two cohorts of students in England - those who took...

Childcare costs are often viewed as one of the biggest barriers to work, particularly among lone parents on low incomes. Children in England are typically eligible to start school - and thus access a number of hours of free public education - on 1 September after they turn four. This means that...

Higher education (HE) participation has expanded dramatically in England over the last half century; however, access to HE amongst particular groups of students remains a major policy concern. This report makes use of newly linked administrative data to better understand the determinants of...

This report compares and contrasts the economic circumstances of individuals born between the 1940s and the 1970s, currently ages between their mid-30s and mid-70s. In doing so, it aims to provide a sense of the likely economic position of the younger cohorts in later life, in absolute terms and...

This report considers the extent to which differences in parental characteristics explain gaps in cognitive and socio-emotional development between children at older ages. It documents and explores the differences between children born to cohabiting and married couples for a range of other...

How have household incomes evolved since the onset of the financial crisis? How has the gap between rich and poor changed? How have living standards changed over time for different parts of the population? How many people are in poverty and which groups are most likely to face poverty? Each...

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...

This paper analyses the key trends in child poverty in Britain, with particular focus on changes since the late 1990s when the issue was promoted towards the top of the policy agenda. The position of low-income families with children in the income distribution improved considerably in the late...

Conventional in-work benefits or tax credits are now well established as a policy instrument for increasing labour supply and tackling poverty. A different sort of in-work credit is one where the payments are time-limited, conditional on previous receipt of welfare, and, perhaps, not...