Using data tracking all those born in a single week in Great Britain in 1958 through to their mid-50s we observe an inverse U-shaped gender wage gap (GWG) over their life-course: an initial gap in early adulthood widened substantially during childrearing years, affecting earnings in full-time...

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...

We investigate the role of training in reducing the gender wage gap using the UK-BHPS which contains detailed records of training. Using policy changes over an 18 year period we identify the impact of training and work experience on wages, earnings and employment. Based on a lifecycle model and...

Using nationally representative surveys of workplaces with 50 or more employees we find the adoption of High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in the public sector are positively correlated with workplace financial performance and the implementation of workplace organizational change. The...

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...

A long-running debate in the small firms' literature questions the value of formal 'human resource management' (HRM) practices which have been linked to high performance in larger firms. We contribute to this literature by exploiting linked employer-employee surveys for 2004 and 2011. Using...

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...