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...

The long-term care needs of the growing older population are increasingly important issues for policymakers and society as a whole. This report uses new data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing - a panel survey representative of the household population aged 50 and over in England with...

The paper analyses the impact of centrally regulated pay on the quality of applicants to be police officers in England and Wales using a unique dataset of individual test scores from the national assessment that is required of all applicants. It provides empirical evidence of two distinct...

Using a lifecycle model of consumption, saving and portfolio choice combined with linked survey and administrative data on wealth and lifetime earnings we evaluate measures of retirement preparedness. We estimate heterogeneous discount factors for households and compare these estimates of their...

Whether the UK leaves the European Union, and if so on what terms, is a crucial issue and therefore rightly should be the subject of much debate in the run-up to the general election on 12 December. But Brexit is not the only economically important decision that the UK faces. So the general...

The proportion of self-employed workers contributing to a private pension has been steadily declining since the 1990s. This is in contrast to private-sector employees, for whom the rate of pension participation has dramatically increased as a result of automatic enrolment. Furthermore, even...

Recent years have seen increasing concerns in many developed countries over 'the changing nature of work'. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Taylor Review notes that only 60% of workers are permanent employees. In the United States, a recent review by Mas and Pallais (2020) found that...

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...

Prices of real and financial assets fell substantially in the UK during 2008-09. The fourth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) was in the field throughout this 'financial crisis'. We use these data and earlier ELSA waves first to document the effect of the crisis on the...