This report describes patterns of financial help from family received by first-time buyers. We quantify the value of gifts and loans made, how they vary across different regions of the country and between those from different parental backgrounds, and shed light on their role in explaining...

We document key patterns in the flow of significant gifts and loans between friends and family in Great Britain, using newly-available data from the Wealth and Assets Survey. We identify a number of new stylised facts. Gifts and loans are generally intergenerational transfers: 83% of the value...

Understanding the drivers of wealth transfers during life is crucial to understanding the intergenerational transmission of inequality, the optimal design of social insurance, and the efficacy of expansionary fiscal policy. To shed light on this, we analyse the relationships between giving and...

The tax system treats funds that remain in a pension at death extremely favourably. Where an individual dies before age 75, funds remaining in their pension escape income tax entirely - there was income tax relief when the money was paid into the pension and no income tax when the money is taken...

This report takes a fresh look at the prospects for the future of retirement incomes for employees in the UK. Since the Pensions Commission reported around 20 years ago, much has changed in the economic and pensions policy environment. While the introduction of automatic enrolment has been in...

This report discusses how public policy should change to bring about better outcomes in retirement for employees through their accumulation of private pension wealth. In doing so, we draw on new modelling undertaken as part of the Pensions Review (O'Brien, Sturrock and Cribb, 2024) as well as...

There have been widespread concerns about the patterns of retirement saving amongst self-employed workers, who now make up just over one in eight of the whole labour force. Most strikingly, the fraction of self-employed workers earning over £10,000 who are making contributions to a private...