IFS Zooms In: The Economy

Older workers are one group of people who are at risk of suffering serious and persistent consequences from the economic turmoil arising from the coronavirus pandemic. Previous research has shown that unemployment shocks have persistent effects on the employment and incomes of older workers. In particular, older individuals who lose their jobs are less likely to secure re-employment, or to find a job on a similar wage to their previous earnings, than younger workers. Being unexpectedly out of work, or on lower wages, in the years leading up to retirement can have obvious negative implications for retirement resources. In this episode, we speak with Rowena Crawford, IFS Associate Director, who has recently published research on how the pandemic is impacting older workers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The COVID pandemic has created huge uncertainly for students returning to university. Have student numbers remained stable in the face of the COVID-19 crisis? Has the A Level results debacle had an impact on admissions? Should students be paying full rates for an online-only experience? How are university finances doing more generally in the face of the coronavirus crisis?In this episode, we speak with Jack Britton, education expert at the IFS, to consider some of the complex questions facing the higher education sector. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A socially mobile country provides equal opportunities for everyone, across big cities and small towns, and regardless of whether your parents are rich or poor. Social mobility is never far from the front pages; discussions around education, geographic and intergenerational inequalities and jobs affect everyone. Joining us this week is Lindsey MacMillan, Director of the new Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities and Anna Vignoles, Professor of Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought new and severe pressures on the UK economy. The challenge now facing Her Majesty’s Treasury will be how to balance the need for increasing revenues through taxes with stimulating much-needed economic growth. This week, our host and IFS Director Paul Johnson speaks to Helen Miller, Deputy Director of the IFS and expert on tax policy, to discuss how the Treasury might raise revenues in the future and how our current tax system can be reformed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The closures of childcare providers to most families during the COVID-19 crisis have underlined the importance of access to childcare, both to support paid work and to help shape young children’s environment. However, the crisis has had severe consequences for the finances of childcare providers, which were already weak in several parts of the sector going into the crisis. Despite a range of government support programmes, many providers lost income during lockdown. In the medium term, a longer-lasting fall in demand for childcare or an increase in costs related to social distancing could seriously hamper financial sustainability in the sector going forward. This week, we speak with Christine Farquharson, Senior Research Economist at IFS and Claire Crawford, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham and IFS Research Fellow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While most things have changed in 2020, the end of the summer will once again see students preparing to go back to school. But this year’s return to school will be unlike any that has come before; for many students, it will have been more than five months since they last attended school in person. Reopening schools has been contentious, but the Department for Education in England – partly motivated by research showing the challenges from home learning and the growing inequalities it has brought – has signalled its determination for all students to return come September. This will be a decisive shift from a period in which schools were open for some year groups, some of the time, with some families choosing to attend while others stayed home. This week we are joined by Angela Donkin, Chief Social Scientist, at the National Foundation For Educational Research (NFER) and Sarah Cattan, Associate Director at IFS in the Education and Skills sector. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently, students got their A Level results, despite having never sat an exam.How did the government decide what grades to give students? What methodology did they use? How has this affected the distribution of results?This week, we speak with Jack Britton, Associate Director at IFS and expert on education, to get to the bottom of how this year's A Level results were calculated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the last five months the country has, understandably, been focused on the health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is already having a huge effect on the economy, on employment and on the public finances. All the while, though, the government has been preparing for the reality of Brexit; not the formal Brexit that happened back in January, but the new trading relationship which will come into force at the end of this year. That too, whatever the final deal, will cause deep and fundamental changes to our economy and to jobs, earnings and incomes.In this episode, we speak to Peter Levell, Senior Research Economist at IFS and expert in the economics of Brexit, to look at how the significant change in our trading relationship with Europe will affect the UK. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted concerns about inequalities. This is not only about gaps between rich and poor, young and old and between different ethnic groups. It is also about the differences between people living in different places. Even prior to the crisis, there was a sense that the UK is a highly geographically unequal country and that this inequality is increasing. In this episode, we explore these geographical inequalities with David Phillips, Associate Director at IFS and an expert on devolved and local government finance.Inequality: The IFS Deaton Review is funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recent decades have seen rising wealth-to-income ratios. In England, increases in wealth have been concentrated among older generations. Those born in the 1980s have accumulated no more wealth than those born in the 1970s had done by the same age, but the parents of those born in the 1980s hold 40% more wealth than the parents of those born in the 1970s held at the same age. One consequence is that inherited wealth is on course to be a much more important determinant of lifetime resources for today’s young than it was for previous generations. In this episode we speak to James Banks, Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and Senior Research Fellow at IFS, and David Sturrock, Senior Research Economist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.