The end of 2021 marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of IF, a milestone that we marked with a report looking at how the welfare of younger generations has changed over the past decade. IF published three other research reports this year on growing housing inequality, age bias in government spending and the discount… Read more »

John Hobby
Economics Researcher
John joined IF in October 2021 as its Economics Researcher. He has an undergraduate degree in History, Politics and Economics and is currently studying part-time at Birkbeck for his MSc. As a pluralist economist, John is interested in incorporating insights from other social sciences into his economic thinking. John’s areas of interest include wealth inequality, student debt and the climate crisis. Outside work, John is most likely to be found cooking, reading or listening to music.
The social care cap and the intergenerational contract
On 7 September 2021, the government announced reforms to the social care system in order to provide more support to people with fewer financial resources. A recent announcement on 17 November 2021 casts doubt on whether these reforms will be worth the costs borne by younger generations. John Hobby, IF researcher, investigates whether this is… Read more »
COP26: Degrowth as a solution to the climate crisis
John Hobby, IF Researcher, looks at why GDP is an imperfect measure of human wellbeing and how changing how we think about growth could help us improve global living standards while reducing environmental degradation. Green Growth has become the established theoretical and policy response to tackling climate change and ecological breakdown, with talk of a… Read more »