The post-2010 reforms to the financing of higher education at English universities have proved extremely controversial. Students on most courses now face the prospect of being charged tuition fees that can cost up to £9,000 per year, and having to pay a higher interest rate on the debt than previous generations of graduates. But how… Read more »
Term: Papers
The IF Intergenerational Unfairness Index: 2013 Edition
This is the first annual sequel to the original edition of the Intergenerational Unfairness Index, IF’s pioneering attempt to measure intergenerational unfairness in the UK. Building on the measures established by the 2012 Edition, this piece of research found that the prospects of young people appear to be worsening across a range of key areas,… Read more »
No Entry! Transport barriers facing young people
Young people in Britain are being unfairly disadvantaged by cuts to public transport services, according to this study which was undertaken on IF’s behalf by Richard Bourn of the Campaign for Better Transport. This report particularly looked at the relationship between changes in public transport policy and the declining employment prospects of large numbers of… Read more »
Fare Concessions for Older People: identifying the numbers
Most people are aware that everyone who reaches state pension age in Britain, and most of the over 60s, are given a generous taxpayer-funded subsidy to use public transport. But how do people actually use this in practice? And how much does it cost? In order to investigate how people use age-related fare concessions, IF… Read more »
All in this together? Why over-65s should pay National Insurance
There is currently an imbalance in the UK tax system. As things stand, workers stop having to pay National Insurance contributions (NICs) when they reach state pension age, effectively giving workers who continue at their jobs a pay rise at the expense of the general taxpayer. The rapid increase in the number of workers who… Read more »
Can the UK Afford to Pay for Pensions?
The UK government currently has almost £5 trillion worth of pension liabilities which it will have to pay in the future (£1.2 trillion for public service pensions and £3.84 trillion in respect of the state pension). Most of these are unfunded, meaning that they are largely paid out of annual tax revenues and the bill… Read more »
Will young people be poorer than their parents?
In 2011, the Labour leader Ed Miliband drew headlines when he warned that his generation was in danger of failing to fulfil the “British promise” that each new generation should be able to enjoy a better quality of life than the previous one had. This comment seemed to tap into a widespread sense of… Read more »
Spending Power across the Generations
Who wields the balance of spending power in contemporary Britain? With increasing media and political rhetoric surrounding the “cost-of-living-crisis”, it is useful to analyse patterns of spending behaviour to see if certain types of household appear to be suffering or benefiting disproportionately as a result of broader economic trends. In this report, IF analysed data… Read more »
Flying in the Face of Fairness: intergenerational inequities in the taxation of air travel
Debates about aviation policy in Britain are usually concerned with how many airports the country needs – and where they should be built – to support the economy and give us enough extra capacity to handle the increasing amount of flying that people are projected to do in the future. This report, written on behalf… Read more »
Pensioner Millionaires in the UK: identifying the numbers
The members of Britain’s baby boomer generation who are just starting to enter retirement have been called “the richest generation in history”. Yet, to a large extent, the British welfare state still treats age as a proxy for need, transferring large amounts of public money to all pensioners in the form of universal benefits, regardless… Read more »