Mike Brewer
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View article: A healthy State? Putting the 2025 Spending Review into context
A healthy State? Putting the 2025 Spending Review into context Open
June 11th 2025 saw the Chancellor reveal the results of the first ‘zero-based’ review since 2008, the first stand-alone Spending Review since 2019, and the first three-year plan since 2021. It was the Government’s chance to say what its pr…
View article: Renew and improve: Setting up the Household Support Fund for the future
Renew and improve: Setting up the Household Support Fund for the future Open
At the upcoming Spending Review, the Government has a chance to deliver a long-term settlement for the Household Support Fund, the largest form of discretionary crisis support in England. Conceived of as a temporary post-Covid initiative, …
View article: What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility?
What Do We Know About Income and Earnings Volatility? Open
We first review research about income and earnings volatility and second provide new UK evidence about the latter using high‐quality administrative record data. The USA stands out as a high‐volatility country relative to the UK and other h…
View article: Unsung Britain bears the brunt
Unsung Britain bears the brunt Open
This briefing note analyses the choices the Government has made in the context of an awkward backdrop to the 2025 Spring Statement. It argues that the Chancellor had difficult work to do in bringing the books in line with her fiscal rules,…
View article: A dangerous road?
A dangerous road? Open
The 'Pathways to Work' Green Paper marks a serious attempt by the Government to tackle two major concerns: the growing spend on disability benefits, and the large number of people who are not working through ill-health. [1] The proposals t…
View article: Unstable Pay: New estimates of earnings volatility in the UK
Unstable Pay: New estimates of earnings volatility in the UK Open
This report uses a newly available dataset – payroll data held by HM Revenue and Customs on over 250,000 working-age people covering April 2014 to March 2019 – to look at monthly and weekly volatility in employee pre-tax earnings. It is on…
View article: Unsung Britain: The changing economic circumstances of the poorer half of Britain
Unsung Britain: The changing economic circumstances of the poorer half of Britain Open
This report marks the launch of Unsung Britain, a one-year research programme designed to understand the economic circumstances of today’s low-to-middle income families and how these have changed in recent decades. The paper finds that Bri…
View article: Universal Credit: Welfare reform and mental health
Universal Credit: Welfare reform and mental health Open
The UK Universal Credit (UC) welfare reform simplified the benefits system whilst strongly incentivising a return to sustainable employment. Exploiting a staggered roll-out, we estimate the differential effect of unemployment under UC vers…
View article: Cutbacks ahead: Considering the impact of proposed changes to disability benefits on living standards and the public finances
Cutbacks ahead: Considering the impact of proposed changes to disability benefits on living standards and the public finances Open
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already come under pressure for making one welfare cut to help her address the challenging fiscal outlook in the run up to her first Budget – but there are more in store due to spending commitments inherite…
View article: Ratchets, retrenchment and reform: The social security system since 2010
Ratchets, retrenchment and reform: The social security system since 2010 Open
Spending on social security as a share of GDP has risen slightly since the financial crisis, but the system in Great Britain has undergone profound change over the same time. Large-scale structural reforms have fundamentally altered the sy…
View article: Trends in income and wealth inequalities
Trends in income and wealth inequalities Open
This article brings together trends in inequalities in income, wealth and, to a limited extent, consumption in the United Kingdom, with a focus on trends until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers how trends in wealth compare w…
View article: Trends in income and wealth inequalities
Trends in income and wealth inequalities Open
This chapter brings together trends in inequalities in income, wealth and, to a limited extent, consumption in the United Kingdom, with a focus on trends until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
View article: Trends in income and wealth inequalities
Trends in income and wealth inequalities Open
Key findings1. Now that interest rates are rising, the interaction of quantitative easing (QE) with the Bank of England's current methods for implementing monetary policy will add to strains on the public finances.These could, and arguably…
View article: Household Earnings and Income Volatility in the UK, 2009–2017
Household Earnings and Income Volatility in the UK, 2009–2017 Open
We study the volatility of sources of individual and household level income in the UK in the years 2009-2017, following the Great Recession and government austerity. We find that the volatility of (pre-tax) earnings and disposable income h…
View article: Does more free childcare help parents work more?
Does more free childcare help parents work more? Open
Many governments are considering expanding childcare subsidies to increase the labour force participation of parents (especially mothers) with young children. In this paper, we study the potential impact of such a policy by comparing the e…
View article: A method for decomposing the impact of reforms on the long-run income distribution, with an application to universal credit
A method for decomposing the impact of reforms on the long-run income distribution, with an application to universal credit Open
Income inequality, as well as the impact of tax and benefit reforms on it, has typically been evaluated with respect to 'snapshot' incomes, measured over short periods such as one week or year. But longitudinal data allows long-run measure…
View article: Does more free childcare help parents work more?
Does more free childcare help parents work more? Open
Many governments are considering expanding childcare subsidies to increase the labour force participation of parents (especially mothers) with young children. In this paper, we study the potential impact of such a policy by comparing the e…
View article: Did the UK policy response to Covid-19 protect household incomes?
Did the UK policy response to Covid-19 protect household incomes? Open
We analyse the UK policy response to Covid-19 and its impact on household incomes in the UK in April and May 2020, using microsimulation methods. We estimate that households will lose a substantial share of their net income (7% on average)…
View article: The initial impact of COVID-19 and policy responses on household incomes
The initial impact of COVID-19 and policy responses on household incomes Open
As soon as the scale of the coronavirus shock to the economy became clear, the UK government introduced three policies to protect directly household incomes: a Job Retention Scheme, to pay the wages of employees who were temporarily furlou…
View article: In‐Work Credits in the UK and the US
In‐Work Credits in the UK and the US Open
In‐work credits grew in popularity worldwide during the late 1990s and 2000s as a means of reforming welfare systems in ways that could both encourage work and reduce poverty. This paper reviews the role of in‐work tax credits in the UK an…
View article: The curious incidence of rent subsidies: Evidence of heterogeneity from administrative data
The curious incidence of rent subsidies: Evidence of heterogeneity from administrative data Open
This paper provides new evidence on the incidence of rent subsidies. We use administrative panel data on subsidy recipients in the UK and exploit a natural experiment in which entitlements were cut for about a million households. In the sh…
View article: Top incomes in the UK: analysis of the 2015-16 Survey of Personal Incomes
Top incomes in the UK: analysis of the 2015-16 Survey of Personal Incomes Open
Using administrative tax data, we estimate top income shares for the UK through to 2015-16 (at the time of writing, the UK data held by the World Income Database stopped in 2014-15). Top income shares fell back considerably in 2009, but th…
View article: What Do We Really Know about the Employment Effects of the UK's National Minimum Wage?
What Do We Really Know about the Employment Effects of the UK's National Minimum Wage? Open
A substantial body of research on the UK's National Minimum Wage (NMW) has concluded that the the NMW has not had a detrimental effect on employment. This research has directly influenced, through the Low Pay Commission, the conduct of pol…