Credit crunched: single parents, universal credit and the struggle to make work pay

Gingerbread has published a major academic report that looks at the impact on single parent families of the government’s flagship welfare programme, universal credit. We are concerned that, far from achieving the reform’s stated goal of “making work pay”, many single parents could actually lose out in cash terms under the new system. Universal […]

Family fortunes: the bank of mum and dad in low income families

[…] welfare for low income families: their wider family, specifically the support from the bank of mum and dad. The report examines in detail the prevalence, nature and impact of intergenerational transfers in low income families. Such support generally generates positive financial and emotional benefits for both donors and recipients. So new, imaginative policies are […]

Social assistance in Central and Eastern Europe: features and characteristics

[…] Thus, countries with more inclusive social insurance schemes tend to have more generous universal poverty relief and fewer categorical means-tested benefits. Previous poor relief experiences may also impact on the blueprint of the current social assistance program. Building on the case of Hungary, it may be hypothesized that a tradition of local charities favours […]

Mortgage interest rates helping the rich to save more?

[…] with some even struggling to pay bills – let alone having money left over to save. But new analysis from NatCen Social Research has shown that the recession has had less impact on the savings behaviour of the richest households – and if anything has enabled many of them to save even more than before.

Integrating indirect taxation into EUROMOD. Documentation and results for Germany.

This paper documents the integration of microsimulation tools for direct taxation, indirect taxation, and social benefits in the context of the European tax and benefit simulator, EUROMOD. Integration has been developed parallely for the two countries, Belgium and Germany. The paper at hand documents the process and presents simulation results for the case of Germany. […]

Nonparametric estimation of a compensating variation: the cost of disability

[…] cost of public disability support. Economists often use the idea of a “compensating variation” (CV) as a way of measuring intangibles in money terms, to allow the impact of policy to be compared with its financial cost. For a disabled individual, the CV is defined as the amount of additional income he or she […]