Carl Emmerson

Conditional Cash Transfers and School Dropout Rates

This paper evaluates a United Kingdom pilot study designed to test whether a means-tested conditional cash transfer paid to 16- to 18-year-olds for staying in full-time education is an effective way of reducing the proportion of school dropouts. The transfers impact is substantial: In the first year, full-time education participation rates increase by around 4.5 percentage points while the proportion receiving two years of education increases by around 6. 7 percentage points. Those receiving the full payment have the largest initial increase in participation and some evidence is found suggesting that part of the effect can be explained by liquidity constraints.

Mortality, Health Status, and Wealth

In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after conditioning on the initial health status, wealth rankings are important determinants of mortality and the evolution of the health indicator in the survey. For men aged 65 moving from the 40th percentile to the 60th percentile in the wealth distribution increases the probability of survival by between 1.0 and 1.9 percentage points depending on the measure of wealth used. A similar effect is found for women of between 1.1 and 1.3 percentage points. In the process of estimating these effects we control for nonrandom attrition from our sample. (JEL: I2, J19) Copyright (c) 2003 The European Economic Association.

Privatising provision and attacking poverty ? The direction of UK Pension Policy under new Labour

This paper analyses the thrust of the UK Governments pension reforms in the context of the system they inherited. The reforms represent continuity with what went before in seeking to continue the privatisation of pension provision, but herald a new emphasis on pensioner poverty reduction. There is a clear broad strategy even though not all of the reforms fit obviously within it – a generous means-tested system, extensive private provision and a diminished contributory pension. In the long term, this strategy has advantages in terms of containing public sector liabilities, but involves further downgrading the contributory principle. It will also affect the incentive to save for many individuals. Individuals currently on means-tested benefits will be able to keep more of their savings as a result of the reform. But those currently outside the means-tested benefit regime who expect to be brought into it as a result of the reforms will face a diminished incentive to save.

Tax Reform and Retirement Saving Incentives: Take-Up of Stakeholder Pensions in the UK

In April 2001, the UK government introduced Stakeholder Pensions – a new private pension arrangement. The reform also changed the structure of tax-relieved pension contribution ceilings, increasing their generosity for lower-earners. We examine the impact of these changes on private pension coverage using individual level data. We use a difference-in-differences strategy with an estimator that is modified to allow for dichotomous outcomes. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Stakeholder Pension reforms had little or no impact on saving behaviour, our results indicate that the change to the contribution ceilings affected private pension coverage rates among lower-earners, especially among women.

Can't wait to get my pension: the effect of raising the female early retirement age on income, poverty and deprivation

We estimate the impact of increasing the female early retirement age (ERA) on household living standards. Examining the increase in the female ERA from 60 to 63 in the UK, we find increased earnings only partially offset lost public pension income, leaving affected womens household incomes £32 per week lower on average. The proportional effect was substantially larger for women in lower income households. This increased the income poverty rate among affected women by 6.4 percentage points. We find no evidence of an increased inability to afford important material items, potentially suggesting that material deprivation has been avoided through smoothing of consumption.

The IFS Green Budget 2004

This chapter begins with a discussion of four issues in company taxation. First, we assess the recent government consultation document on reform to corporation tax, which looks at possible changes to the rules for calculating taxable income. (This follows a series of reforms to the taxation of corporate profits since 1997, which are discussed in Chapter 9.) In Section 6.2, we look at the taxation of dividends, in the light of the changes to the UK tax system since 1997 and recent proposals for reform in the USA. In Section 6.3, we assess the structure of North Sea taxation following the changes announced in Budget 2002 and in the 2002 Pre-Budget Report. Then, in Section 6.4, we consider an issue that is not on the government’s immediate agenda, but one where there might be a case for reform – stamp duty on share transactions. The chapter also looks at innovation policy, following the 2002 Pre-Budget Report announcement of a review into the interaction between universities and business, which will report at the same time as a separate review of the UK’s innovation performance. In the final section of the chapter, we examine trends in UK research and development (RD) activity and consider current policy towards innovation, including the two new RD tax credits.