scholarly journals Household Earnings and Income Volatility in the UK, 2009–2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Avram ◽  
Mike Brewer ◽  
Paul Fisher ◽  
Laura Fumagalli
Keyword(s):  
Tax Credits ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Income Shocks ◽  
Income Volatility ◽  
Household Level ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Uk

AbstractWe 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 has fallen for the working-age in this period, largely due to fewer negative and large earnings shocks. For older individuals, we also find a fall in the volatility of private income, mainly due to fewer positive and large income shocks. Taxes and transfers help stabilise incomes, with social security cash benefits and income-dependent refundable tax credits reducing household private income volatility by around a quarter for the working age, and 40 percent for those aged 60 or over. However, over the sample period, taxes and benefits became less well correlated with earnings, reducing their ability to counteract swings in labour income. The findings illustrate the consequences of fiscal retrenchment and the cut-backs to welfare benefits on the stability of incomes.

Middle and Below Living Standards: What Can We Learn from Beyond Income Measures of Economic Well-being?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marii Paskov ◽  
Joan E. Madia ◽  
Tim Goedemé
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Material Deprivation ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Household Level ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Household Incomes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Well Being

This chapter complements the income-based measures of living standards on which earlier chapters have focused by incorporating non-income dimensions of economic well-being into its analysis, including indicators of material deprivation, economic burdens, and financial stress. It analyses how working-age households around and below the middle of the income distribution fared in European countries in the years before, during, and after the Great Recession. Harmonized household-level data across the members of the EU are analysed to see whether the evolution of these various non-income measures present a similar or different picture to household incomes over time. To probe what lies behind the patterns this reveals, four quite different countries are then examined in greater depth. Finally, the chapter also explores the relationship between material deprivation for households around and below the middle and overall income inequality.

scholarly journals Household level health and socio-economic vulnerabilities and the COVID-19 crisis: An analysis from the UK

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Mikolai ◽  
Katherine Keenan ◽  
Hill Kulu
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Retirement Age ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Representative Study ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Uk

Objectives. To investigate how COVID-19-related health and socio-economic vulnerabilities occur at the household level, and how they are distributed across household types and geographical areas in the United Kingdom. Design. Cross-sectional, nationally representative study. Setting. The United Kingdom. Participants. ~19,500 households. Main outcome measures. Using multiple household-level indicators and principal components analysis, we derive summary measures representing different dimensions of household vulnerabilities critical during the COVID-19 epidemic: health, employment, housing, financial and digital. Results. Our analysis highlights three key findings. First, although COVID-19 health risks are concentrated in retirement-age households, a substantial proportion of working age households also face these risks. Second, different types of households exhibit different vulnerabilities, with working-age households more likely to face financial, housing and employment precarities, and retirement-age households health and digital vulnerabilities. Third, there are area-level differences in the distribution of vulnerabilities across England and the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Conclusions. The findings imply that the short- and long-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis are likely to vary by household type. Policy measures that aim to mitigate the health and socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic should consider how vulnerabilities cluster together across different household types, and how these may exacerbate already existing inequalities.

scholarly journals No Love on the Dole: The Influence of the UK Means-tested Welfare System on Partnering and Family Structure

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
RITA GRIFFITHS
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Labour Supply ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Lone Parents ◽  
Low Income Mothers ◽  
The Uk

AbstractTwo-parent families with dependent children are known to be at lower risk of poverty and significantly less reliant on state financial help than lone-parent households. It might therefore be expected that the factors influencing partnership transitions among low-income women would represent a key area of policy interest. However, driven by concerns about weak work incentives, policy focus and research has to date concentrated on understanding lone parents’ labour supply and encouraging the transition from benefits into employment. Surprisingly little is therefore known about demographic decision making among women reliant on UK means-tested welfare. As part of a wider qualitative study exploring family formation, partnership dissolution and repartnering decisions among low-income mothers, this paper examines whether and to what extent entitlement to welfare benefits or tax credits influenced the decision to live with or apart from a partner or child's father. The research found that the aspects of welfare that remove or reduce a mother's access to an independent income and require one partner in a couple to be financially dependent on the other had been strongly influential in partnering decisions and living arrangements. Policy implications are discussed.

Occupational mobility, employment transitions and job quality in Europe: The impact of the Great Recession

2020 ◽  
pp. 0143831X2093193
Author(s):  
Martina Bisello ◽  
Vincenzo Maccarrone ◽  
Enrique Fernández-Macías
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article investigates employment and occupational transitions that are behind structural changes in European labour markets before, during and after the Great Recession. The study introduces a new methodological approach for studying labour market flows considering the quality of the jobs from and into which the flows are taking place by differentiating them into wage quintiles. The analysis compares six European countries that are usually associated with different institutional clusters – France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It tracks the transitions of their working age populations into and out of inactivity, unemployment and employment (in five wage categories). The findings show the extent to which employment and occupational mobility patterns differ across European countries, resulting in very different outcomes in terms of employment opportunities and life chances. Results also suggest that the countries studied fall into three distinct categories based on the degree of occupational mobility characterising their economies.

The IMF and the Politics of Austerity in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Clift
Keyword(s):  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Public Power ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Regulatory Interventions ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
The Imf

The IMF uses crisis-defining economic ideas, and crisis legacy-defining ideas, to construct interpretations of economic crises in ways which prioritize particular policy or institutional responses, and rule out or marginalize others. The post-crash IMF enjoyed scope to shift the boundaries of ‘legitimate’ policy, involving heightened appreciation of ‘non-linear’ threats from losses of confidence, prolonged weak demand, and financial system fragilities and contagion. The policy corollaries of this Fund rethink were that economic stability has to be actively pursued through a wider range of policy and regulatory interventions by governments, central banks, the IMF, and other forms of authority and public power. In the context of the Great Recession, the Fund no longer considered it safe to assume an inherent tendency on the part of unfettered market forces in finance and the real economy to deliver the stability and full employment at the heart of its mandate.

scholarly journals In-work Universal Credit: Claimant Experiences of Conditionality Mismatches and Counterproductive Benefit Sanctions

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
SHARON WRIGHT ◽  
PETER DWYER
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Job Search ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Benefit Sanctions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Universal Credit is the UK’s globally innovative social security reform that replaces six means tested benefits with one monthly payment for working age claimants - combining social security and tax credit systems. Universal Credit expands welfare conditionality via mandatory job search conditions to enhance ‘progression’ amongst working claimants by requiring extra working hours or multiple jobs. This exposes low paid workers to tough benefit sanctions for non-compliance, which could remove essential income indefinitely or for fixed periods of up to three years. Our unique contribution is to establish how this new regime is experienced at micro level by in-work claimants over time. We present findings from Qualitative Longitudinal Research (141 interviews with 58 claimants, 2014-17), to demonstrate how UC impacts on in-work recipients and how conditionality produces a new coerced worker-claimant model of social support. We identify a series of welfare conditionality mismatches and conclude that conditionality for in-work claimants is largely counterproductive. This implies a redesign of the UK system and serves as an international warning to potential policy emulators.

scholarly journals The contribution of changes to tax and social security to stalled life expectancy trends in Scotland: a modelling study

2020 ◽  
pp. jech-2020-214770
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Richardson ◽  
Martin Taulbut ◽  
Mark Robinson ◽  
Andrew Pulford ◽  
Gerry McCartney
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Group Sex ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Social Security Benefits ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Welfare Reforms ◽  
Detrimental Impact

BackgroundLife expectancy (LE) improvements have stalled, and UK tax and welfare ‘reforms’ have been proposed as a cause. We estimated the effects of tax and welfare reforms from 2010/2011 to 2021/2022 on LE and inequalities in LE in Scotland.MethodsWe applied a published estimate of the cumulative income impact of the reforms to the households within Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) quintiles. We estimated the impact on LE by applying a rate ratio for the impact of income on mortality rates (by age group, sex and SIMD quintile) and calculating the difference between inflation-only changes in benefits and the reforms.ResultsWe estimated that changes to household income resulting from the reforms would result in an additional 1041 (+3.7%) female deaths and 1013 (+3.8%) male deaths. These deaths represent an estimated reduction of female LE from 81.6 years to 81.2 years (−20 weeks), and male LE from 77.6 years to 77.2 years (−23 weeks). Cuts to benefits and tax credits were modelled to have the most detrimental impact on LE, and these were estimated to be most severe in the most deprived areas. The modelled impact on inequalities in LE was widening of the gap between the most and least deprived 20% of areas by a further 21 weeks for females and 23 weeks for males.InterpretationThis study provides further evidence that austerity, in the form of cuts to social security benefits, is likely to be an important cause of stalled LE across the UK.

The UK and EMU: Choosing the Regime

2002 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 54-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell
Keyword(s):  
Euro Area ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
Fiscal Regimes ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Uk

The UK has to make a decision on membership of EMU in the next two years. The monetary and fiscal regimes in the Euro Area and in the UK do not differ greatly. However, we argue that membership of EMU will increase the stability of the economy and the credibility of the policy framework, and hence will enhance the prospects for growth and higher incomes and employment. There appear to be no major problems associated with joining EMU at around 1.50 euros to the pound, although there are risks to the UK if the euro appreciates against the dollar after we have entered. However, the costs associated with this risk have to be offset against the probability of the significant output gains that could come from EMU membership in the medium term.

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