Resolution Foundation Event Recordings

Despite the cuts announced in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, spending on public services is set to be on average £43 billion higher over the years of the upcoming Spending Review, compared with what was set out by the previous Government at the 2024 Spring Budget. But with much of this extra spending front-loaded to this year and next, questions remain about funding pressures in the years afte...

What is driving the US’ impressive productivity outperformance? How does it differ from the UK, and what lessons can be drawn? And what can firms and policy makers do to reverse the UK’s productivity woes, and prevent another decade of economic stagnation in Britain?

Book launch for The Measure of Progress by Diane Coyle.

The minimum wage has been a huge success story since its introduction in 1999 – but 2025 might be its trickiest year yet. The combination of increases to employer National Insurance and a bigger-than-expected 6.7 per cent rise in the National Living Wage has left businesses warning of jobs cuts and hiring freezes. Previous such warnings haven’t materialised, but with the jobs market already in rec...

How has the economic outlook changed since last Autumn? What are the impacts of any tax and spend decisions the Chancellor has made to meet her fiscal rules? How might they affect households across the income distribution? And what does the latest outlook, and the Chancellor’s response, tell us about Britain’s quest for stronger growth and rising living standards?

In her Budget last Autumn, the Chancellor set out plans to boost public spending and investment by £300 billion, alongside the largest tax increases in over 30 years. She also announced new, binding fiscal rules and left herself £10 billion of headroom against meeting them. But the UK economy – and the world – has changed in the past five months…   To what extent will the UK’s poor recent economic...

Britain is becoming sicker, with a sustained increase in levels of ill-health and disability. This creates financial challenges for families, and a fiscal challenge for the Government, with spending on incapacity and disability benefits forecast to rise from £40 billion today to £60 billion by the end of the Parliament. Everyone agrees that the current system is not working. But no-one can agree o...

Most people are used to receiving regular monthly pay cheques, hopefully with the occasional bonus and an annual rise. But while this is often taken for granted, for other workers the size and timing of their pay cheques are far more volatile – with knock on effects on their ability to pay bills, save, plan ahead and smooth their living standards over time. But with Brits notoriously adverse to ta...

The new Government is currently preparing a child poverty strategy, and hoping to emulate the success of the last Labour government, which lifted over half a million children out of poverty over its first five years. This ambition is needed too, because unless action is taken, poverty rates are expected to rise over the course of the parliament. But Britain in the mid-2020s is very different to th...

In recent decades the UK has become an increasingly diverse country. And yet, persistent and significant ethnic inequalities remain. While the jobs and pay gaps experienced by those from an ethnic minority are becoming better understood, the key living standards question of housing affordability is still under-discussed. With even higher-income ethnic minority groups spending a greater share of th...

How worrying data and market unrest could affect Britain’s economic outlook.   Government debt markets across the world are having a jittery start to 2025, and the UK is one of the most affected economies with gilt yields volatile amid concerns about stagflation, though they have started to fall back in recent weeks. While these movements pass most people by, they can have a material impact on the...

Doubts about the financial returns from gaining a degree and concerns about too many people now going to university persist in the debate about the future of UK higher education. But in a new paper published by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, Resolution Foundation President and former universities minister David Willetts challenges this pessimistic outlook.  The Resolution Foundatio...

2025 is shaping up to be a big year in UK politics, as the Government’s ambitions set out across various White Papers start to be turned into deliverable action on the ground. The Spending Review could also set the tone for the rest of the Parliament, as the Chancellor sets out how to invest £100 billion wisely, and Ministers show how they intend to improve public services in the face of severe fi...

Rising employment has been one of the biggest economic changes for lower income families over the past quarter century, with the number of workless households falling by a third since 1996. But while more people from poorer households are entering the workforce, they are not necessarily getting on in their careers or enjoying the work they do. This second report of the Unsung Britian project – sup...

How should the Government set its new Industrial Strategy?   The Government is gunning for growth, and a new Industrial Strategy lies at the heart of this agenda. But while an Industrial Strategy is supposed to set long-term policy thinking, it also comes to the fore in acute political crises, as Ministers have already found with threatened closures to steel plants and car factories. As the new Go...

British firms are still adjusting to the Brexit shock that has affected UK firms’ ability to trade with our biggest trading partner bloc. Now a new shock is looming from the country we trade most with via threats of universal tariffs from the President-Elect Donald Trump. But the impact of these huge trade shocks will differ across different sectors, and across importing and exporting firms. Under...

British household wealth has been on a rollercoaster ride in recent years. Increased saving during the Covid-19 pandemic boosted wealth, only for interest rate rises during the cost-of-living crisis to wipe out wealth gains. Since the late 1970s overall measures of wealth inequality have been relatively stable. But this hides big changes in wealth gaps both within generations, and between them. An...

Transfers between generations – from care given to younger or older relatives, to gifts, inheritances and a roof over one’s head – play a vital role in society. But despite their importance to family living standards, they are often misunderstood. If we’re to better appreciate how modern Britain operates, we need to understand the economic significance of these intergenerational transfers, and wha...

There are around 13 million low-to-middle income families across Britain today. This diverse group of families are at the heart of the country’s economic prospects, and any government’s political mandate. And yet they are poorly understood – who they are, how their lives have changed, and the stresses and strains they are under. In order to better understand low-to-middle income Britain, the Resol...

The first Budget of the new Parliament is a particularly important one, giving the Chancellor a unique opportunity to set the economic framing for the next five years. It’s also often a chance to take painful decisions – post-election tax rises are a time-honoured tradition.  The Resolution Foundation hosted its traditional ‘morning after the night before’ event to debate and answer questions abou...

The next big hurdle on Britain’s path towards a green economy is decarbonising every-day travel. Emissions from getting around – from cars, vans, buses, trains and planes – make up the greatest share of the country’s carbon footprint, and have hardly shrunk in the past decade. So, if we want to go green, we need to overhaul the ways in which families get from A to B. Moving from polluting petrol t...

Painful post-election Budgets are a time-honoured tradition in Britain, and the new Government’s upcoming fiscal event will be no exception, with the PM and Chancellor already warning of tough decisions being made. Expectations are being set for higher taxes, higher borrowing or lower spending – or perhaps a combination of all three. What tax and spend decisions might the Chancellor consider in or...

One of the key goals of the Pensions Commission, published almost two decades ago, was to reform pension saving so that more people were encouraged to save enough for a decent income in retirement. The main policy recommendation of the Commission – auto-enrolment – has been rolled out and ramped up since then, and in doing so has completely transformed the savings landscape across Britain. But is...

Britain has left the EU almost five years ago, and the economic damage – particularly when it comes to trade – is now clear. The new Government has put resetting UK-EU relations at the heart of its growth mission. But the concrete actions announced so far are unlikely to make much difference. A far more ambitious approach to rebooting our trading relations will be needed to really shift the econom...

The UK has made progress in addressing societal inequalities, but continues to be shaped by interlinked structural disparities. That includes those related to gender, race, class, sexuality, age and disability. Five years ago, the Resolution Foundation and UCL collaborated on a commission exploring the interactions between these inequalities. Since then, the UK has gone through significant challen...