The government’s benefits cuts mean that families are finding it even harder to make ends meet

Rising inflation and the freezing and cutting of benefits for those in work mean that households are more squeezed than they were only a year ago – in fact wages need to have risen by 24 per cent for a family to reach the same standard of living as in 2010. Chris Goulden writes that this pressure on family budgets is likely to continue, and may even get worse

Minimum wage plus in-work benefits are still not necessarily enough for a minimum standard of living

Chris Goulden reviews recent JRF research into minumum income standards, finding that a necessary but not sufficient condition for a minimum standard of living is to be in work, but earnings on the National Minimum Wage combined with in-work benefits are not necessarily enough

“We would never try to have impact for impact’s sake alone”: the inside view on think tanks and academic research

Following recent debate around whether think tanks are approaching their use-by dates, Chris Goulden outlines an alternative model of engagement with academics undertaken by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Chris argues that being consistent and protecting the quality, independence and relevance of research that is funded is paramount

What Smart Campuses Can Teach Us about Smart Cities: User Experiences and Open Data

Universities, like cities, have embraced novel technologies and data-based solutions to improve their campuses with ‘smart’ becoming a welcomed concept. Campuses in many ways are small-scale cities. They increasingly seek to address similar challenges and to deliver improved experiences to their users. How can data be used in making this vision a reality? What can we learn from smart campuses that can be scaled up to smart cities? A short research study was conducted over a three-month period at a public university in the United Kingdom, employing stakeholder interviews and user surveys, which aimed to gain insight into these questions. Based on the study, the authors suggest that making data publicly available could bring many benefits to different groups of stakeholders and campus users. These benefits come with risks and challenges, such as data privacy and protection and infrastructure hurdles. However, if these challenges can be overcome, then open data could contribute significantly to improving campuses and user experiences, and potentially set an example for smart cities

The IFS Green Budget

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. It is well known that children growing up in poor families leave school with considerably lower qualifications than children from better off backgrounds. Using a simple decomposition analysis, we show that around two thirds of the socio-economic gap in attainment at age 16 can be accounted for by long-run family background characteristics and prior ability, suggesting that circumstances and investments made considerably earlier in the child's life explain the majority of the gap in test scores between young people from rich and poor families. However, we also find that differences in the attitudes and behaviours of young people and their parents during the teenage years play a key role in explaining the rich-poor gap in GCSE attainment: together, they explain a further quarter of the gap at age 16, and the majority of the small increase in this gap between ages 11 and 16. On this basis, our results suggest that while the most effective policies in terms of raising the attainment of young people from poor families are likely to be those enacted before children reach secondary school, policies that aim to reduce differences in attitudes and behaviours between the poorest children and those from better-off backgrounds during the teenage years may also make a significant contribution towards lowering the gap in achievement between young people from the richest and poorest families at age 16. JEL codes: I20, I32 Terms of use: Documents i

Prevalence of drug use Key findings of the 2001/2002 British Crime Survey

Includes bibliographical referencesSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:3927. 73415(182) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo