Resolution Foundation Podcasts

Book launch for Exile Economics: What happens if globalisation fails by Ben Chu

Where are the Government’s welfare reforms heading?

Which areas of public investment should be prioritised at the Spending Review?

What are the labour market experiences of foreign-born workers? How do systemic issues allow poor practices to persist? What are the wider implications for the UK labour market? And how can policy – including the measures in the upcoming Employment Rights Bill – better protect workers?

Our homes are now the second biggest contributor the UK’s carbon footprint, and efforts to address this rely on the widespread replacement of gas boilers with electric heat pumps. But the rollout of heat pumps is slow and behind schedule, despite generous grants on offer, and particularly so among low-to-middle income families and those living in urban areas. Home heating is one of the most visible parts of the net zero transition to households, and a policy shift is required to get more fitted into homes and ensure that all families ultimately benefit via lower energy bills. But these shifts are neither free, nor straightforward.

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 after that. These services are vital for families – providing ‘in kind’ benefits which provide a huge boost to the living standards of lower-income households. So future provision will make a difference to the outlook for living standards.

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 recession territory, might this year be different? It is amidst this uncertainty and challenging backdrop that the Government will need set out a longer-term plan for the minimum wage.

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 performance feed through into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s new economic and fiscal outlook, and how it will affect the amount of headroom the Chancellor has? What policies may be required – on tax, welfare and public service spending – to hit the fiscal rules? And how do these policies sit in the wider context of the UK needing to defend itself and its allies, grow its economy, and boost living standards throughout the country?

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 on how to change it. The Government will need to break that stalemate in its upcoming Green Paper.

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 talking about pay, the scale of earnings volatility across the country is unknown.

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 the late-1990s – a new approach will be needed to lift children out of poverty over the next decade. What reduced child poverty in the late-1990s and 2000s, and to what extent can that approach be repeated today? What is the role of work, housing, and social security in lifting families above the poverty line? How much might it cost to deliver a successful child poverty strategy? And what are the costs of not doing so?

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 their budgets on keeping a roof over their heads compared to White British households, the puzzle of why they are paying more for their housing remains unsolved. How much of the housing affordability gap can be explained by age, tenure and location? How do housing conditions differ between ethnic minority groups? How do these inequalities feed into the country’s wider housing crisis? And what can policy do to ensure the most disadvantaged groups benefit from improvements to Britain’s housing stock?  Speakers: Florence Eshalomi MP, Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee Kwajo Tweneboa, S

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 their living standards. For policy makers, a deteriorating economic outlook may need to be confronted too – either through a changed path for interest rates, or tough choices on tax and spend.    Speakers: Katharine Neiss, Deputy Head of Global Economics at PGIM Fixed Income Mohamed El-Erian, President of Queens’ College, Cambridge University James Smith, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation Ruth Curtice, Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation (Chair)    

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 Foundation and the King’s Policy Institute are hosting an in-person and interactive event to discuss the controversial question of the returns from university for graduates, firms and the wider economy, and how we can better assess the long-lasting benefits of higher education. Following a presentation from Lord Willetts, we will hear from leading experts including the Rt Hon Baroness Jacqui Smith, the minister responsible for universities in the Department for Education. Chaired by Professor Bobby Duffy. 

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 financial constraints. The living standards outlook is no less challenging. If 2024 was the year of the election, then 2025 looks set to be the year of the post-election squeeze, as real earnings growth falls while taxes go up. The new economic milestone of raising living standards across the UK may feel some way off.

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 – supported by JPMorganChase – examines low-to-middle income families’ experiences of employment, pay and job quality. What constraints do low-to-middle income families face when it comes to raising employment? Which industries do they work in, and how does this impact on their pay and hours security? Which aspects of work are important to them, and what do they consider when making employment decisions? What barriers do they face to job mobility?

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 Government sets out fresh long-term thinking on how it can support British industries, what should inform a new Industrial Strategy for the decisive decade ahead? How should industrial strategy balance a front-footed focus on leveraging the strengths of many of its services sectors, with a more defensive approach to protecting vulnerable industries, like advance manufacturing? To what extent should place feature in a national strategy, and should any of that strategy be devolved to City-regions and local areas? Where does policy help or hinder firms’ expansion? And how much difference can a new Industrial Strategy make