Research projects

In 2010 the UK coalition Government committed itself to an active policy of fiscal consolidation designed to ‘eliminate’ the structural deficit by the end of the current parliament (HM Budget, March 2011). As part of their consolidation plans the Government announced its intention to promote a rebalancing of the UK economy, away from public sector…

The UK gender Pay gap 1998-2013: What is the role of the public sector? The Quarterly Labour Force Survey was used to compare gender wage gap in the public and private sectors between 1998 and 2013 and to identify the contribution of the sectoral employment allocation to the overall gender pay gap. The study covered…

Pay determination and outcomes in the public sector Data from the Labour Force Survey was used to investigate public sector wage differential in the UK 1994 to 2012. In the first of a set of analyses, three separate sub-periods are considered in detail, each characterise broadly different government policy stances towards the public sector and different…

Pay and Job Quality: Is the Grass Greener in the Public Sector? The unadjusted public-private sector pay differential has attracted considerable political interest since the coalition government came to power in the UK in 2010. It has been used to justify changes to pay setting arrangements and the imposition of pay restraint on the public sector. However, previous analyses have…

The National Equality Panel’s report An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK provided a milestone in our understanding of relationships between people’s characteristics and their financial position. Through detailed analysis of complex datasets, some newly available, it charted in depth how ‘inequalities in people’s economic outcomes – such as earnings, income and wealth – are related…