Today sees the publication of a report of findings from research undertaken by a team at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research and the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The project considered the impact of changes in the structure of employment and pay on income inequality and poverty. It combined employment projections with a tax and benefit model to simulate the distribution of household income, poverty and inequality.

The research found that changes in the labour market, combined with changes to the tax and benefit system, over the next decade are likely to increase relative poverty rates across the UK. It also found that changes that might be expected to lead to lower poverty, such as reducing the gender pay gap or rebalancing regional growth, are (by themselves) unlikely to do so.

The full report is available on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website.

IER's Anne Green has been announced as a member of the Lead Expert Group of the Foresight Project on the Future of Manufacturing.

The project calls on industry and academic expertise from the UK and abroad to explore how the UK can maximise key opportunities and mitigate risks. In doing so, it will provide a robust evidence base to help ensure that policy decisions taken today are resilient in an uncertain future.

The Lead Expert Group of eminent academic and private sector experts from a range of disciplines works alongside the Foresight team. The project’s fresh thinking, innovative evidence base and futures analysis will help inform policy makers.

Details of the project are available on the Future of Manufacturing website.

IER's Bernard Casey gave a presentation at the conference "The Cyprus Economy at a Time of European Uncertainty: Managing Reform and Sustainability", organised by the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and held at LSE on 10-2-12. His talk on "The Fiscal Implications of Demographic Change" gave an overview of the challenges of addressing pension and care provision for Cyprus's ageing population. Other presenters at the event included the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of the Republic of Cyprus, Prof. Chris Pissarides, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics, the head of sovereign debt rating for Europe, Middle East and Africa from Standard & Poor's, experts from the World Bank and the European Commission and academics from the University of Cyprus.

The final evaluation of the City Strategy initiative written by Professor Anne Green and Duncan Adam has been published. The initiative was designed at a time of national economic growth to combat enduring pockets of entrenched worklessness and poverty in urban areas by empowering local institutions to come together in partnerships to develop locally sensitive solutions. In general, City Strategy partnerships were successful in identifying gaps in existing service provision. They also had some successes in aligning funding sources so as to reduce duplication and achieve a more coherent services offer. There is a great deal of positive evidence for process changes made by the partnerships which have been positive for supporting workless individuals. There are numerous micro level individual and project success stories and outcomes all evidenced in this evaluation.

Green, A.E. and Adam, D. (2011). City Strategy: Final Evaluation, DWP Research Report No. 783. Department for Work and Pensions.

Professor Rob Wilson is organising a 1 day International Symposium on Employment and Skills Forecasting to be held at the University of Warwick on 29 September 2011. Participants at the Symposium will be actively involved in skills/employment forecasting in their respective countries.

The event will focus on an international comparison of approaches to labour market assessment and skills forecasting, with inputs from those with hands-on experience, and who can speak authoritatively (and critically) about the strengths and weakness of the various approaches adopted across the world, and the lessons they have learned over the past 20 years.

Attendance at the Symposium is by invitation only. For further information, please contact Rob Wilson (r.a.wilson@warwick.ac.uk)