This research report by Dr Rita Griffiths and Dr Marsha Wood explores how the system of monthly assessment in Universal Credit – used for assessing entitlement, recovering debts and calculating payment – is affecting income security and financial well-being in working households. The research tracked month-to-month changes in earnings and household income, in real time, between 2022 and 2023, among 61 Universal Credit (UC) claimants in 42 working households with one or two earners in paid work or self-employment. A key focus was the system of monthly assessment, in particular the monthly means test, in which the UC payment is automatically adjusted upwards or downwards based on reported changes in a household’s income in the previous month.

The research was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

The report is accompanied by a policy brief: Working claimants navigating the ups and downs of monthly assessments in Universal Credit

This report, by Dr Andrew Weyman, Richard Glendinning, Rachel O’Hara, Dr Joanne Coster and Dr Deborah Roy, details findings from a tracking survey of NHS employee perspectives on influences on staff retention, conducted over four waves between winter 2020 and spring 2023. 

Core themes addressed were: reasons why staff stay/leave; what’s got better/worse; staff worries and concerns; confidence in the future; future work/retirement aspirations; non-NHS job seeking behaviour; strength of attachment to the NHS; and what needs to change.

Findings highlight the centrality of staffing levels relative to the demand for care as the biggest single challenge to staff resilience and retention. While the previously upward trend of staff applying for non-NHS jobs indicates some stabilisation, the all-staff rate remains at 1:7 (as high as 1:4 for some professions). Reports symptoms of burnout show rising trend and confidence in the future an increasingly negative profile. A striking finding is a 24 point drop (61% to 37%) in the proportion of staff who ‘would recommend working for the NHS to others’ between winter 2020/21 and spring 2023.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a core point of reference for university researchers. This paper, authored by Professor Graham Room, poses five questions:

• What responsibility does the researcher have for the transformations of society that follow from their research?
• How far can researchers anticipate the range of these future transformations?
• What does it entail, to engage with the wider public over these futures?
• Is RRI a responsibility for the individual researcher or necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavour?
• What are the strategic implications for universities in relation to the wider society?

Proposals for Universal Basic Income (UBI) have risen in political salience in the last decade but the policy has yet to be introduced by any national government. Governments and NGOs have designed field experiments to test the impact of policies that share many features with a UBI and researchers have produced many microsimulation studies showing that a UBI can reduce poverty with only moderate increases in taxes.

In this paper, authors Dr Joe Chrisp, Professor Nick Pearce and Professor Matteo Richiardi draw on research that suggests political actors that support UBI tend to propose incremental reforms or ‘steps’ towards a UBI as well as indicating their long-term goal. They do a microsimulation analysis of nine proposed incremental reforms in the UK that would make the social security system for working-age adults more universal, unconditional and generous. However, they do so by maintaining the existing household based Universal Credit system. They analyse the cost and distributional consequences of these reforms and briefly discuss the consequences for marginal effective tax rates.

What explains the steep rise in household debt across OECD countries and how does this vary across country? To what extent do trends in the labour share, gross disposable income and consumption map onto these changes in household debt?

This report, authored by Dr Joe Chrisp, reviews existing literature on the nature and dynamics of household debt and analyses trends in the types of debt acquired across countries. The role of the housing market in driving the acquisition of household debt is critical but this does not preclude its role in shaping incomes and consumption. The report ends on a brief discussion of alternative ways to stimulate aggregate demand in place of a reliance on housing and household debt.

Ambient air pollution is a major public health concern. It has prompted novel policy interventions, in the UK and beyond, notably in the form of Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) schemes. This policy brief explores the impact of these schemes on physical health and mental well-being, using large survey and administrative data covering the whole of England.

It finds that these policy interventions have significantly reduced levels of key pollutants, leading to improvements in physical health and mental well-being, and a reduction of hospitalisations for respiratory problems. This effect has been particularly strong for the Central London ULEZ scheme, the strictest of the clean air policies, but we also see positive health impacts over Greater London where the LEZ scheme has been implemented since 2008.

Our evidence suggests that these schemes offer good value for money, with a cost-benefit analysis indicating savings of more than £963 million in Greater London.