February 2026

UK Treasury offers £100k exit packages amid job cuts

Chancellor Rachel Reeves plans to cut roughly 300 roles from her department by 2030, the Financial Times reported on Monday (2 February). The UK Treasury is reportedly offering officials in the finance ministry up to £100,000 to leave voluntarily amid a wider push to trim administrative spending across Whitehall by 16%. The finance ministry, which employs about 2,100 staff, has already imposed a freeze on external recruitment for many non-essential roles, according to the Financial Times. The voluntary exit packages are calculated as three weeks’ salary for...

May 2023

The Effects of Non-Contributory Pensions on Material and Subjective Well Being

By Rosangela Bando, Sebastian Galiani & Paul Gertler Public expenditures on non-contributory pensions are equivalent to at least 1 percent of GDP in several countries in Latin America and is expected to increase. We explore the effect of non-contributory pensions on the well-being of the beneficiary population by studying the Pension 65 program in Peru, which uses a poverty eligibility threshold. We find that the program reduced the average score of beneficiaries on the Geriatric Depression Scale by nine percent...