Stirling economists developing UK Government tax and benefits datasets to support public good research
The datasets will give researchers and policymakers unprecedented insights into employment, benefits and economic wellbeing.
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Economists at the University of Stirling are helping to develop major new UK datasets that will give researchers and policymakers unprecedented insights into employment, benefits and economic wellbeing.
The £2 million project – part of the Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) programme – will see Dr Carl Singleton and Dr Rachel Scarfe, of University of Stirling Business School, develop UK labour market and tax datasets to support research that delivers public benefit.
The Stirling team – which will receive £240,000 in funding through the project – will lead on a strand of work focused on RAPID – a large and complex dataset that at its core contains the population’s anonymised benefits and income tax records, built and used by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The team’s goal is to help the DWP ensure that the dataset can be used in a secure and responsible way to produce world-class research, and in doing so support the UK Government’s longer-term objectives to create good jobs and grow the economy.
Longstanding gap
The team will seek to understand the implications of the dataset – its uses, limitations and possibilities; communicate these to researchers and the wider community; work with the DWP and Office for National Statistics (ONS) to further develop the dataset and maximise its public value; and work with partners to help them use the dataset in their research programmes and policy evaluations.
Dr Singleton and Dr Scarfe will also support the wider team, led by Stirling alumnus Professor Felix Ritchie, of the University of the West of England, on the development of a new tax dataset, LEED (Linked employer-employee data based on tax records), and on a supporting programme of public engagement to ensure support for the project is widespread, well-founded and robust.
The project aims to address a longstanding gap in UK economic and sociological research by making secure, anonymised population-level data more accessible to researchers, helping improve evidence for policy and public services.
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Senior Lecturer in Economics
These datasets have the potential to transform economic and social sciences research in the UK. By bringing together information on the population’s benefits, tax and employment in a secure and responsible way, researchers will be able to answer important questions about people's experiences and journeys in the labour market and out of it.
Dr Singleton, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Stirling Business School, said: “These datasets have the potential to transform economic and social sciences research in the UK. By bringing together information on the population’s benefits, tax and employment in a secure and responsible way, researchers will be able to answer important questions about people's experiences and journeys in the labour market and out of it, and identify what policies make the greatest positive difference for society. We look forward to working with partners across the UK to maximise the public value of this work.”
The UK has been relatively slow to generate whole-population economic datasets from administrative data. ADR UK, the DWP and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are working to address this – by delivering a step change in the availability of anonymised, population-level personal data for economic research.
Transforming economic research
RAPID and LEED, alongside the supporting public engagement activity, have the potential to transform economic research and establish the UK as a global leader in the field. By March 2031, the ambition is to have a new integrated range of data sources covering economic activity of the whole population, made usable by extensive training and support materials, with clear public support and an engagement plan covering all user groups, not only academic researchers.
The five-year project is due to begin in October 2026, and the core team comprises the University of the West of England, University of Stirling, City University, UCL, and University of Birmingham. Commissioning partners are the UK Government, HMRC, DWP and ONS, while other partners include the University of Bristol, King's College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence.
UN Sustainable development goals
The University of Stirling is ranked among the top 200 institutions in the world for its contribution to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The research or activity detailed above relates to the following SDGs.
