Search results

1 – 10 of 914
Book part
Publication date: 25 February 2016

Daniele Checchi, Vito Peragine and Laura Serlenga

This paper studies the cross-country differences in conventional measures of inequality of opportunity in Europe in the space of individual disposable incomes. Exploiting two…

Abstract

This paper studies the cross-country differences in conventional measures of inequality of opportunity in Europe in the space of individual disposable incomes. Exploiting two recent waves of the EUSILC database reporting information on family background (2005 and 2011), we provide estimates of inequality of opportunity in about 30 European countries for two sufficiently distant data points, allowing a check of consistency for country rankings. In addition, we exploit two observations available for most of the countries to explore the relationship between many institutional dimensions and inequality of opportunity, finding evidence of negative correlation with educational expenditure (especially at the pre-primary level) and passive labour market policies.

Details

Inequality: Causes and Consequences
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-810-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 August 2016

Carlos Gradín

We investigate the reasons why income inequality is so high in Spain in the EU context. We first show that the differential in inequality with Germany and other countries is…

Abstract

We investigate the reasons why income inequality is so high in Spain in the EU context. We first show that the differential in inequality with Germany and other countries is driven by inequality among households who participate in the labor market. Then, we conduct an analysis of different household income aggregates. We also decompose the inter-country gap in inequality into characteristics and coefficients effects using regressions of the Recentered Influence Function for the Gini index. Our results show that the higher inequality observed in Spain is largely associated with lower employment rates, higher incidence of self-employment, lower attained education, as well as the recent increase in the immigration of economically active households. However, the prevalence of extended families in Spain contributes to reducing inequality by diversifying income sources, with retirement pensions playing an important role. Finally, by comparing the situations in 2008 and 2012, we separate the direct effects of the Great Recession on employment and unemployment benefits, from other more permanent factors (such as the weak redistributive effect of taxes and family or housing allowances, or the roles of education and the extended family).

Details

Income Inequality Around the World
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-943-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 November 2017

Jonathan Bradshaw and Oleksandr Movshuk

The secondary analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is used to examine inequality in the United Kingdom compared with other European…

Abstract

The secondary analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is used to examine inequality in the United Kingdom compared with other European Union (EU) countries and to analyse how inequality has changed over the period from the start of the great financial crisis in 2008–2015. The analysis compares inequality in market income, gross income and disposable incomes, and measured inequality using the Gini coefficient, 80/20 and 90/10 ratios. It includes an analysis of the impact of cash benefits and direct taxes on market income and how the composition of households in different parts of the income distribution has changed over time. In addition, inequality within the EU is explored. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what contribution the EU itself through its own institutions and policies plays in mitigating market inequalities. We find that the distribution of market income in the United Kingdom is comparatively unequal, but the UK’s relative position on disposable income is greatly improved, due to an effective system of direct taxes and transfers. The conclusions remain broadly similar for all the inequality indices that are considered. There is evidence that households with children have moved down the distribution between 2008 and 2014 and aged households have moved up the distribution in most EU countries including the United Kingdom. The chapter concludes that EU policies have relatively little impact on inequality and that inequalities can really only be tackled using national redistributive policies.

Book part
Publication date: 13 April 2011

Mathias Dolls, Clemens Fuest and Andreas Peichl

This chapter investigates to what extent the tax and transfer systems in Europe protect households at different income levels against losses in current income caused by economic…

Abstract

This chapter investigates to what extent the tax and transfer systems in Europe protect households at different income levels against losses in current income caused by economic downturns like the present financial crisis. We use a multi-country microsimulation model to analyse how shocks on market income and employment are mitigated by taxes and transfers. We find that the aggregate redistributive effect of the tax and transfer systems increases in response to the shocks. But the extent to which households are protected differs across income levels and countries. In particular, there is little stabilization of disposable income for low-income groups in Eastern and Southern European countries.

Details

Who Loses in the Downturn? Economic Crisis, Employment and Income Distribution
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-749-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2020

Orsetta Causa and Mikkel Hermansen

This paper produces a comprehensive assessment of income redistribution to the working-age population, covering OECD countries over the last two decades. Redistribution is…

Abstract

This paper produces a comprehensive assessment of income redistribution to the working-age population, covering OECD countries over the last two decades. Redistribution is quantified as the relative reduction in market income inequality achieved by personal income taxes (PIT), employees’ social security contributions, and cash transfers, based on household-level micro-data. A detailed decomposition analysis uncovers the respective roles of size, tax progressivity, and transfer targeting for overall redistribution, the respective role of various categories of transfers for transfer redistribution; as well as redistribution for various income groups. The paper shows a widespread decline in redistribution across the OECD, both on average and in the majority of countries for which data going back to the mid-1990s are available. This was primarily associated with a decline in cash transfer redistribution while PIT played a less important and more heterogeneous role across countries. In turn, the decline in the redistributive effect of cash transfers reflected a decline in their size and in particular by less redistributive insurance transfers. In some countries, this was mitigated by more redistributive assistance transfers but the resulting increase in the targeting of total transfers was not sufficient to prevent transfer redistribution from declining.

Details

Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-040-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 16 September 2019

Maurizio Bussolo, Carla Krolage, Mattia Makovec, Andreas Peichl, Marc Stöckli, Iván Torre and Christian Wittneben

European countries have the world’s most redistributive tax and transfer systems. While they have been well equipped to deal with vertical inequality – fostering redistribution…

Abstract

European countries have the world’s most redistributive tax and transfer systems. While they have been well equipped to deal with vertical inequality – fostering redistribution from the rich to the poor – less is known about their performance in dealing with horizontal inequality, that is, in redistributing across socioeconomic groups. In a context where individuals may not only care about vertical redistribution, but also about the economic situation of the specific groups they belong to, the horizontal dimension of redistribution becomes politically salient and can be a source of social tensions. The authors analyse the performance of the 28 EU countries for redistribution across (i) age groups; (ii) occupational groups; and (iii) household types over the period 2007–2014 using counterfactual simulation techniques. We find a significant degree of heterogeneity across countries: changes in the tax and transfer system have particularly hit the young and the losers of occupational change in Eastern European countries, while households with greater economic security have benefited from these changes. The findings of this study suggest that horizontal inequality is a dimension which policy-makers should take into account when reforming tax and transfer systems.

Book part
Publication date: 26 August 2015

Olga Cantó and David O. Ruiz

Recent evidence on the impact of the crisis on developed countries shows that changes in income inequality and poverty have been relatively small in spite of the macroeconomic…

Abstract

Recent evidence on the impact of the crisis on developed countries shows that changes in income inequality and poverty have been relatively small in spite of the macroeconomic heterogeneity of the recession across different economies. However, when evaluating individual perceptions linked to the crisis any changes in the chances to scale up or lose ground in the income ladder are also crucial. Our aim in this paper is to analyze to what extent the recession has had an impact on individual equivalent incomes and, in particular, on the prevalence of downward mobility in two developed countries where job losses have been large. We find that income losses have increased, particularly in Spain, and while age and education are key determinants of the probability of experiencing an income loss in both countries, the presence of children only increases the probability of an income loss in Spain.

Details

Measurement of Poverty, Deprivation, and Economic Mobility
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-386-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 August 2009

Vegard Johansen

The causes and variations of social and material welfare form a widespread theme. Classical sociology attended primarily to social class, whereas modern sociology looks at…

Abstract

The causes and variations of social and material welfare form a widespread theme. Classical sociology attended primarily to social class, whereas modern sociology looks at variables such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality and physical and mental ability. Generation or age is proposed as an additional variable to social and material inequalities. Statistical offices have divided income by age brackets and accounted for ‘age-related’ public spending for decades, but it is only relatively recently that generational variations have been theorized. Structure-oriented scholars within social studies of childhood have suggested comparing and confronting the condition of children vis-à-vis the condition of adults and the elderly.

Details

Structural, Historical, and Comparative Perspectives
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-732-1

Book part
Publication date: 26 August 2019

Kim Abildgren

Empirical studies on household-level inflation inequality have so far only focused on periods with positive inflation rates. However, the major concern on the policy agenda since…

Abstract

Empirical studies on household-level inflation inequality have so far only focused on periods with positive inflation rates. However, the major concern on the policy agenda since the most recent financial crisis has been deflation rather than inflation. This naturally raises the question regarding the effect of deflation on the distribution of real income when households spend their budget on different consumption bundles. This chapter compiles annual household-level inflation rates in Denmark from 1930 to 1935 based on microdata from the Expenditure and Saving Survey of 1931 and price data from the official Retail Price Index. The results indicate that lower-income households faced a larger decline in prices on their consumption of goods and services during the deflation years 1930–1932 than higher-income households did. The deflation thus contributed to narrowing the difference in real incomes between the top and bottom parts of the income distribution during the recession. In the years 1933–1935 with positive inflation rates, the lower-income households experienced higher inflation rates than higher-income households. Over the period 1930–1935 seen as a whole, the price development contributed slightly to reducing real income inequality. The low degree of medium-term persistence of differences in household-specific inflation rates is consistent with previous findings in various time periods from the 1960s to the 2000s without any persistent deflation events. The chapter at hand is the first empirical study of the direct distributional effects of price developments at the household level in a period with persistent deflation.

Book part
Publication date: 6 July 2007

Kristian Orsini and Amedeo Spadaro

Individual strategic weight plays an important role in the intra-household allocation of resources; however, empirical studies invariably find such weight difficult to define in a…

Abstract

Individual strategic weight plays an important role in the intra-household allocation of resources; however, empirical studies invariably find such weight difficult to define in a plausible and computable way, given the available data. This paper proposes a framework for the calculation of household members’ strategic weight that can be easily computed using a microsimulation model. The index proposed for each member as the share of resources the household would lose should he or she abandon it. The causes of strategic weight differentials are analysed in four EU countries with significantly different employment structure and tax-benefit systems (Finland, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom), using EUROMOD, an integrated EU-15 microsimulation model.

Details

Equity
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1450-8

1 – 10 of 914