"The importance of distributional issues in policymaking creates a need for empirical tools to assess the social impact of economic shocks and policies. This paper reviews some of the modeling approaches that are currently in use at the World Bank and other international financial institutions....

The analysis of the distributional impact of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, particularly on th e poor and vulnerable, has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries. In recent years...

The transition from a wholly public, pay-as-you go pension system to one where pensions are also provided by individual, privately managed pension accounts does not directly affect those receiving pensions at the time of the reform. Nevertheless, it could affect all current and future workers. A...

There is a widespread perception that public pension systems in richer countries are in crisis. As schemes mature and the population ages, the burden of financing pensions has grown and, on current policies, will rise much further. Developing countries are younger and pension systems relatively...

Today's pension policies can affect retirement incomes and the public finances for decades to come. Retirement income systems that are affordable today, will often prove unsustainable in the future, given the twin pressures of demographic aging and the maturing of pension schemes. The World...

This report assesses the impact of fiscal policy, both revenue and expenditure, on inequality and poverty in the Dominican Republic. On the revenue side, the analysis focuses on the personal income tax, the value added tax (tax on the transfer of industrialized goods and services, known as ITBIS...