I propose a method to decompose changes in income inequality into the contributions of policy changes, wage rate changes, and population changes while considering labor supply reactions. Using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I apply this method to decompose the increase in income...

This paper empirically investigates the impacts of Peru's Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme JUNTOS upon educational outcomes of beneficiary children. The findings associate Juntos participation with higher overall enrolment rates and grades of schooling for children aged 12 to 18 years....

We analyze empirically the optimal design of social insurance and assistance programs when families obtain insurance by making labor supply choices for both spouses. For this purpose, we specify a structural life-cycle model of the labor supply and savings decisions of singles and married...

We empirically investigate the distributional consequences of the Riester scheme, the main private pension subsidization program in Germany. We find that 38% of the aggregate subsidy accrues to the top two deciles of the population, but only 7.3% to the bottom two. Nonetheless the Riester scheme...

We study three budget-neutral reforms of the German tax and transfer system designed to improve work incentives for people with low incomes: a feasible flat tax reform that provides a basic income which is equal to the current level of the means tested unemployment benefit, and two alternative...

In 2001 the German government started to promote the development of private pensions by means of special saving subsidies and tax incentives (Riester-scheme). That policy especially targets households with relatively low incomes. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we scrutinize the...

We study inter-temporal changes in poverty for Germany from year 1978 to 2003, and we employ the bootstrap method to test for statistical significance of results. All results are decomposed by household type and region. Poverty estimates are particularly high for single parents. Most striking,...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Deploying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we analyze the variability of individual earnings and equivalent household income. Permanent and transitory variances of male income over the period 1984-2008 are estimated for Old German Laender in order to determine their importance...

We analyze the labor supply and income effects of a needs-based minimum benefit system ('Bedarfsorientierte Mindestsicherung') to be introduced in Austria by the end of this/beginning of next year. The aim of this reform is to reduce poverty as well as increasing employment rates of recipients...