The systems of direct taxes and cash benefits in the Member States of the European Union vary considerably in size and structure. We explore their direct impacts on cross-sectional income inequality (termed “redistributive effect” for the purpose of this paper) using EUROMOD, a tax-benefit...

Two weeks before the Euro was introduced into circulation as the common currency in twelve Member States (on 1 st January 2002) the European Union adopted a set of commonly agreed indicators for social inclusion. Among them are some income-based indicators, including poverty measures based on...

[Note:] This paper is an adapted version of the substantive part of the Final Report to the European Commission of the project 'Improving the Capacity and Usability of EUROMOD (I-CUE)', Research Infrastructures Design Study 011859.

Tax and benefit systems in the enlarged EU vary significantly in size and structure. We examine how taxes and benefits shape income distributions in 19 EU countries, focusing on the differences between Western European countries (EU15) and Eastern European countries (Estonia, Hungary, Poland,...

This paper reports an exercise to validate EUROMOD output for 1998 by comparing income statistics calculated from the baseline micro-output with comparable statistics from other sources, including the European Community Household Panel. The main potential reasons for discrepancies are...

This paper considers the effects on current pensioner incomes of reforms designed to improve the long-term sustainability of public pension systems in the European Union. We use EUROMOD to simulate a set of common illustrative reforms for four countries selected on the basis of their diverse...

Using evidence from the European Community Household Panel we find that family benefits vary in their importance to household incomes and in the prevention of child poverty across Europe. In one group of countries family benefits appear to have a significant effect on the protection of children...

In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under...

This paper describes a model to simulate expenditure and indirect taxes in 12 EU countries within the EUROMOD tax-benefit model. The paper outlines the types of indirect taxes in the countries examined. Validation checks are made on the effectiveness of the expenditure models used. The...

In empirical analysis, the Kakwani index is the most frequently used indicator for comparing progressivity across countries and over time. The Kakwani is often assumed to measure to what extent a policy design is targeted to the poor. It has, however, a major drawback: it is not defined for net...