China enacted a rural tax reform – the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR) – in the late 1990s. A crucial but unanswered question is whether this reform improved farmers' welfare in rural areas. This paper uses village-level survey data from the Chinese Household Income Project in order to...

In the late 1990s, China enacted a rural tax reform known as the "Tax-for-Fee Reform" (TFR), largely driven by a desire to address farmers' complaints about their perception of a heavy and regressive tax burden. This paper examines the impact of the TFR on inequality in rural villages in China....

Rising inequality and widespread poverty, social unrest and polarization, gender and ethnic disparities, declining social mobility, economic fragility, unbalanced growth due to technology and globalization, and existential danger from climate change are urgent global concerns of our day. These...

Between 2003 and 2009, Argentina’s social spending as a share of GDP increased by 7.6 percentage points. Marginal benefit incidence analysis for 2003, 2006, and 2009 suggests that the contribution of cash transfers to the reduction of disposable income inequality and poverty rose markedly...

We perform the first comprehensive fiscal incidence analyses in Brazil and the US, including direct cash and food transfers, targeted housing and heating subsidies, public spending on education and health, and personal income, payroll, corporate income, property, and expenditure taxes. In both...

We apply a standard tax and benefit incidence analysis to estimate the impact on inequality and poverty of direct taxes, indirect taxes and subsidies, and social spending (cash and food transfers and in-kind transfers in education and health). The extent of inequality reduction induced by direct...

How much redistribution and poverty reduction is being accomplished in Latin America through social spending, subsidies, and taxes? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay using a comparable methodology yields the following results....

Between 2003 and 2009, Argentina's social spending as a share of GDP increased by 7.6 percentage points. Marginal benefit incidence analysis for 2003, 2006, and 2009 suggests that the contribution of cash transfers to the reduction of disposable income inequality and poverty rose markedly...

How much redistribution and poverty reduction is being accomplished in Latin America through social spending and taxes? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay yield the following results. Direct taxes and cash transfers reduce...