Assessing the quality of microsimulation models is an important contributing factor for motivating their use in both academic and policy environments. This is particularly relevant for EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union, because it is intended to be widely...

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

The new Labour Government in Britain has made the reduction of childpoverty one of its central objectives. This paper describes the specificinitiatives involved in Labour’s approach and weighs them up in termsof their potential impact. After setting out the extent of the problem ofchild...

The paper analyses changes in poverty in Britain since 1997. A povertylevel of 60 percent of median equivalised income is used. The first partexamines the changes that occurred between 1996/7 and 2000/1 asshown by the Family Resources Survey, on which government estimatesof Households Below...

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of fiscal policy on the economic resources available to children, and on the child poverty rate. A static microsimulation model specifically designed for the purposes of comparative fiscal analysis in the European Union, EUROMOD, is used to...

This paper quantifies the economic well-being of different age groups and the extent of their reliance on incomes from public and private sources. The aim is to establish how social benefits, and the taxes needed to finance them, affect income levels and disparities across different age groups....

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...

International comparisons of inequality based on measures of disposable income may not be valid if the size and incidence of publicly-provided in kind benefits differ across the countries considered. The benefits that are financed by taxation in one country may need to be purchased out of...

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...