We present an empirical assessment of the accessibility and levels of 'safety-net' benefits. Complementing existing studies, which often adopt an institutional focus or compare legal entitlement rules, it employs a people-centred perspective, using data on cash support that people receive in...

Means-tested Social Assistance (SA) benefits play an important role as social protection floors supporting households in financial difficulties. This paper presents evidence on the patterns of SA benefit receipt in a selection of OECD and EU countries. It provides an overview of the role of SA...

This paper estimates the welfare and distributional impact of two types of welfare reform in the 15 (pre-enlargement) member countries of the European Union. The reforms are revenue neutral and financed by an overall and uniform increase in marginal tax rates on earnings. The first reform...

For a number of reasons, incomes vary strongly with age. The nature of this variation is of interest for a wide range of policy purposes. Since age structures differ across countries, knowledge about the incomes earned by different age groups is also necessary for understanding and interpreting...

Finding a suitable balance of work and family life is not an easy task for parents who face multiple, and potentially conflicting, demands. Childcare policies play a crucial role in helping parents reconcile care and employment-related tasks. But inconsistent or poorly implemented policies can...

<OL><LI>The OECD regularly produces estimates of tax burdens and benefit entitlements for a range of “typical household” situations. The results of these calculations (published in the <I>Benefits and Wages</I> and <I>Taxing Wages</I> series) are frequently used to compare countries’ tax-benefit systems and to...</i></i></li></ol>

<OL><LI>This paper presents results from an on-going joint European Commission / OECD project, aimed at monitoring the direct influence of tax and benefit instruments on household incomes. The project uses and extends OECD tax-benefit models to compute a range of work incentive indicators such as...</li></ol>

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation where the tax rate on one person depends...

<OL><LI>Macro-based effective tax rate (ETR) measures do not provide information on the level or distribution of marginal effective tax rates thought to influence household behaviour. They also do not capture differences in average ETRs facing different population sub-groups. I use EUROMOD, an EUwide...</li></ol>

The twin problem of in-work poverty and persistent labour market difficulties of low-skilled individuals has been one of the most important drivers of tax-benefit policy reforms in OECD countries in recent years. Employment-conditional cash transfers to individuals facing particular...