This paper presents findings on the changing effectiveness of cash transfers and income taxes on inequality and poverty reduction in four EU countries - the UK, Italy, Sweden and France. We use long time series (spanning four decades) to examine trends within countries over time and between...

The purpose of this paper is to propose theoretical foundations on the impact of transfer scheme, e.g. Community Agricultural Policy, on income inequality within European Countries. First, we show that ex-post inequality (in the after-transfer distribution) may increase if either initial...

This paper examines the distributional impacts of the changes to benefits, tax credits, pensions and direct taxes between the UK Elections in May 2010 and in May 2015. It also looks ahead to the longer-term effects of changes and plans that were announced by the 2010-2015 Coalition government,...

It is not straightforward to define the ethics of responsibility in cases where the consequences of changes in factors within our control are partly determined by factors beyond our control. In this paper, we suggest that one plausible view is to keep us responsible for the parts of the...

The Russian tax-benefit system consists of numerous types of support available to a large circle of beneficiaries; they are regulated by a number of legislative acts that focus on certain types of assistance rather than on vulnerable groups. In addition, the decentralization reform of social...

The poverty reduction potential of national social assistance programs in eight Central and Eastern European countries is examined using data from the EU-SILC. Results indicate that social assistance programs are a marginal component of the social protection system throughout the region. They...

This study analysed the contribution of economic growth and redistribution components to aggregate poverty changes in Ireland from 1987-2005, using the Shapley value decomposition approach. The analysis used the household disposable income data from the Household Budget Survey to calculate...

This paper uses the tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD to assess how three types of tax reform would affect the state budget and the income distribution in the Netherlands. After briefly introducing the Dutch tax system and the case for and against these reforms, we investigate the...

Using the 2004 income survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office we consider the targeting of two types of unemployment-related benefits: a) unemployment insurance and re-training benefits and b) the unemloyment assistance (UA). The evidence suggests that unemployment-related benefits...

Income inequality in Mexico increased between 1989 and 1994; between 1994 and 2006, inequality declined; and, between 2006 and 2014, inequality was again on the rise. We apply decomposition techniques to analyse the proximate determinants of labour income inequality and fiscal incidence analysis to...