We compare three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their family support systems: Austria, Spain and the UK. The structure of these systems is different: Austria emphases universal benefits, Spain tax concessions and the UK means-tested...

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...

EUROMOD is a 15-country tax-benefit microsimulation model based on national household micro-data. It is designed to estimate the revenue and distributional effects of national or EUwide changes in social and fiscal policy. In order to provide European results, and for results at the national...

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...

Over the past 20 years, microsimulation models have come to play an important role in policy analysis, identifying gainers and losers, and characterising the effect on incentives. A natural development of national models is a Europe-wide tax benefit model. The present paper reports results from...

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,...

The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare the effectiveness of Minimum Income (MI) schemes in protecting people of working age from poverty in the European Union. Using the EU-wide microsimulation model EUROMOD, we investigate (a) coverage and (b) adequacy of MI schemes in 18...

The paper focuses on the support given through tax and benefit systems to families with children and addresses how the size and impact on the income distribution of this kind of support can be accurately measured. While such support is usually measured in rather narrow terms by adding up the...

As unemployment rises across the European Union (EU) it is important to understand the extent to which the incomes of the new unemployed are protected by tax-benefit systems and to assess the cost pressures on the social protection systems of this increase in unemployment. This paper uses the EU...

As unemployment rises across the European Union (EU) it is important to understand the extent to which the incomes of the new unemployed are protected by tax-benefit systems and to assess the cost pressures on the governments. This paper uses the EU tax-benefit model EUROMOD to explore these...