%0 Report
        %A Immervoll, Herwig
%A Levy, Horacio
%A Lietz, Christine
%A Mantovani, Daniela
%A O'Donoghue, Cathal
%A Sutherland, Holly
%A Verbist, Gerlinde
        %T Household Incomes and Redistribution in the European Union: Quantifying the Equalising Properties of Taxes and Benefits
        %D 2005
        %8 2005 Oct
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 1824
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1824
        %X 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 microsimulation model for the European Union. This relies on harmonised household micro-data representative of each national population together with simulations of entitlements to cash benefits and liabilities for taxes and social contributions. It allows us to draw a more comprehensive – and comparable – picture of the combined effects of transfers and taxes than is usually possible. We decompose the redistributive effect of tax-benefit systems to assess and compare the effectiveness of individual policies at reducing income disparities. The following categories of benefits and taxes are considered both individually and in combination: income taxes, social contributions, cash benefits designed to target the poor or redistribute inter-personally (through means-testing) as well as cash benefits intended to redistribute intra-personally across the lifecycle (through social insurance or contingency-based entitlement). We derive results for the 15 "old" members of the European Union and present them for each country separately as well as for the EU-15 as a whole. 
        %K microsimulation
%K redistribution
%K income inequality
%K European Union