TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Immervoll, Herwig
AU  - Levy, Horacio
AU  - Lietz, Christine
AU  - Mantovani, Daniela
AU  - O'Donoghue, Cathal
AU  - Sutherland, Holly
AU  - Verbist, Gerlinde
        TI  - Household Incomes and Redistribution in the European Union: Quantifying the Equalising Properties of Taxes and Benefits
        PY  - 2005/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 1824
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1824
        AB  - 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. 
        KW  - microsimulation
KW  - redistribution
KW  - income inequality
KW  - European Union
        ER  -