Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to reduce work incentives for lower income classes and to increase durations of unemployment. Standard studies measure work incentives based on annual income concepts. This paper analyzes how work...

In 2016, the Polish government introduced a large child benefit, called "Family 500+", with the aim to increase fertility and reduce child poverty. It is universal for the second and every further child and means-tested for the first child. We study the impact of the new benefit on female labor...

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 implies that the US is effectively moving towards a general child benefit. However, the amount paid out is dependent on income, similar to schemes in several other countries. In the present paper, we argue that instead of suppressing the labour supply of...

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the United States, providing over $67 billion to more than 27 million families for the tax year 2016, an average of $2,455. By subsidizing the earnings of low-income workers, the EITC reduces poverty both directly...

We analyze the distributive justice of the combined burden of taxes, social security contributions and public transfers on employee households. In order to investigate whether the treatment of families by the aggregate tax-benefit system can be regarded as "fair" we compare the equivalent...

We study three budget-neutral reforms of the German tax and transfer system designed to improve work incentives for people with low incomes: a feasible flat tax reform that provides a basic income which is equal to the current level of the means tested unemployment benefit, and two alternative...

This article describes ZEW-EviSTA®, the microsimulation model developed and used at ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim. The model simulates the German tax and transfer system using household micro level data. By estimating fiscal effects, labor market outcomes as well as...