The federal government announced in its 2012 budget its intention to delay the age of eligibility for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement from 65 to 67 years. By the time the policy is fully implemented (i.e., in 2030), this delay will have increased net revenues of the fedral...

Dans cet article, nous étudions l'impact des différences de longévité sur la conception des politiques publiques, en particulier celles liées au départ à la retraite. Nous montrons premièrement qu'alors même que l'espérance de vie a augmenté de manière très importante tout au long...

We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting...

Variations in aggregate poverty indices can be due to differences in average poverty intensity, to changes in the welfare distances between those poor of initially unequal welfare status, and/or to emerging disparities in welfare among those poor of initially similar welfare status. This note...

We propose a general cost-of-inequality approach that jointly integrates horizontal and vertical equity criteria in the assessment of poverty alleviation programs, with the strength of each criterion being captured through its own inequity-aversion parameter. This contrasts with the assessment...

The paper simulates the redistributive impact of three possible scenarios for the introduction of a basic income (BI, also sometimes called "citizens' income") in Québec. The simulations are revenue neutral at the joint provincial-federal government level. The first scenario assumes that a set...

Assessing whether distributional changes are "pro-poor" has become increasingly widespread in academic and policy circles. Starting from relatively general ethical axioms, this paper proposes simple graphical methods to test whether distributional changes are indeed pro-poor. Pro-poor standards...

We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing transfer program reforms. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves...

This paper suggests a methodology to identify socially-desirable directions for poverty-alleviating tax reforms. The cost-benefit ratio of increasing any commodity-tax rate is derived from the minimization of a poverty measure subject to a revenue requirement for the government. Further, to...