How much redistribution and poverty reduction is being accomplished in Latin America through social spending, subsidies, and taxes? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay using a comparable methodology yields the following results....

We perform the first comprehensive fiscal incidence analyses in Brazil and the US, including direct cash and food transfers, targeted housing and heating subsidies, public spending on education and health, and personal income, payroll, corporate income, property, and expenditure taxes. In both...

Conventional wisdom states that fiscal policy redistributes little in Latin America. Lower tax revenues and – above all – lower and less progressive transfers have been identified as the main cause. Existing studies show that, while in Europe the distribution of all transfers combined (cash...

Fiscal policy can change poverty and inequality substantially or slightly depending on the government’s redistributive effort. We develop a diagnostic framework to assess how aligned fiscal policies are with supporting a minimum living standard and human capital accumulation, as well as with...

Inequality and poverty fell sharply in many Latin American countries during a decade in which voters in ten countries chose left-leaning leaders. Are these developments related? Using data for 18 Latin American countries, this paper presents econometric evidence that social democratic regimes in...

Between 2000 and 2009, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries for which comparable data exist. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures and data sources. In depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil,...

We assess inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in six Latin American countries, employing two waves of PISA data (2006 and 2009). By means of a non-parametric approach using a decomposable inequality index, GE(0), we rank countries according to their degree of inequality of...

We evaluate household transport consumption inequalities in France, Denmark and Cyprus, investigate their temporal dynamics and estimate the redistributive effects of taxes on different commodity categories. A comparative analysis is carried out in light of the differences between these...

The distributional impact of the structural pension reform in Latin American countries has been largely absent in the economic debate. However, this reform may widen inequality in old-age and reduce welfare. In this paper we study the consequences of implementing a multi-pillar system in one of...

This paper evaluates transport consumption inequalities among French households, investigates their temporal dynamics, and estimates the redistributive effects of taxes on different commodity categories. A decomposition by expenditure component of the Gini coefficient is applied, using...