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....

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...

This study validates the microeconomic model defining the evolution of personal incomes in the U.S. Because of a large portion of population not reporting any income, any comprehensive modeling of the overall personal income distribution (PID) is complicated. Age-dependent PIDs allow overcoming...

The evolution of Gini coefficient for personal incomes in the USA between 1947 and 2005 is analyzed and modeled. There are several versions of personal income distribution (PID) provided by the US Census Bureau (US CB) for this period with various levels of resolution. Effectively, these PIDs...

The average and median income dependence on work experience and time is analyzed and modelled for the USA. The original data set providing the mean and median income estimates in 10 year long intervals spans a long time period of almost 35 years – from 1967 to 2003. A microeconomic model...

Numerical modelling of the personal income distribution (PID) in the USA from 1950 to 2003 is accomplished based on a microeconomic model for the personal income evolution. It is shown that the overall PID demonstrates the existence of some fixed hierarchical income distribution structure in the...

A comprehensive study of the personal income distribution (PID) in the USA is carried out. Principal characteristics of the PID in USA are established. A microeconomic model of the personal income distribution and evolution with time is developed. The model balances two processes – individual...

Guatemala is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America and has the highest incidence of poverty. The indigenous population is more than twice as likely of being poor than the nonindigenous group. Fiscal incidence analysis based on the 2009-2010 National Survey of Family Income and...

Taxes and transfers can have significant impacts on poverty and inequality. All standard measures are by definition anonymous in the sense that we do not know the identity of winners and losers. That a given combination of taxes and transfers makes some of the poor poorer, however, may be...