Most methods for the analysis of distributional change rely on the changes in the income of a particular group of people, taking either the situation of this group in the previous period, or the average change in the population, as reference point. By contrast, we propose a measure of...

Empirical studies on income distribution and poverty have indicated that the public transfer system has been successful in terms of poverty and inequality reduction in welfare states. However, very little attention has been paid to private transfers in this analysis. Recently, while there has...

Incomes in the poorest two quintiles on average increase at the same rate as overall average incomes. This is because, in a global dataset spanning 118 countries over the past four decades, changes in the share of income of the poorest quintiles are generally small and uncorrelated with changes...

This paper examines the evolution of the breadth and target of social policy in the US. By analyzing LIS household data from the US, the paper brings fresh evidence to longstanding debates over how inequality influences income redistribution, whether a welfare retrenchment has occurred, and...

We introduce two separate datasets (The Global Consumption Dataset (GCD) and The Global Income Dataset (GID)) containing an unprecedented portrait of consumption and income of persons over time, within and across countries, around the world. The benchmark version of the dataset presents...

Korpi and Palme's (1998) classic "The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality" claims that universal social policy better reduces poverty than social policies targeted at the poor. This article revisits Korpi and Palme's classic, and in the process, explores and informs a set of...

Using observational micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we assess the redistributive impact of tax and transfer configurations across 22 OECD countries for the period 1999-2013. After recovering new tax data (employer social contributions), we measure the reduction of income...