Indonesia has a very good record of poverty reduction, having halved its incidence over the past two decades. Nevertheless, almost 30 million people still live below the national poverty line, mostly in rural areas and in certain provinces. In order to make further progress in lifting these...

New Zealand generally performs well in terms of economic and social inclusion. It has high employment rates, and education and health-care systems work well for most. However, some New Zealanders are stuck on low incomes and face material deprivation and multiple barriers to economic and social...

The economic literature suggests that a revenue-neutral shift of tax revenues from income taxes to property taxes would increase GDP per capita in the medium term. This paper analyses for Ireland the consequences of such a shift in the tax mix. In particular, it examines whether this can be...

Restoring fiscal sustainability is a major challenge in Slovenia. Yet, the performance in terms of expenditure control is poor and public expenditure on social spending increased briskly during the crisis, significantly more than on average across the OECD. Despite recent progress in reforming...

This paper derives estimates of the efficiency of welfare spending in Slovenia and the other OECD countries from data envelopment analysis based on model specifications used in earlier OECD studies. Results suggest that Slovenia ranks about 25th among OECD countries for output efficiency: for a...

Employment has risen by more and unemployment has risen less than expected, given the path of output. Nevertheless, long-term and youth unemployment and involuntary part-time work are high. A polarised labour market risks worsening income inequality, which is high by OECD standards, despite a...

Under the Universal Credit reform, the main means-tested benefits except the Council Tax Benefit will be pooled into one single benefit with one single taper rate. The reform will give people better incentives to work, reduce complexity and contribute to reducing poverty. The reform could reduce...

Luxembourg is a rich and fast-growing country. However, inequality of disposable incomes has trended up modestly over the past decades and relative poverty has risen reflecting mainly the rapid growth of high incomes. The relatively high inequality of market incomes is substantially reduced by...

Income inequality in Colombia has declined since the early 2000s but remains very high by international standards. While most of the inequality originates from the labour market, wealth – and thus capital income – is also highly concentrated and the tax and transfer system has little...

In several OECD countries, ongoing fiscal consolidation might have a negative impact on the static income distribution. However, this conclusion should be treated only as an approximate first step in the analysis. A full assessment of distributional effects of consolidation packages would need...