This paper assesses Italy’s 2019 tax and benefit reforms, analyses hypothetical reforms and proposes a reform package that balances goals of reducing poverty, encouraging employment and fiscal sustainability. Using the OECD’s Tax-Benefit and the EUROMOD microsimulation models, it shows that...

Reducing poverty remains an important challenge, and the COVID-19-crisis may further reinforce social vulnerabilities. Although it has declined lately, relative poverty remains high in international comparison and is distributed unevenly across population groups with the elderly, people with...

We present a general-equilibrium behavioural microsimulation model designed to assess long-run macroeconomic, fiscal and social consequences of reforms to the tax and transfer system. The behaviour of labour supply is assessed along both the extensive and intensive margins, by merging the...

In 2016 the Polish government introduced a large new child benefit, called “Family 500+”, with the aim to increase fertility from a low level and reduce child poverty. The benefit is universal for the second and every further child and means-tested for the first child. Increasing out-of-work...

Little is known yet about the impact of the COVID crisis on household income and jobs in absence of real time information on these variables. A recent literature strand has sought to overcome data limitations to assess the distributional impact of policy measures taken in the EU using various...

In this paper, we exploit pension reform-induced changes in retirement eligibility requirements to assess the role of grandparental child care availability in the labor force participation of women with children under 15. We focus on Italy for two reasons: first, it has low rates of female...

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...