As unemployment rises across the European Union (EU) it is important to understand the extent to which the incomes of the new unemployed are protected by tax-benefit systems and to assess the cost pressures on the social protection systems of this increase in unemployment. This paper uses the EU...

The distributional impact of policy changes is usually considered in terms of equivalised household income, assuming that each individual within the household is being affected in the same way, as a result of complete income pooling. The aim of this paper is to extend this approach by...

This paper presents an evaluation of the tax-transfer treatment of married couples in 15 EU countries using the EUROMOD microsimulation model. First, we show that many tax-transfer schemes in Europe feature negative jointness defined as a situation where the tax rate on one person depends...

This paper introduces a theory-based equivalence scale for public in-kind transfers, which justifies comparison of distributions of extended income (cash income plus the value of public services) between European countries. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed equivalence scale in an...

This paper assesses the impact on household incomes of the COVID-19 pandemic and governments’ policy responses in April 2020 in four large and severely hit European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain and the UK. We provide comparative evidence on the level of relative and absolute welfare...