Using the 2004 income survey of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office we consider the targeting of two types of unemployment-related benefits: a) unemployment insurance and re-training benefits and b) the unemloyment assistance (UA). The evidence suggests that unemployment-related benefits...

In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of € 7.5 per hour on the basis of a...

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education...

In this paper, we study the role of price correction in estimating the impact of price subsidies and anti-poverty cash transfer schemes on poverty in Tunisia. Three types of price corrections are considered: (a) no corrections; (b) living standards deflated by spatial Laspeyres price indices;...

This paper investigates the development of poverty in Sweden using micro data derived from tax files for the city of Göteborg for the years 1925, 1936, 1947, 1958 as well as more recent (1983, 1994 and 2003) information. We define poverty as living in a household with a disposable income lower...

The UK Attendance Allowance (AA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) are non means-tested benefits paid to many disabled people aged 65+. They may also increase entitlements to means-tested benefits through the Severe Disability Premium (SDP). We investigate proposed reforms involving...

The paper analyses the incentive and the redistributive effects of introducing either a family based or an individual in-work benefit in Italy. The reforms are financed through the abolition of the existing tax credit targeted at inactive people. In-work benefits are means-tested transfers given...

We examine the consequences of underreporting of transfer programs in household survey data for several prototypical analyses of low-income populations. We focus on the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics, but provide evidence that our...

This paper presents findings on the changing effectiveness of cash transfers and income taxes on inequality and poverty reduction in four EU countries - the UK, Italy, Sweden and France. We use long time series (spanning four decades) to examine trends within countries over time and between...