Decomposing the post-tax Gini coefficient across groups of pre-tax equals reveals the separate contributions to the redistributive effect of an income tax of (1) the effective schedule (the vertical effect), (2) the unequal treatment of equals arising from departures from this effective schedule...

This paper sets out to explore theoretically how a change in the distribution of disposable income affects the market demand for a good or service. With the help of only minimal information on the shape of the Engel curve and the transition from one distribution to the other, a variety of...

Some analysts use sequential dominance criteria, and others use equivalence scales in combination with non-sequential dominance tests, to make welfare comparisons of joint distributions of income and needs. In this paper we present a new sequential procedure which copes with situations in which...

Income taxation typically has an inequality-reducing impact. This would be explained by theory were it the case that all income units were taxed according to a common progressive schedule. But this is not so; we lack a theoretical explanation for the observed finding. This paper explains how...

Household needs must be taken into account when designing an equitable income tax. If the equivalence scale is income dependent it is not transparent how to achieve equity. In this paper we explore the question of horizontal equity and the implications for progression (vertical equity), when the...

Three 'I's of poverty curves, based on distributions of poverty gaps, provide evocative graphical summaries of the incidence, intensity, and inequality dimensions of poverty, and a means for checking for unanimous poverty orderings according to a wide class of poverty indices. The orderings may...