I examine how changes in the receipt of social transfers benefits associated to program reforms have affected the Canadian income distribution over the 1996-2006 period. Using the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, I apply nonparametric decomposition methods to construct density...

Let there be two individuals: "rich," and "poor." Due to inefficiency of the income redistribution policy, if a social planner were to tax the rich in order to transfer to the poor, only a fraction of the taxed income would be given to the poor. Under such inefficiency and a standard utility...

We review the literature on the public choice approach to explaining redistribution policies. The focus is on policies that are pursued with the sole reason to redistribute initial endowments. Moreover, we restrict ourselves to redistribution in democracies. In democratic settings, generic...

The concept of equality of opportunity (EOp) goes back to Roemer (1993, 1998) who argues that a society shall guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of...

Using the first release of the three-wave, four-year General Social Survey panel dataset, we track changes in attitudes towards redistribution and government from 2006 to 2010 to find that decreases in demand for redistribution are associated with decreases in confidence in government after the...

Redistribution across individuals in a one-year-period framework is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective. In particular, public pensions, that smooth incomes over the...

This paper estimates the impact of Tunisia's tax and transfer system on inequality and poverty and assesses the benefits from public spending on education and health. Results show that Tunisia's redistributive fiscal policy reduces inequality and extreme poverty significantly. However, based on...

A persistent and very high-income inequality is a well known feature of the Brazilian economy. However, from 2001 to 2005 the Gini index presented an unprecedented fall of 4.6 percent combined with significant poverty reduction. Previous studies using partial equilibrium analysis have pointed...

A transfer from a richer individual to a poorer one seems to be the most intuitive and straightforward way of reducing income inequality in a society. However, can such a transfer reduce the welfare of the society? We show that a rich-to-poor transfer can induce a response in the individuals'...

Redistribution across individuals in a one-year-period framework is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective, reducing the level of actual redistribution across...