The federal government's welfare reform efforts have two defining characteristics: first, welfare reform requires welfare recipients to work for their checks (and to move toward permanent, self-sustainable employment); and second welfare reform devolves administrative responsibility to the...

The federal government spent more than $2.3 trillion in 2016 on the welfare state, an amount equal to approximately 60 percent of all federal outlays in that year. About $1.6 trillion of those expenditures went to Social Security and Medicare, and the other roughly $700 billion was used to fund...

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...

This Article presents an original empirical analysis demonstrating that low-income families experience far greater income fluctuations than higher-income families and, as a result, taxation of annual income disproportionately burdens low-income families. The author proposes two simple income...

This paper explains how to build Lorenz Curves for income distributions and discusses their use for inequality measurement. A short conceptual background, a step-by-step procedure and a simple numerical example illustrate how to calculate and draw Lorenz Curves. A discussion on the use of Lorenz...

This paper illustrates how Crossing Generalised Lorenz (GL) curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options. It starts by illustrating two alternative income distributions...

In this paper I will analyse the redistribution of income amongst n generations using the Single-mindedness Theory. I will introduce a new expression for the balanced-budget constraint, no longer based on lump- sum transfers as in the traditional literature, but rather on more realistic labour...

On the basis of anonymous (or cross-sectional) analyses, income losses during the Great Recession in a number of European countries were concentrated among the poorest ten per cent of the population. The anonymous approach however, which simply compares the distribution of income at two points...

This paper is a review and commentary, from both ethical and informational perspectives, of some known results in optimal anti-poverty budgetary rules for two kinds of intervention, direct income transfers and wage employment programmes.