What's Best for Women: Gender Based Taxation, Wage Subsidies or Basic Income?

Ugo Colombino and Edlira Narazani

No 6828, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use a microeconometric model of household labour supply in order to evaluate, with Italian data, the behavioural and welfare effects of gender based taxation (GBT) as compared to other policies based on different optimal taxation principles. The comparison is interesting because GBT, although technically correct, might face implementation difficulties not shared by other policies that in turn might produce comparable benefits. The simulation procedure accounts for the constraints implied by fiscal neutrality and market equilibrium. Our results support to some extent the expectations of GBT's proponents. However it is not an unquestionable success. GBT induces a modest increase of women's employment, but similar effects can be attained by universal subsidies on low wages. When the policies are evaluated in terms of welfare, GBT ranks first among single women but for the whole population the best policies are subsidies on low wages, unconditional transfers or a combination of the two.

Keywords: gender based taxation; wage subsidies; basic income; guaranteed minimum income; labour supply; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 I3 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2012-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6828.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: What’s Best for Women: Gender Based Taxation, Wage Subsidies or Basic Income?" (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6828

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().