Are social security programs progressive?

Alvaro Forteza

World of Labour, 2015, No 172, 172

Abstract: Social security programs generally seek to provide insurance and to reduce poverty and inequality. Providing insurance requires little redistribution. But reducing inequality and alleviating poverty do require redistribution. To reduce inequality, programs must redistribute income, but redistributing income is not the same as reducing inequality. While some programs redistribute large amounts of income without noticeably reducing inequality, others reduce inequality with less redistribution and fewer labor market distortions. A non-contributory tier, which provides benefits without requiring contributions, is a key component for reducing inequality.

Keywords: social security; inequality; redistribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 J14 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/are-social-security-programs-progressive-1.pdf (application/pdf)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/are-social-security-programs-progressive (text/html)

Related works:
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:izawol:journl:y:2015:n:172

Access Statistics for this article

World of Labour is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc

More articles in World of Labour from LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Olga Nottmeyer ().