Income Redistribution and Poverty Reduction in Latin America: The role of social spending and taxation in achieving development goals

Nora Lustig

Development, 2014, vol. 57, issue 3-4, 388-399

Abstract: How much do social spending and taxation contribute to achieving the goals of poverty reduction and expanding the access to education and health services among the poor? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay using a comparable methodology yields the following results. Direct taxes and cash transfers reduce inequality and poverty by non-trivial amounts in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay but less so in Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru. In Bolivia and Brazil indirect taxes more than offset the poverty-reducing impact of cash transfers. When one includes the effect of in-kind transfers in education and health valued at government costs, they reduce inequality in all countries by considerably more than cash transfers. Spending on public education and health services is broadly pro-poor, with the exception of tertiary education and the health component of the social security system.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v57/n3-4/pdf/dev20154a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journ ... /full/dev20154a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:pal:develp:v:57:y:2014:i:3-4:p:388-399

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/41301/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Development is currently edited by Stefano Prato

More articles in Development from Palgrave Macmillan, Society for International Deveopment Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().