The Efficiency of Race- and Gender-Targeted Income Transfers

Matthew J. Cushing and Mary G. McGarvey

Public Finance Review, 2003, vol. 31, issue 5, 455-486

Abstract: In this article, the authors quantify the potential efficiency gains from moving toward an income redistribution system that bases transfers on membership in demographic groups such as race and gender. They compute four measures of the marginal efficiency cost (MEC) of redistribution under a standard linear income tax and under a policy that tags specific demographic groups. The authors find that a tagging system can significantly lower the MEC of redistribution. At the margin, a system of tagging demographic groups achieves the goal of greater income equality at a significantly lower cost in terms of lost output.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142103254570 (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:sae:pubfin:v:31:y:2003:i:5:p:455-486

DOI: 10.1177/1091142103254570

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Public Finance Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().