The Redistributive Effect of Selected Federal Transfer and Tax Provisions

Thomas L. Hungerford
Additional contact information
Thomas L. Hungerford: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC 20540, thungerford@crs.loc.gov

Public Finance Review, 2010, vol. 38, issue 4, 450-472

Abstract: Several policy makers have voiced concern, bordering on alarm, over federal budget deficits and growing federal debt over the past decade and have advocated changes in spending and revenue policies to address their concerns. This study examines the redistributive effect of various federal tax provisions and transfer programs using methods that pick up important dimensions of redistribution often missed in analyses. Overall, the results are as expected—both U.S. taxes and transfers reduce income inequality. The redistributive effect, however, could be larger, if the reranking effect were reduced or eliminated. The reranking effect tends to be relatively more important for transfers than for taxes.

Keywords: income inequality; redistribution; Gini; taxation; transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142110373610 (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:38:y:2010:i:4:p:450-472

DOI: 10.1177/1091142110373610

Access Statistics for this article

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