Social Transfers and Income Inequality in Turkey: How Informative Is the Survey of Income and Living Conditions?

Cem Başlevent ()
Additional contact information
Cem Başlevent: İstanbul Bilgi University Santral, Eyüp 34060 Istanbul, Turkey

Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal, 2014, vol. 3, issue 3, 23-42

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the difficulties in determining the extent to which social transfers have an impact on income inequality in Turkey. Given the socio-economic and political importance of the issue, an examination of the redistributive impact of pensions and social assistance programs in Turkey could indeed be an enlightening exercise. Unfortunately, some data inadequacies limit our ability to provide a reliable answer to the research question. The currently available micro data set drawn from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) identifies the amounts of various types of income received by individuals or—in some cases—households, and we find that social assistance and disability benefits do alleviate income inequality. However, the actual redistributive effect of what is generally agreed upon as “social assistance” in the Turkish context is probably quite larger than our findings suggest. The reason is that certain types of social benefits are lumped together in the SILC with other income types, while others—including health-insurance premiums paid by the state on behalf of poor households—are not recorded at all. The redistributive impact of pension payments and unemployment benefits does not appear to be very large, since especially the latter are received mainly by individuals who are outside the lower end of the income distribution.

Keywords: Social transfers; social assistance; income inequality; Turkey; SILC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 H75 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ekonomitek.org/pdffile/no9_08_makale2_cem_baslevent.pdf (application/pdf)

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:tek:journl:v:3:y:2014:i:3:p:23-42

Access Statistics for this article

Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal is currently edited by TEK Secretary

More articles in Ekonomi-tek - International Economics Journal from Turkish Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ercan Uygur ().