An Overall Assessment of the Distributional Consequences of Government Spending and Taxation in the United States, 1989 and 2000

Edward N. Wolff and Ajit Zacharias

Chapter 2 in The Distributional Effects of Government Spending and Taxation, 2006, pp 15-68 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter assesses the effects of government expenditures and taxation on household economic well-being in the United States in 1989 and 2000 on the basis of household-level data.1 While there is an enormous literature on particular aspects of government expenditures and taxation, there has been no recent study of the net effect of the government budget (expenditures less taxes) on household economic well-being. The last comprehensive estimates, for the year 1970, were published in 1981 (Ruggles and O’Higgins, 1981). Since the early 1980s, the Census Bureau has been publishing regular estimates of broader definitions of disposable household income that reflect the net effects of some taxes and transfers. However, the measures do not take into account public provisioning (government expenditures on schools, highways and so on), which has a crucial effect on economic well-being. The present study seeks to fill this gap in the existing literature by developing comprehensive estimates that take into account all relevant government expenditures and taxes for an admittedly remarkable period in recent US economic history (see Blinder and Yellen, 2001; Stiglitz, 2003).

Keywords: Gini Coefficient; Government Expenditure; Government Spending; Computable General Equilibrium Model; Money Income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37860-5_2

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230378605_2

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