Changes in Income Distributions and the Role of Tax-Benefit Policy During the Great Recession: An International Perspective

Olivier Bargain, Tim Callan, Karina Doorley and Claire Keane
Additional contact information
Claire Keane: The Economic and Social Research Institute

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impact of the economic crisis and the policy reaction on inequality and relative poverty in four European countries: France, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The period examined, 2008–13, was one of great economic turmoil, yet it is unclear whether changes in inequality and poverty rates over this time period were mainly driven by changes in market income distributions or by tax-benefit policy reforms. We disentangle these effects by producing counterfactual (‘no reform') scenarios using tax-benefit microsimulation and representative household surveys for each country. For the first stage of the Great Recession, we find that the policy reaction contributed to stabilising or even decreasing inequality and relative poverty in the UK, France and, especially, Ireland. Market income changes nonetheless pushed up inequality and relative poverty in France. Relative poverty increased in Germany as a result of policy responses combined with market income changes. Subsequent policy reforms, in the later stage of the crisis, had markedly different cross-country effects, decreasing overall poverty in France, increasing it in Ireland, and giving mixed effects for different subgroups in Germany and the UK.

Keywords: crisisde; composition; inequality; microsimulation; poverty; tax-benefit policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-03590136
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Published in Fiscal Studies, 2017, 38 (4), pp.559-585. ⟨10.1111/1475-5890.12113⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://amu.hal.science/hal-03590136/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Changes in Income Distributions and the Role of Tax‐Benefit Policy During the Great Recession: An International Perspective (2017)
Working Paper: Changes in Income Distributions and the Role of Tax-benefit Policy During the Great Recession: An International Perspective (2014)
Working Paper: Changes in income distribution and the role of tax-benefit policy during the Great Recession: an international perspective (2013)
Working Paper: Changes in Income Distributions and the Role of Tax-Benefit Policy During the Great Recession: An International Perspective (2013)
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:hal:journl:hal-03590136

DOI: 10.1111/1475-5890.12113

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().