The distributional effects of tax-benefit policies under New Labour: a Shapley decomposition

Olivier Bargain

No 200907, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Using counterfactual microsimulations, Shapley decompositions of time change in inequality and poverty indices make it possible to disentangle and quantify the relative effect of tax-benefi?t policy changes, compared to all other effects including shifts in the distribution of market income. Using this approach also helps to clarify the different issues underlying the distributional evaluation of policy reforms. An application to the UK (1998-2001) con?firms previous fi?ndings that inequality and depth of poverty would have increased under the ?first New Labour government, had important reforms like the extensions of income support and tax credits not been implemented. These reforms have also contributed to substantially reduce poverty among families with children and pensioners.

Keywords: Tax-benefit policy; Inequality; Poverty; Shapley decomposition; Microsimulation; Tax credits--Great Britain; Fiscal policy--Great Britain; Poverty--Great Britain; Income distribution--Great Britain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H53 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2604 First version, 2009 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The distributional effects of tax-benefit policies under New Labour: a Shapley decomposition (2009)
Working Paper: The Distributional Effects of Tax-Benefit Policies under New Labour: A Shapley Decomposition (2009)
Working Paper: The Distributional Effects of Tax-benefit Policies under New Labour: A Shapley Decomposition (2009)
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:ucn:wpaper:200907

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().