Is the neighbour’s grass greener? Comparing family support in Lithuania and four other New Member States

Salanauskaite, Lina; Verbist, Gerlinde

doi:10.1177/0958928713480066

Cited by 37 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…1 A large body of research has demonstrated that child benefits are of paramount importance in reducing child poverty (Van Lancker and Van Mechelen 2015;Salanauskaite and Verbist 2013;Bradshaw 2012;Kamerman et al 2003;Immervoll et al 2001). This means that child benefit systems have an important redistributive impact, commonly referred to as a vertical equity objective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

Verbist

Lancker

2015

Soc Indic Res

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A large body of research has demonstrated that child benefit systems are of paramount importance in reducing child poverty, thus having an important vertical equity component. Although all child benefit systems embody in one way or the other such vertical equity objective, the primary objective of child benefit systems is to (at least partly) compensate for the costs associated with childrearing and to minimize the welfare loss relative to childless families, a horizontal equity objective. Most studies are concerned with vertical equity and child poverty reduction; here we also explicitly take the dimension of horizontal equity into account. In this paper, we propose and develop a two-dimensional framework for evaluating and classifying the outcomes of child benefit systems in terms of both vertical and horizontal equity. Treating these two objectives as analytically distinct permits the construction of a synthetic index of child benefit outcomes and allows for the explicit incorporation of a value judgement about the most important objective of child benefit systems. In doing so, we propose a novel measure for gauging horizontal equity based on the cost of children implicit in commonly used equivalence scales drawing on the public finance literature. We demonstrate the potential of our evaluative framework for policy purposes by means of an empirical application for 31 European welfare states. We contribute to the literature by highlighting the role of characteristics of benefit systems in achieving certain objectives regarding horizontal and/or vertical equity.Keywords Child benefit systems Á Horizontal equity Á Vertical equity Á Cost of children Á Child poverty Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

Verbist

Lancker

2015

Soc Indic Res

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“…Several studies attempted to estimate the cost-effectiveness of specific policy instruments by 'borrowing' different elements of family policies from other EU countries and comparing their effects with those of the original systems (Levy, 2003, Salanauskaite and Verbist, 2013 This paper takes a similar approach in Russia. Although an inquiry into the cumulative impact of family policies is of high interest this study analyses only a part of the existing child benefit package due to data limitations iv and difficulties in replicating some of the simulated allowances in other countries v .…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most OECD countries child poverty rates are higher than overall population poverty rates, though there are significant cross-country variations in the extent and intensity of poverty. Especially children in lone parent and large families are the subject of policy concern due to their overrepresentation among the poor (Salanauskaite and Verbist, 2013, Misra et al, 2007, Van Lacker et al, 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributional impacts of cash allowances for children: A microsimulation analysis for Russia and Europe

Popova

2016

Journal of European Social Policy

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This paper analyses programmes of cash allowances for children and compares their effectiveness in combating child poverty in Russia and four EU countries representing alternative family policy models -Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom.Using microsimulation models, this paper estimates the potential gains if the Russian system were re-designed along the policy parameters of these countries and vice versa. The results confirm that the poverty impact of the program design is smaller than that of the level of spending. Other conditions being equal, the best distributional outcomes for children are achieved by applying the mix of universal and means-tested child benefits, such as those employed by the UK and Belgium. At the same time, the Russian design of child allowances does not appear to be less effective in terms of its impact on child poverty when transferred to European countries in place of their current arrangements.

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“…countries (Salanauskaite and Verbist 2013). The present study is the first to perform a swap of the whole tax-benefit systems between two countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from your neighbor: tax-benefit systems swaps in Latin America

2017

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Over the last decades, Latin American countries have experienced a noticeable decrease in income inequality. While this trend is mainly associated with a decline in wage inequality, progressive reforms of the tax-benefit systems of the region may have played a role. While redistributive systems in Latin America are still in their infancy, they are constantly expanding and do so at different pace in the region. To investigate this point in a comparative way, the present study exploits newly developed tax-benefit microsimulation models for Ecuador and Colombia. These two neighboring countries show contrasted situations in terms of income distribution and we characterize the extent to which this difference is explained by different tax-benefit systems. The comparative nature of our microsimulation models allows us to swap tax-benefit systems between countries to produce counterfactual simulations whereby the system of a country is applied to the population of the other. In this way, we can decompose the total country difference in income distribution to extract the role of different tax-benefit policies. We confirm that the Ecuadorean system is more redistributive and quantify the difference: if the Ecuadorean system was applied to the Colombian population, the Gini coefficient would be reduced by 1.7 points in Colombia. Headcount poverty would decrease by around 10% and the intensity of poverty by up to 14.7%. This analysis contributes to the recent literature on the redistributive role of taxbenefit systems in Latin America and highlights the role of microsimulation techniques to show how countries in the region can learn from each other in order to improve social protection and reduce income inequality.

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Is the neighbour’s grass greener? Comparing family support in Lithuania and four other New Member States

Cited by 37 publications

References 21 publications

Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

Horizontal and Vertical Equity Objectives of Child Benefit Systems: An Empirical Assessment for European Countries

Distributional impacts of cash allowances for children: A microsimulation analysis for Russia and Europe

Learning from your neighbor: tax-benefit systems swaps in Latin America

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