Koen Caminada

Leiden University | LEI · Institute for Tax Law and Economics

Most welfare states design their tax/benefit-system to combat income poverty. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social transfers and income taxes in alleviating poverty. We use micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine the antipoverty effect of social transfers and income taxes. Our data also allow us to decompose the trajectory...

Given the ageing of the populations in many Western countries, older people constitute an important group in the analysis of poverty. In this chapter, we examine the poverty incidence among older people across LIS countries, relying on data from the Luxembourg Income Study. The data show that poverty rates are substantially reduced by redistributio...

In most Member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD), the income gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. This article analyses whether and to what extent income taxes and social transfers have contributed to this trend. Has the redistributive impact of different social programmes changed ove...

In this paper, we analyze fiscal redistribution after the Great Recession. Are welfare states still effective in reducing income inequality? We use recent microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine redistribution from transfers and income taxes, and the several underlying social programs that drive the changes in 31 countries. On average...

In most OECD countries the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. This paper analyzes whether and to what extent taxes and social transfers have contributed to this trend. Has the redistributive power of different social programs changed over time? The paper contributes to the literature by disentangling several parts of fisca...

Polarization is an interesting additional social indicator for analyzing income distribution across countries, as it captures the phenomenon of ‘clustering around extreme poles’. Income polarization can be closely linked to social exclusion, which is relevant for EU social policy, because combatting social exclusion is a central element of the Lisb...

In dit artikel laten we een Europese vergelijking zien van de inkomenspositie van ouderen. Allereerst kijken we naar de relatieve inkomens van 65-plussers ten opzichte van 65-minners. Vervolgens wordt de inkomensongelijkheid onder de ouderen in beeld gebracht, ook weer in vergelijking met de rest van de bevolking. Ten slotte komt de armoede onder o...

Income polarization adds to the literature on income distribution by providing information on the poles of the distribution of income, but little is known about this issue in Europe. This article explores income polarization and its determinants for twenty European countries over the period 2004–13 based on EU-SILC microdata and Shapley decompositi...

Prior studies have suggested that higher public pensions are associated with lower income inequality among the elderly, whereas the reverse is true for private pensions. Van Vliet et al. (2012) empirically test whether relative shifts from public to private pension schemes entail higher levels of income inequality among the elderly using panel data...

Social security contributions make up around a fourth of total tax revenue in OECD countries. However, there are concerns on the economic effects of high levies on labour. Recent studies suggest that at least a third of taxes on labour are shifted onto employers, leading to higher wage costs. We find substantial evidence in the literature that the...

Polarization is an interesting additional social indicator for analyzing income inequality and poverty across countries, as it captures the phenomenon of ‘clustering around extreme poles’. Rising income polarization can be harmful since it is closely linked to poverty, social exclusion, social tension and social unrest (Brzezinski, 2013). However,...

The Dutch pension system is highly ranked on adequacy. These rankings, however, are based on fictitious replacement rates for median income earners. This paper investigates whether the Dutch pension adequacy is still high when we take into account the resources that people really accumulate, using a large administrative data set. A comprehensive ap...

In most OECD countries, the gap between rich and poor has widened over the past decades. The present study analysed whether and to what extent direct taxes and social transfers contribute to this trend. The study contributes to the literature by disentangling several parts of fiscal redistribution in a comparative setting. We used micro-data from t...

In many European and other Western countries, labour markets will continue to be reformed in order to accommodate further adjustments to economic, demographic and socio-ecological developments. Moreover, labour market institutions and other aspects of labour markets receive a lot of attention in EU policy debates because they are regarded as key fa...

Discussions on how to organize European labour markets are one of the key public policy issues of today. In European policy debates, the most important concepts seem to be ‘flexicurity’ and the ‘transitional labour market.’ In this report we examine the cross-country variation in the generosity of unemployment benefits, which is a key element of th...

The aim of this article is to offer detailed information of the redistributive impact of social transfer programmes and taxes in 28 Member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, employing data that have been computed from the Luxembourg Income Study's micro‐level database. We find that welfare states on average red...

Résumé Dans le présent article, nous utilisons des données compilées à partir de la base de microdonnées de la Luxembourg Income Study pour fournir des informations détaillées sur l'impact redistributif des transferts sociaux et de la fiscalité dans 28 pays membres de l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques ( OCDE ). Nous cons...

Auszug Ziel dieses Artikels ist eine genaue Analyse der Umverteilungswirkung von sozialen Transferprogrammen und Steuern in 28 Mitgliedsstaaten der Organisation für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung durch eine Berechnung mit Daten, die aus der Datenbank der Mikrodaten der L uxembourg Income Study stammen. Wir kommen zum Ergebnis, dass...

Resumen El propósito del presente artículo es ofrecer información detallada sobre la repercusión redistributiva que tendrán los impuestos y los programas de transferencias sociales en veintiocho países miembros de la O rganización para la C ooperación y el D esarrollo E conómicos ( OCDE ), para lo que se utilizan datos informatizados extraídos de l...

This paper analyzes the relationship between social expenditure and relative income poverty. A vast literature claims that high social effort goes along with low poverty levels across countries. Social expenditure ratios are generally used as a proxy for social effort. However, this indicator is far from perfect. We analyze the familiar claim captu...

Caminada K, Goudswaard K, Koster F. Social income transfers and poverty: a cross‐country analysis for OECD countries Poverty alleviation is an important policy objective in developed welfare states. This article reports on a study of the association between social transfer policies and poverty. It has been claimed in several studies that based on a...

Poverty alleviation is an important objective of European countries and of the United States. If these ‘rich’ states offer elaborate systems of income maintenance, why is there still a considerable amount of poverty? And why are anti-poverty outcomes so different in the United States compared to European countries? This paper completes a trilog...

This data set provides data on unemployment benefit schemes in 34 welfare states. The data set updates, extends and modifies Scruggs’ dataset (2005). The current data set includes all 27 member states of the European Union (EU) and 7 non-EU OECD countries for the period 1971-2009. The codebook contains descriptions of the variables included as well...

Introduction This data set offers a number of measures of fiscal redistribution in the developed countries,

Several previous papers have marked the United States as an outlier: high poverty rates, low public social spending but high private social expenditures; a rather strong belief that people are poor because of laziness or lack of will; and remarkable differences across the States due to state discretion. With that established context in mind, this p...

The aim of this paper is to offer detailed information of fiscal redistribution in 36 countries, employing data that have been computed from the Luxembourg Income Study’s micro-level database. LIS data are detailed enough to allow us to measure both overall redistribution, and the partial effects of redistribution by several taxes or transfers. We...

van Vliet O, Been J, Caminada K, Goudswaard K. Pension reform and income inequality among older people in 15 European countries The ageing of populations and hampering of economic growth have increased pressure on public finances in many advanced capitalist societies. Consequently, governments have adopted pension reforms in order to relieve pressu...

Convergence of social protection objectives and policies in Member States is an explicit objective of the EU. Earlier research has shown that there has indeed been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels over the last decades. However, comparative studies frequently use indicators which may not be representative as measures of the wel...

Auszug Eine Aufgabe vieler nationaler Sozialschutzsysteme ist es, Einkommen nachhaltig umzuverteilen. Umfang und Art der angebotenen Sozialschutzprogramme befinden sich jedoch in einem Wandel. In einigen Ländern ist eine Verlagerung von öffentlichen zu privatwirtschaftlichen Sozialschutzplänen zu beobachten, wobei Letztere die öffentlichen Programm...

A function of many national social protection systems is to substantially redistribute income. However, the size and nature of social protection programmes are changing. In a number of countries there has been a shift from public towards private social protection arrangements, with the latter substituting for, or complementing, public programmes. D...

Résumé L'une des fonctions de nombreux systèmes nationaux de protection sociale consiste à redistribuer le revenu dans d'importantes proportions. Mais la taille et la nature des programmes de protection sociale sont en pleine évolution. Dans un certain nombre de pays, l'on a assistéà une réorientation du public vers le privé en matière de dispositi...

Resumen Una de las funciones de muchos sistemas nacionales de protección social consiste en redistribuir sustancialmente la renta. Sin embargo, la envergadura y las características de los programas de protección social están cambiando. En cierto número de países, se ha producido un cambio hacia regímenes privados de protección social, destinados a...

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model to study the effect of income insecurity of parents and offspring on the child's residential choice. Parents are partially altruistic toward their children and will provide financial help to an independent child when her income is low relative to the parents'. We find that children of more altruistic pa...

The last two decades show an trend towards a less equal income distribution in OECD. There are many causes for this trend. This paper analysis whether changes in social security systems are one of these causes. For some OECD-countries we find a relationship between changing welfare state policies (as measured by expenditure ratios and replacement r...

The European Union coordinates and encourages Member State actions to combat poverty, and to reform their social protection systems on the basis of policy exchanges and mutual learning (‘best practices’). This paper analyses the effectiveness of welfare state policies and especially social transfers in EU-countries in alleviating poverty. To indica...

The European Union coordinates and encourages Member State actions to combat poverty, and to reform their social protection systems on the basis of policy exchanges and mutual learning (‘best practices’). This paper analyses the effectiveness of welfare state policies and especially social transfers in EU-countries in alleviating poverty. To in...

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model to study the effect of income insecurity of parents and offspring on the child's residential choice. Parents are partially altruistic toward their children and will provide financial help to an independent child when her income is low relative to the parents'. We find that children of more altruistic pa...

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model to study the effect of income insecurity of parents and offspring on the child's residential choice. Parents are partially altruistic toward their children and will provide financial help to an independent child when her income is low relative to the parents'. We find that children of more altruistic pa...

Many countries have tax facilities for pension savings. These facilities are often associated with the application of the cash-flow treatment of pensions: pension contributions are tax-exempt, capital income of pension funds is tax-exempt, and pension benefits are taxed, but usually at a relatively low rate. This paper investigates the revenue effe...

In this paper, we propose a theoretical model to study the effect of income insecurity of parents and offspring on the child's residential choice. Parents are partially altruistic toward their children and will provide financial help to an independent child when her income is low relative to the parents'. We find that children of more altruistic pa...

Insight into the level and nature of taxes and social insurance contributions may be important for the perception of citizens about the costs of public provisions and - associated with this - for their behavioral responses. From the theoretical literature on tax illusion and from several empirical studies we conclude that when a clear relation is e...

Earlier research has shown that there has been a tendency of convergence of social protection levels in the European Union and in other OECD countries over the last decades. However, comparative studies of social protection systems frequently use indicators (gross public expenditure on social benefits and gross replacement rates) which may not be r...

Most analyses of social protection are focussed on public arrangements. However, social effort is not restricted to the public domain; all kinds of private arrangements can be substitutes to public programs. OECD data indicate that accounting for private social benefits has an equalising effect on levels of social effort across a number of countrie...

A wide variety of tax regimes for (occupational) private pension saving are in place around the world. Generally, pension saving is taxed at a relatively low rate, although the revenue loss due to tax facilities for pension savings and/or pension tax expenditures may differ across countries. A strong fiscal stimulus to build up pension capital will...

The Netherlands belongs, with its three pension pillars and its substantial funding, to the leading group of countries in Europe with a solid pension system. But tax facilities for pension savings have become an expensive business for the Dutch government. It is now one of the largest ’tax expenditures’. Through the deduction of pension and annuity...

Samenvatting Inzicht in de omvang en de aard van heffingen kan van belang zijn voor de perceptie van burgers over de kosten van (collectieve) voorzieningen en – daarmee samenhangend – voor de economische gedragsreacties. In dit artikel wordt geanalyseerd wat de effecten kunnen zijn van het beter informeren van de burger over de heffingen die hij la...

Cornelisse and Goudswaard (2002) showed that there has been a tendency of rather strong convergence of social protection systems in the European Union and in other OECD countries over the last decades. This convergence was mainly caused by the increasing size and generosity of the welfare programs in almost all countries. The authors call this rela...

In dit paper brengen we de inkomensontwikkeling van de groep arbeidsongeschikten en personen met een nabestaandenpensioen in de periode 1990-2000 in kaart en bezien hoe die inkomens zich hebben ontwikkeld ten opzichte van andere sociale groepen (werknemers, ambtenaren en andere uitkeringsgroepen). Aanleiding van dit onderzoek is het ontbreken van e...

In most OECD-countries income inequality has increased during the last two decades. In this paper, we investigate whether changes in the overall distribution of income can be attributed to social policy measures. For most (but not all) countries we find a possible relationship between changing welfare state policies (as measured by expenditure rati...

In this contribution, we take a closer look at the process of international tax co-ordination which has gained momentum over the last few years. In this process, different areas have been discussed, such as corporate income taxation, taxation of savings, taxation of ecommerce, and measures against tax havens. Considerable progress has been made bot...

Throughout the last couple of decades the individual income tax systems of most industrialized countries have been (repeatedly) the subject of considerable reform efforts. Although the reform packages vary to a wide extent across countries, the direction of change is roughly similar. Most tax reforms are characterized by base broadening, reduction...

Het stelsel van sociale zekerheid beoogt een zekere mate van inkomensherverdeling tussen actieven en degenen die zijn aangewezen op een uitkering. Over de huidige mate van herverdeling is niet zoveel bekend. In dit artikel presenteren we cijfermateriaal van een aantal regelingen die gezamenlijk als 'sociale zekerheid' worden aangemerkt. Ondanks all...

Throughout the last couple of decades, the individual income tax systems of most industrialized countries have been (repeatedly) the subject of considerable reform efforts. Many OECD countries have implemented tax reforms characterized by base broadening, reduction of tax rates and flattening of the rate structure. Recently, the focus has also been...