Inequalities Within Couples: Market Incomes and the Role of Taxes and Benefits in Europe (original) (raw)
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Inequalities within Couples in Europe: Market Incomes and the Role of Taxes and Benefits
Eastern Economic Journal, 2011
In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under tax-benefit systems that are progressive, there is some redistribution from men to women overall. However, an aggregate perspective is insufficient for understanding how earning opportunities and public policies affect living arrangements at the family level in general and the circumstances of men and women in particular. Arguably, it is within the household that a gendered division of labour is most relevant.
Taxation of Couples in European Countries
This paper uses the EUROMOD microsimulation model to estimate effective marginal and participation tax rates for couples in 15 EU countries. Each couple has two potential sources of earned income: primary and secondary earnings. We examine the degree and nature of jointness in the tax and transfer schedules, and compare this to recent normative prescriptions from optimal income tax theory. Using a simple model of labor supply, we further quantify the equity-efficiency trade-off from increasing redistribution to one-and no-earner couples. Based on the existing empirical evidence, which demonstrates that the extensive margin is far more responsive for females than for males, we conclude that, in most countries, such a policy is undesirable unless the redistributive tastes of the government are extreme.
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The design of tax systems has a considerable impact on the distribution of income and wealth at the household and the individual level, and due to gender-differentiated socio-economic conditions also in a gender perspective. One of the most important areas of taxation is the taxation of personal incomes. Besides the level of income tax rates and the design of the income tax schedule (progressive versus flat tax schedule), the system of household taxation (joint versus individual taxation), the determination of taxable income and the design of tax exemptions (tax allowances versus credits), particularly child-related ones, are crucial determinants of the distributional effects and work incentives of the personal income tax. The study presents an overview of the microsimulation results for selected provisions of the personal income tax system on income distribution and work incentives. The microsimulations are based on EUROMOD for six selected EU countries: Germany, Austria, Spain, Cz...
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THE FEMALE INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN EUROPE
In this paper, we investigate the distribution of female net income across Eu- rope using data from the 2000 wave of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The determination of female income is explored using condi- tional quantile regression with selection correction. The results show that dif- ferences in labor supply and family structure are important across both the income distribution and regions; additionally, interaction terms between regions and family structure show large variation. While the incomes of women in some regions are unaffected by having children or by being in a couple, women in other regions experience varying effects on their income. This implies that dif- ferences in family structure are important determinants of female income across Europe.
In the past two decades, many researchers have used the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data to analyse women's economic status, or economic gender inequality, across the industrialized countries. Researchers concerned with labour market outcomes have concluded that: (i) women's labour market status lags men's in nearly every LIS country and time period; (ii) motherhood is a consequential factor nearly everywhere; while parenthood typically has little effect (or a positive effect) on men's employment rates and earnings, it weakens women's everywhere; (iii) against this backdrop of commonality, gendered outcomes vary dramatically across countries; and (iv) variation in policies, or policy packages, explains a substantial share of the observed variation in outcomes. Researchers focused on poverty have found that: (i) in several countries, post-tax-and-transfer poverty is more prevalent among women than men, mothers compared with fathers, and female-headed households relative to male-headed households; (ii) solo mothers everywhere face a heightened risk of low income and/or poverty, especially in the English-speaking countries; (iii) across the LIS countries, single elderly women are also at heightened risk, with the USA standing out as an extreme case; and (iv) cross-national variation in tax-and-transfer policies explains a large share of variation in post-tax-and-transfer income.
Gender Earnings Differentials in Europe 3
2010
This study investigates and compares gender earnings differentials across nine European countries using data from the last wave of the European Community Household Panel. Our results show that gender earnings differentials still exist and differ across countries. The fact that labour markets value the same characteristics differently by gender is the main force driving earnings gaps, irrespective of the decomposition method used. Selectivity bias turns out to be an issue only in certain countries. The detailed decomposition reveals that differences in constant terms of the earnings equations and different rewards regarding human capital characteristics dominate the gaps. Differences in rewards regarding educational qualifications play a minor role, while differences in occupational groups seem to have a mixed effect. On the other hand, years of potential experience are more important than education in determining male earnings advantage in all countries examined. Therefore, a unifor...
Closing the Gender Gap: Gender Based Taxation, Wage Subsidies or Basic Income?
2014
TGender based taxation (GBT) has been recently proposed as a promising policy in order to close the gender gap, i.e. promote gender equality and improve women’s status in the labour market and within the family. We use a microeconometric model of household labour supply in order to evaluate, with Italian data, the behavioural and welfare effects of GBT as compared to other policies based on different optimal taxation principles. The comparison is interesting because GBT, although technically correct, might face implementation difficulties not shared by other policies that in turn might produce comparable benefits. Our results support to some extent the expectations of GBT’s proponents. However, it is not an unquestionable success. GBT induces a modest increase of women’s employment, but similar effects can be attained by universal subsidies on low wages. When the policies are evaluated in terms of welfare, GBT ranks first among single women but among couples and in the whole populat...
Journal of European Social Policy, 2020
In analysing heterosexual couples’ work–family arrangements over time and space, the comparative social policy literature has settled on the framework of the ‘male-breadwinner’ versus the ‘dual-earner’ family. Yet, in assuming men in couple-families are (full-time) employed, this framework overlooks another work–family arrangement, which is the ‘female-breadwinner’ couple. Including female-breadwinner couples matters because of their growing prevalence and, as our analysis shows, greater economic vulnerability. We perform descriptive and regression analyses of Luxembourg Income Study microdata to compare household incomes for female-breadwinner couples and other couple-types across 20 industrialized countries. We then consider how labour earnings and benefit incomes vary for ‘pure’ breadwinner couples – comprising one wage-earner and one inactive/unemployed partner – according to the gender of the breadwinner. We find that pure female breadwinners have lower average individual earni...