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The distributional impact of proposed reforms plays a central role in public debates around tax and transfer policy. We show that accounting for realistic patterns of mobility in employment, earnings and household circumstances over the life-cycle greatly affects our assessment of the distributional effects of tax and transfer reforms. We focus on three reforms modelled in the UK context: (i) changes to out-of-work versus in-work benefits, (ii) adjustments to income tax rates, and (iii) reforms to indirect taxation. In all three cases, the long-run distributional impact differs to that implied by a standard crosssection analysis in important ways.
Authors
Research Fellow Financial Conduct Authority
Jonathan is a Research Fellow at the IFS and a Technical Specialist in the Economics Department at the Financial Conduct Authority.
Associate Director
Peter joined in 2009. He has published several papers on the microeconomics of household spending and labour supply decisions over the life-cycle.
Research Fellow Trinity College Dublin
Barra is a Research Fellow at IFS and Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin.
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.ifs.2016.1617
- Publisher
- The IFS
Suggested citation
P, Levell and B, Roantree and J, Shaw. (2016). Mobility and the lifetime distributional impact of tax and transfer reforms. London: The IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/mobility-and-lifetime-distributional-impact-tax-and-transfer-reforms-0 (accessed: 28 March 2024).
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