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| An analysis of equity in redistribution to the retired and children over recent decades in the OECD and UK | | Author(s) | Jonathan Bradshaw, John Holmes |
| Journal title | Journal of Social Policy, vol 42, no 1, January 2013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, January 2013 |
| Pages | pp 39-56 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/JSP |
| Keywords | Expenditure [care] ; Social welfare ; Services ; Social security benefits ; Taxation ; Retired persons ; Children ; Social policy ; United Kingdom ; International. |
| Annotation | In his publication `The Pinch' (Atlantic Books, 2010) David Willetts attracted attention by asking whether baby boomers have been guilty of a monumental failure to protect the interest of future generations. This was just the latest contribution to a long running concern of social policy analysts about horizontal equity and generational fairness. Using OECD data from 1980_2007, this paper shows that there is no evidence that social expenditure has been shifting in favour of the retired at the expense of children, except perhaps recently in some Nordic countries. For the UK the authors create a time-series using published articles since 1977 and micro data sets since 1994/5 from the annual Office for National Statistics analyses of the `Effect of Taxes and Benefits on Household Incomes'. These are then used to analyse trends in the redistributive impact of cash benefits, direct and indirect taxes and services on the retired and households with children and across the income distribution. The analysis shows how relative support for the retired versus children has changed over time, which elements have contributed to the changes and for which part of the income distribution. There has been a small shift in final income in favour of the retired but it was not the result of changes in taxes, benefits or services in kind but rather a change in the original income distribution in favour of the retired. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-121214200 A |
| Classmark | QD: TY: I: JH: WS: BB6: SBC: TM2: 8: 72 |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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