IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/easeco/v37y2011i3p344-366.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequalities within Couples in Europe: Market Incomes and the Role of Taxes and Benefits

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Figari

    (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. E-mails: ffigar@essex.ac.uk; hlevy@essex.ac.uk;hollys@essex.ac.uk)

  • Herwig Immervoll

    (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.)

  • Horacio Levy

    (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. E-mails: ffigar@essex.ac.uk; hlevy@essex.ac.uk;hollys@essex.ac.uk)

  • Holly Sutherland

    (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. E-mails: ffigar@essex.ac.uk; hlevy@essex.ac.uk;hollys@essex.ac.uk)

Abstract

This paper explores the effects of tax and benefit systems on differences in income and incentives to earn income within couples in nine member countries of the European Union. The comparative perspective allows us to establish the relative effects of different policy regimes, given the characteristics of each national population, using a consistent approach and set of incidence assumptions across countries. We find variation in the extent of within-couple equalizing across countries and depending on whether the man or the woman has the larger market income. We find no evidence of tax-benefit systems reducing income differences at the expense of increasing disparities in work incentives within couples.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Figari & Herwig Immervoll & Horacio Levy & Holly Sutherland, 2011. "Inequalities within Couples in Europe: Market Incomes and the Role of Taxes and Benefits," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 37(3), pages 344-366.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:37:y:2011:i:3:p:344-366
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/journal/v37/n3/pdf/eej200948a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/journal/v37/n3/full/eej200948a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iga Magda & Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska & Marta Palczyńska, 2024. "What if She Earns More? Gender Norms, Income Inequality, and the Division of Housework," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 1-20, March.
    2. Samantha Greenspun & Nora Lustig, 2013. "Gendered Fiscal Incidence Analysis. A Review of the Literature," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 76, Tulane University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:easeco:v:37:y:2011:i:3:p:344-366. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.