IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ses/arsjes/2011-ii-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Redistribution in Switzerland: Social Cohesion or Simple Smoothing of Lifetime Incomes?

Author

Listed:
  • Monika Engler

Abstract

Using the example of Switzerland, this paper examines the extent to which the state and the social security institutions change the income distribution. Two sets of questions are examined: (1) Who benefits from the public services, and who bears the public costs? (2) To what extent does an annual redistribution involve redistribution (a) across households with different lifetime income, and (b) across different phases of life within the same households? Budget incidence analyses and pseudo panel procedures allow to compare annual and lifetime household incomes that arise before and after transfers. The results suggest that public interventions induce substantial redistribution, which is due primarily, however, to income-smoothing transfers within households and not to redistribution across households.

Suggested Citation

  • Monika Engler, 2011. "Redistribution in Switzerland: Social Cohesion or Simple Smoothing of Lifetime Incomes?," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 147(II), pages 107-155, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:2011-ii-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sjes.ch/papers/2011-II-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Tax incidence," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 26, pages 1787-1872, Elsevier.
    2. Verbeek, Marno & Nijman, Theo, 1992. "Can Cohort Data Be Treated as Genuine Panel Data?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 9-23.
    3. Deaton, Angus, 1985. "Panel data from time series of cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 109-126.
    4. Nelissen, Jan H. M., 1998. "Annual versus lifetime income redistribution by social security," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 223-249, May.
    5. Aaron, Henry & McGuire, Martin, 1970. "Public Goods and Income Distribution," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(6), pages 907-920, November.
    6. Browning, Martin & Deaton, Angus & Irish, Margaret, 1985. "A Profitable Approach to Labor Supply and Commodity Demands over the Life-Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(3), pages 503-543, May.
    7. van de Walle, Dominique, 1998. "Assessing the welfare impacts of public spending," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 365-379, March.
    8. Jean-Marc Falter, 2006. "Equivalence Scales and Subjective Data in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 142(II), pages 263-284, June.
    9. Verbeek, M.J.C.M. & Nijman, T.E., 1992. "Can cohort data be treated as genuine panel data?," Other publications TiSEM d4eada8f-b91c-4fe7-a58c-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Davies, James B & St-Hilaire, France & Whalley, John, 1984. "Some Calculations of Lifetime Tax Incidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 633-649, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Foellmi, Reto & Martinez, Isabel Z., 2017. "Die Verteilung von Einkommen und Vermögen in der Schweiz [The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Switzerland]," MPRA Paper 84443, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Oliver Hümbelin, 2016. "Ungleichheit und Umverteilung über das Steuersystem. Eine Analyse der Verteilungseffekte von direkten Steuern und steuerlichen Abzügen mit Steuerdaten des Kantons Aargau (2001-2011)," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 23, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences.
    3. Oliver Hümbelin & Rudolf Farys, 2017. "Redistribution through taxes and deductions. A decomposition analysis with administrative tax data from Switzerland," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 26, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences.
    4. Oliver Hümbelin & Rudolf Farys, 2017. "Income redistribution through taxation – how deductions undermine the effect of taxes," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 25(1), pages 1-35, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Monika Engler, 2010. "Redistribution in Switzerland: Social Cohesion or Simple Smoothing of Lifetime Incomes?," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 2010-02, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    2. Evren Ceritoglu, 2017. "Disentangling Age and Cohorts Effects on Home-Ownership and Housing Wealth in Turkey," Working Papers 1706, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    3. Paquet, Marie-France & Bolduc, Denis, 2004. "Le problème des données longitudinales incomplètes : une nouvelle approche," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 80(2), pages 341-361, Juin-Sept.
    4. Yancy Vaillant & Esteban Lafuente & Manoj Chandra Bayon, 2019. "Early internationalization patterns and export market persistence: a pseudo-panel data analysis," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 669-686, October.
    5. Lavin, Felipe Vasquez & Bratti, Luna & Orrego, Sergio & Barrientos, Manuel, 2020. "Assessing the Use of Pseudo-panels to Estimate the Value of Statistical Life in Developing Countries," EfD Discussion Paper 20-20, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.
    6. Mairead Roiste & Apostolos Fasianos & Robert Kirkby & Fang Yao, 2021. "Are Housing Wealth Effects Asymmetric in Booms and Busts?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 578-628, May.
    7. Oguiza Tovar, Ainhoa, 2003. "Análisis descriptivo del desempleo en la CAPV (1993-1999)," BILTOKI 1134-8984, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Economía Aplicada III (Econometría y Estadística).
    8. Paul J. Devereux, 2007. "Small-sample bias in synthetic cohort models of labor supply," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 839-848.
    9. Gassner, Katharina, 1998. "An estimation of UK telephone access demand using Pseudo-Panel data," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 143-154, November.
    10. Antonio Cutanda & José M. Labeaga & Juan A. Sanchis-Llopis, 2020. "Aggregation biases in empirical Euler consumption equations: evidence from Spanish data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 957-977, March.
    11. Rumman Khan, 2018. "Assessing cohort aggregation to minimise bias in pseudo-panels," Discussion Papers 2018-01, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    12. Oguiza Tovar, Ainhoa, 2003. "Análisis descriptivo de la población ocupada en la CAPV (1993-1999)," BILTOKI 1134-8984, Universidad del País Vasco - Departamento de Economía Aplicada III (Econometría y Estadística).
    13. Katharina GASSNER, 1998. "An Estimation of UK Telephone Access Demand Using Pseudo-Panel Data," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9817, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    14. Mª Dolores Collado, 1998. "Estimating binary choice models from cohort data," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 22(2), pages 259-276, May.
    15. Dolores Collado, M., 1997. "Estimating dynamic models from time series of independent cross-sections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 37-62.
    16. Rumman Khan, 2021. "Assessing Sampling Error in Pseudo‐Panel Models," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(3), pages 742-769, June.
    17. Randolph Luca Bruno & Laura Magazzini & Marco Stampini, 2018. "The Joint Estimate of Singleton and Longitudinal Observations: a GMM Approach for Improved Efficiency," Working Papers 04/2018, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    18. David Aristei & Luca Pieroni, 2010. "Habits, Complementarities and Heterogeneity in Alcohol and Tobacco Demand: A Multivariate Dynamic Model," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(4), pages 428-457, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Budget Incidence Analysis; Redistribution; Lifetime Income Smoothing; Pseudo Panel Procedure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence

    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:ses:arsjes:2011-ii-1. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Kurt Schmidheiny (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sgvssea.html .

    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.