IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04188709.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Influence of tax structures on income inequality in WAEMU countries
[Influences des structures fiscales sur l'inégalité de revenus dans les pays de l'UEMOA]

Author

Listed:
  • Zabsonre Zacharia

    (CEDRES - Centre d'Etudes, de Documentation et de Recherches Economique et Sociale - UJZK - Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, UTS - Université Thomas Sankara)

  • Boukary Ouedraogo

    (CEDRES - Centre d'Etudes, de Documentation et de Recherches Economique et Sociale - UJZK - Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo, UTS - Université Thomas Sankara)

Abstract

Extreme inequalities often engender the kind of poverty that has major implications for the enjoyment of civil and political rights (Alston, 2019). Left unchecked, it can lead to oligarchy, socio-political unrest, political instability, insecurity crises (Miller, 2021; Tanzi, 2018; Karen, 2017). Yet all citizens are legitimately entitled to a share of income generated by the state because they agree to obey the legitimacy of the state and the prosperity of its members (Hemel, 2019). Income distribution before tax may change due to changes in tax regimes (Bourguignon, 2015). The present research therefore aims to analyze the influence of the tax structure on income inequality in WAEMU over the period 2000-2020. To do this, the technique of least squares in two stages is used. The results show that progressive and regressive taxation positively affect income inequality in the WAEMU area. The overall level of taxation and proportional taxes do not have a significant effect on income inequality in WAEMU countries. Therefore, to reduce income inequality, WAEMU countries have an interest in reducing both regressive taxes, and progressive taxes. But the decline of the former must be greater than the latter.

Suggested Citation

  • Zabsonre Zacharia & Boukary Ouedraogo, 2023. "Influence of tax structures on income inequality in WAEMU countries [Influences des structures fiscales sur l'inégalité de revenus dans les pays de l'UEMOA]," Post-Print hal-04188709, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04188709
    DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8276335
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04188709v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04188709v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5281/zenodo.8276335?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jaejoon Woo & Ms. Elva Bova & Mr. Tidiane Kinda & Ms. Yuanyan S Zhang, 2013. "Distributional Consequences of Fiscal Consolidation and the Role of Fiscal Policy: What Do the Data Say?," IMF Working Papers 2013/195, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Jorge Martínez-Vázquez & Violeta Vulovic & Blanca Moreno Dodson, 2012. "The Impact of Tax and Expenditure Policies on Income Distribution: Evidence from a Large Panel of Countries," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 200(1), pages 95-130, March.
    3. François Bourguignon, 2015. "The Globalization of Inequality," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10433.
    4. Laurence M. Ball & Davide Furceri & Mr. Daniel Leigh & Mr. Prakash Loungani, 2013. "The Distributional Effects of Fiscal Consolidation," IMF Working Papers 2013/151, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Yingying Deng & Monica Prasad, 2009. "Taxation and the Worlds of Welfare," LIS Working papers 480, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2007. "How Progressive is the U.S. Federal Tax System? A Historical and International Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    7. Andrew G. Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry, 2017. "Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(4), pages 792-815, November.
    8. Elvire Guillaud & Matthew Olckers & Michaël Zemmour, 2020. "Four Levers of Redistribution: The Impact of Tax and Transfer Systems on Inequality Reduction," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(2), pages 444-466, June.
    9. Miles Corak, 2013. "Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 79-102, Summer.
    10. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    11. John Carter, 2007. "An Empirical Note on Economic Freedom and Income Inequality," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 163-177, January.
    12. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    13. Luca Agnello & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2014. "How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 702-726, December.
    14. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    15. Bird, Richard M. & Zolt, Eric M., 2005. "The limited role of the personal income tax in developing countries," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 928-946, December.
    16. Fernando Rios-Avila & Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, 2018. "Standard-error correction in two-stage optimization models: A quasi–maximum likelihood estimation approach," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 18(1), pages 206-222, March.
    17. repec:bla:devpol:v:23:y:2005:i:2:p:131-144 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Denvil Duncan & Klara Sabirianova Peter, 2016. "Unequal inequalities: Do progressive taxes reduce income inequality?," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 23(4), pages 762-783, August.
    19. Koen Caminada & Kees Goudswaard & Chen Wang & Jinxian Wang, 2019. "Has the redistributive effect of social transfers and taxes changed over time across countries?," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 3-31, January.
    20. Facundo Alvaredo & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Lucas Chancel & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "World Inequality Report 2018," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01885458, HAL.
    21. Achillefs Karakotsios & Constantinos Katrakilidis & Dimitrios Dimitriadis & Theodoros Christoforidis, 2020. "Examining the relationship between income inequality, taxation and economic freedom: a panel cointegration approach," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 206-215.
    22. Beramendi, Pablo & Rueda, David, 2007. "Social Democracy Constrained: Indirect Taxation in Industrialized Democracies," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(4), pages 619-641, October.
    23. Suits, Daniel B, 1977. "Measurement of Tax Progressivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 747-752, September.
    24. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    25. Dao, Ha & Godbout, Luc, 2014. "Le rôle de la fiscalité dans la réduction des inégalités : doit-on se soucier de la structure fiscale servant à prélever les recettes?," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 90(4), pages 303-327, December.
    26. Chen, Shu-Hua, 2020. "Inequality-growth nexus under progressive income taxation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    27. Richard M. Bird & Eric M. Zolt, 2005. "Redistribution via Taxation: The Limited Role of the Personal Income Tax in Developing Countries (2005)," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0507, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    28. Solt, Frederick, 2019. "Measuring Income Inequality Across Countries and Over Time: The Standardized World Income Inequality Database," SocArXiv mwnje, Center for Open Science.
    29. Claessens, Stijn & Perotti, Enrico, 2007. "Finance and inequality: Channels and evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 748-773, December.
    30. Sebastian Guala, 2009. "Taxes in a Wealth Distribution Model by Inelastically Scattering of Particles," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 7(1), pages 1-7.
    31. Jakobsson, Ulf, 1976. "On the measurement of the degree of progression," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1-2), pages 161-168.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gervasio SEMEDO & Bertrand LAPORTE & Asbath ALASSANI, 2022. "How does tax structure affect income inequality? Empirical evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2960, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    2. Simone Salotti & Carmine Trecroci, 2018. "Cross-country evidence on the distributional impact of fiscal policy," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(51), pages 5521-5542, November.
    3. Vanesa Jorda & Jose M. Alonso, 2020. "What works to mitigate and reduce relative (and absolute) inequality?: A systematic review," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-152, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Sudip Ranjan Basu, 2017. "Do data show divergence? Revisiting global income inequality trends," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 24(1), pages 23-53, June.
    5. Rémi Bazillier & Jérôme Hericourt, 2017. "The Circular Relationship Between Inequality, Leverage, And Financial Crises," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 463-496, April.
    6. Richard M. Bird & Eric M. Zolt, 2014. "Taxation and inequality in the Americas: Changing the fiscal contract?," Chapters, in: Richard M. Bird & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), Taxation and Development: The Weakest Link?, chapter 7, pages 193-237, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Pogorelskiy, Kirill & Seidl, Christian & Traub, Stefan, 2010. "Tax progression: International and intertemporal comparison using LIS data," Economics Working Papers 2010-08, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    8. Ciminelli, Gabriele & Ernst, Ekkehard & Merola, Rossana & Giuliodori, Massimo, 2019. "The composition effects of tax-based consolidation on income inequality," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 107-124.
    9. Erauskin, Iñaki & Turnovsky, Stephen J., 2019. "International financial integration and income inequality in a stochastically growing economy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 55-74.
    10. Chung Tran & Nabeeh Zakariyya, 2023. "Progressive Pension and Optimal Tax Progressivity," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2023-691, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    11. Oueslati, Walid & Zipperer, Vera & Rousselière, Damien & Dimitropoulos, Alexandros, 2017. "Energy taxes, reforms and income inequality: An empirical cross-country analysis," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 80-95.
    12. Alain Trannoy, 2015. "Inequality and welfare: Is Europe special?," Working Papers 384, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    13. Kouassi YEBOUA, 2021. "Fiscal policy and growth-inequality tradeoffs: Bayesian evidence from Cote d’Ivoire," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania / Editura Economica, vol. 0(1(626), S), pages 297-310, Spring.
    14. Martin Ambassa Messy & Itchoko Motande Mondjeli Mwa Ndjokou, 2021. "Taxation and Income Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(3), pages 1153-1164.
    15. Mark Edem Kunawotor & Charles Barnor & Raymond Dziwornu, 2021. "The Income Redistributive Effects of Taxes in Africa," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(3), pages 1579-1591.
    16. Per Krusell & Anthony Smith & Joachim Hubmer, 2015. "The historical evolution of the wealth distribution: A quantitative-theoretic investigation," 2015 Meeting Papers 1406, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Conrad Scheibe, 2016. "Fiscal Consolidations and Their Effects on Income Inequality," UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series 2016-4, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
    19. Mario Alloza, 2021. "The impact of taxes on income mobility," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(4), pages 794-854, August.
    20. Joachim Hubmer & Per Krusell & Anthony A. Smith Jr., 2020. "Sources of US Wealth Inequality: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2020, volume 35, pages 391-455, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:hal:journl:hal-04188709. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.