IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2019-497.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Redistributive impacts of fiscal policies in Mexico: Corrections for top income measurement problems

Author

Listed:
  • Vladimir Hlasny

    (Ewha Womans University Seoul, Korea)

Abstract

We assess the redistributive impacts of fiscal instruments in a 2014 Mexican household budget survey (ENIGH) correcting for potential top-income measurement problems. We use two correction methods – survey-sample reweighting for households’ nonresponse probability, and replacing of top incomes using synthetic values from the Pareto distribution – to re-estimate the impacts of pensions, transfers, taxes, and subsidies. These corrections yield higher Ginis (0–9 pc.pt. increase) and top 1\% and 10\% income shares (0–5, and 1–5 pc.pt. increases), consistently between the reweighting and replacing methods, and consistently across all income concepts. Moving from pre-fiscal to post-fiscal income, corrections for nonresponse abate, while corrections for mismeasurement rise. Taxable income exhibits the highest inequality, further undergoing the highest upward correction for top income problems, potentially consistent with evidence of earnings misreporting among the rich. Nontaxable income has a strong equalizing impact of 3.3–4.5 points of the Gini further growing under the top-income corrections. The corrections confirm the inequality-neutral impact of contributory pensions, and equalizing impacts of transfers, taxes and subsidies. In-kind transfers, cash-like transfers and direct taxes have the strongest equalizing impacts: 4.7–5.7, 1.6–1.9, and 1.2–2.2 points of the Gini, respectively. Indirect taxes and subsidies are weakly equalizing, by 0.4-0.6 points. Finally, top-income measurement challenges retain their magnitude across the 2010, 2012 and 2014 ENIGH, but household nonresponse becomes more positively selected over time, causing serious biases.

Suggested Citation

  • Vladimir Hlasny, 2019. "Redistributive impacts of fiscal policies in Mexico: Corrections for top income measurement problems," Working Papers 497, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-497
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2019-497.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raymundo Campos & Gerardo Esquivel & Nora Lustig, 2012. "The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Mexico, 1989–2010," Working Papers 267, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    2. Mariano Bosch & Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez, 2014. "The Trade-Offs of Welfare Policies in Labor Markets with Informal Jobs: The Case of the "Seguro Popular" Program in Mexico," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 71-99, November.
    3. Gerardo Esquivel, 2011. "The Dynamics of Income Inequality in Mexico since NAFTA," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2011), pages 155-188, August.
    4. Filip Novokmet & Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2018. "From Soviets to oligarchs: inequality and property in Russia 1905-2016," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 189-223, June.
    5. Davidson, Russell & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for inequality and poverty measures," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(1), pages 141-166, November.
    6. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2007. "Inequality and the GB2 income distribution," Working Papers 73, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Grafe, Regina & Irigoin, Maria Alejandra, 2006. "The Spanish Empire and its legacy: fiscal redistribution and political conflict in colonial and post-colonial Spanish America," Journal of Global History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 241-267, July.
    8. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    9. Cowell, Frank A. & Flachaire, Emmanuel, 2007. "Income distribution and inequality measurement: The problem of extreme values," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 1044-1072, December.
    10. François Bourguignon, 2018. "Simple adjustments of observed distributions for missing income and missing people," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 171-188, June.
    11. Frank A. Cowell, 2008. "Income Distribution and Inequality," Chapters, in: John B. Davis & Wilfred Dolfsma (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Social Economics, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Distributionally‐Sensitive Inequality Indices And The Gb2 Income Distribution," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 392-398, June.
    13. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Nora Lustig & Florencia Amábile & Marisa Bucheli & George Gray Molina & Sean Higgins & Miguel Jaramillo & Wilson Jiménez Pozo & Veronica Paz Arauco & Claudiney Pereira & Carola Pessino & Máximo Rossi , 2013. "The impact of taxes and social spending on inequality and poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay: An overview," Working Papers 315, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    15. Bruno Martorano, 2014. "Pre-crisis Conditions and Government Policy Responses: Chile and Mexico during the Great Recession," Papers inwopa729, Innocenti Working Papers.
    16. Nora Lustig, 2011. "Fiscal policy and income redistribution in Latin America: Challenging the conventional wisdom," Working Papers 227, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    17. Nora Lustig & George Gray-Molina & Sean Higgins & Miguel Jaramillo & Wilson Jiménez & Veronica Paz & Claudiney Pereira & Carola Pessino & John Scott & Ernesto Yañez, 2012. "The Impact of Taxes and Social Spending on Inequality and Poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru: A Synthesis of Results," Working Papers 264, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    18. Vladimir Hlasny, 2020. "Nonresponse Bias in Inequality Measurement: Cross‐Country Analysis Using Luxembourg Income Study Surveys," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(2), pages 712-731, March.
    19. Lustig Nora, 2016. "Inequality and Fiscal Redistribution in Middle Income Countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 17-60, June.
    20. John Scott, 2008. "Redistributive Constraints under High Inequality: The Case of Mexico," Working Papers DTE 441, CIDE, División de Economía.
    21. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2017. "Pareto Models, Top Incomes and Recent Trends in UK Income Inequality," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(334), pages 261-289, April.
    22. Anand, Sudhir & Segal, Paul, 2017. "Who Are the Global Top 1%?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 111-126.
    23. Oscar Altimir, 1987. "Income Distribution Statistics In Latin America And Their Reliability," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 33(2), pages 111-155, June.
    24. Korinek, Anton & Mistiaen, Johan A. & Ravallion, Martin, 2007. "An econometric method of correcting for unit nonresponse bias in surveys," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 213-235, January.
    25. Filip Novokmet & Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2017. "Appendix to "From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905-2016"," Working Papers 201710, World Inequality Lab.
    26. Anton Korinek & Johan Mistiaen & Martin Ravallion, 2006. "Survey nonresponse and the distribution of income," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 4(1), pages 33-55, April.
    27. Barry C. Arnold, 2008. "Pareto and Generalized Pareto Distributions," Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion, and Well-Being, in: Duangkamon Chotikapanich (ed.), Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves, chapter 7, pages 119-145, Springer.
    28. Angus Deaton, 2019. "The Analysis of Household Surveys," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 30394.
    29. Cornia, Giovanni Andrea (ed.), 2014. "Falling Inequality in Latin America: Policy Changes and Lessons," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198701804.
    30. Mistiaen, Johan A. & Ravallion, Martin, 2003. "Survey compliance and the distribution of income," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2956, The World Bank.
    31. Barbara Castelletti, 2013. "How Redistributive is Fiscal Policy in Latin America?: The Case of Chile and Mexico," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 318, OECD Publishing.
    32. Stephen P. Jenkins & Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Measuring inequality using censored data: a multiple‐imputation approach to estimation and inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(1), pages 63-81, January.
    33. Butler, Richard J. & McDonald, James B., 1989. "Using incomplete moments to measure inequality," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 109-119, September.
    34. Raymundo Campos-Vázquez & Nora Lustig & John Scott, 2018. "Inequality in Mexico: Labour markets and fiscal redistribution 1989–2014," WIDER Working Paper Series 188, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    35. Christoph Lakner & Branko Milanovic, 2016. "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 203-232.
    36. Raymundo Campos & Gerardo Esquivel & Nora Lustig, 2012. "The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Mexico, 1989–2010," Working Papers 267, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    37. Anand, Sudhir & Segal, Paul, 2017. "Who are the global top 1%?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101816, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    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. Vladimir Hlasny, 2021. "Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1217-1256, September.

    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. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2018. "Top Incomes and Inequality Measurement: A Comparative Analysis of Correction Methods Using the EU SILC Data," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-21, June.
    2. Nora Lustig, 2018. "Measuring the Distribution of Household Income, Consumption and Wealth: State of Play and Measurement Challenges," Working Papers 1801, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    3. Vladimir Hlasny, 2021. "Parametric representation of the top of income distributions: Options, historical evidence, and model selection," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1217-1256, September.
    4. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2022. "The Impact of Top Incomes Biases on the Measurement of Inequality in the United States," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(4), pages 749-788, August.
    5. Nora Lustig, 2019. "The “Missing Rich” in Household Surveys: Causes and Correction Approaches," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 75, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    6. Nora Lustig, 2020. "The ``missing rich'' in household surveys: causes and correction approaches," Working Papers 520, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Bartels, Charlotte & Waldenström, Daniel, 2021. "Inequality and top incomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 959, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    8. Frank Cowell & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2021. "Inequality Measurement: Methods and Data," Post-Print hal-03589066, HAL.
    9. Diego Winkelried & Bruno Escobar, 2022. "Declining inequality in Latin America? Robustness checks for Peru," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 223-243, March.
    10. Brzeziński, Michał & Myck, Michal & Najsztub, Mateusz, 2019. "Reevaluating Distributional Consequences of the Transition to Market Economy in Poland: New Results from Combined Household Survey and Tax Return Data," IZA Discussion Papers 12734, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    12. Mathias Silva, 2023. "Parametric models of income distributions integrating misreporting and non-response mechanisms," AMSE Working Papers 2311, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    13. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2018. "Top Incomes and the Measurement of Inequality in Egypt," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 32(2), pages 428-455.
    14. Arthur Charpentier & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2022. "Pareto models for top incomes and wealth," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 1-25, March.
    15. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.
    16. Arthur Charpentier & Emmanuel Flachaire, 2019. "Pareto Models for Top Incomes," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02145024, HAL.
    17. Li, Chengyou & Yu, Yangcheng & Li, Qinghai, 2021. "Top-income data and income inequality correction in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 210-219.
    18. Branko Milanovic, 2022. "After the Financial Crisis: The Evolution of the Global Income Distribution Between 2008 and 2013," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(1), pages 43-73, March.
    19. Burdín, Gabriel & De Rosa, Mauricio & Vigorito, Andrea & Vilá, Joan, 2022. "Falling inequality and the growing capital income share: Reconciling divergent trends in survey and tax data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    20. Lidia Ceriani & Paolo Verme, 2022. "Population Changes and the Measurement of Inequality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 549-575, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    fiscal incidence; redistribution; inequality; top income measurement problems; Pareto distribution; Mexico; ENIGH.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • N36 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Latin America; Caribbean

    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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2019-497. 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: Maria Ana Lugo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.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.