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The Impact of Taxes and Transfer Payments on the Distribution of Income: A Parametric Comparison

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  • James McDonald
  • Rachel Hartshorn
  • Samuel Dastrup

Abstract

The Luxembourg Income Study data is used to explore the impact of taxes and transfer payments on the distribution of income across thirteen countries for different years. The five-parameter generalized beta distribution and ten of its special cases are considered as models for the size distribution of income. Maximum likelihood methods are used to estimate the model with corresponding measures of goodness of fit and inequality reported. These results identify the best-fitting two, three, and four- parameter models as well as describe the inter-temporal patterns of inequality corresponding to earnings, total income, and disposable income. A general pattern of increasing inequality is observed for almost all countries considered along with significantly different distributional impacts of taxes and transfer payments across countries.

Suggested Citation

  • James McDonald & Rachel Hartshorn & Samuel Dastrup, 2006. "The Impact of Taxes and Transfer Payments on the Distribution of Income: A Parametric Comparison," LIS Working papers 401, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:401
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    3. Boccanfuso, Dorothée & Richard, Patrick & Savard, Luc, 2013. "Parametric and nonparametric income distribution estimators in CGE micro-simulation modeling," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 892-899.
    4. Sung Y. Park & Anil K. Bera, 2018. "Information theoretic approaches to income density estimation with an application to the U.S. income data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(4), pages 461-486, December.
    5. Monique Graf & J. Miguel Marín & Isabel Molina, 2019. "A generalized mixed model for skewed distributions applied to small area estimation," TEST: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 28(2), pages 565-597, June.
    6. Michał Brzeziński, 2013. "Parametric Modelling of Income Distribution in Central and Eastern Europe," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 5(3), pages 207-230, September.
    7. Walter, Paul & Weimer, Katja, 2018. "Estimating poverty and inequality indicators using interval censored income data from the German microcensus," Discussion Papers 2018/10, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    8. 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.
    9. Khosravi Tanak, A. & Mohtashami Borzadaran, G.R. & Ahmadi, J., 2015. "Entropy maximization under the constraints on the generalized Gini index and its application in modeling income distributions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 438(C), pages 657-666.
    10. Brzezinski, Michal, 2013. "Asymptotic and bootstrap inference for top income shares," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 10-13.
    11. Brzezinski, Michal, 2014. "Empirical modeling of the impact factor distribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 362-368.
    12. Monique Graf & Desislava Nedyalkova, 2014. "Modeling of Income and Indicators of Poverty and Social Exclusion Using the Generalized Beta Distribution of the Second Kind," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 821-842, December.
    13. Enrico Fabrizi & Maria Rosaria Ferrante & Carlo Trivisano, 2020. "A functional approach to small area estimation of the relative median poverty gap," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(3), pages 1273-1291, June.

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