IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp222.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

To What Extent do Fiscal Regimes Equalize Opportunities for Income Acquisition Among Citizens?

Author

Listed:
  • John E. Roemer
  • Rolf Aaberge
  • Ugo Colombino
  • Johan Fritzell
  • Stephen P. Jenkins
  • Ive Marx
  • Marianne Page
  • Evert Pommer
  • Javier Ruiz-Castillo
  • Maria Jesus San Segundo
  • Torben Tranaes
  • Gert G.Wagner
  • Ignacio Zubiri

Abstract

This project employs the theory of equality of opportunity, described in Roemer's book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in ten countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen's type is defined by the socioeconomic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country's current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does.

Suggested Citation

  • John E. Roemer & Rolf Aaberge & Ugo Colombino & Johan Fritzell & Stephen P. Jenkins & Ive Marx & Marianne Page & Evert Pommer & Javier Ruiz-Castillo & Maria Jesus San Segundo & Torben Tranaes & Gert G, 2000. "To What Extent do Fiscal Regimes Equalize Opportunities for Income Acquisition Among Citizens?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 222, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp222
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.38566.de/dp222.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

    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:diw:diwwpp:dp222. 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: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.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.