We apply stochastic dominance tests to investigate trends in inequality in Australia over the period 1983 to 1998. Results show significant levels of inequalities in the income and expenditure distributions for the population as a whole as well as within population groups. We further find that the impact of the government's tax and transfer redistribution scheme varied greatly among the different demographic groups. After tax and transfers are made, significant gains in welfare levels were observed for migrant and single-parents households compared to their non-migrant and couple-parent counterparts respectively. In contrast, welfare levels of male-headed households continue to dominate those of female households post tax and that there is limited government capacity for closing the existing gap in incomes and expenditures among households without children.
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Paper provided by Monash University, Department of Economics in its series Monash Economics Working Papers with number
21/07.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1983.
"Ranking Income Distributions,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 50(197), pages 3-17, February.
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