Studies Of Income Redistribution In Denmark

Income redistribution studies on the macro–economic level have been undertaken in Denmark for the years 1938–39, 1949, 1955, and 1963. By use of national accounts figures and all other available statistics, it was on certain assumptions possible to distribute public sector income and expenditure by income groups. A quite different approach is used in a Danish redistribution study on the micro‐economic level for 1971, which relies solely on the comprehensive data from the family budget survey for that year. Unfortunately this study only relates to employee households. This paper deals with the 1963 and 1971 studies. First it describes and discusses the differences in methodology between the two studies and indicates some ideas for future studies in this field in Denmark. In the following sections some main results of the two studies are given, briefly for the 1963 study and more comprehensively for the 1971 study. The studies show the great and growing strength of the policy of redistribution through public sector income and expenditure in Denmark. It is the opinion of the authors that the appearance of redistribution studies based on comprehensive family budget surveys makes for a substantial improvement of redistribution figures, and that the purely micro‐level frame of reference makes it possible to interpret the results in a more satisfactory way than before. Furthermore, the appearance of detailed input‐output based national accounts data should bring about further improvements in redistribution figures through better data on indirect taxes and subsidies as well as supporting data which are necessary to link the micro and macro levels in a consistent way.