IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v25y1999i4p539-556.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Benefits on Income Inequality in the Canadian Provinces

Author

Listed:
  • Galen J. Countryman

Abstract

This study provides an analysis of the relative progressivity of the immediate impact of the unemployment insurance (UI) program in Canada from 1975 to 1996 at both the national and provincial level. In addition, the welfare gain from the reduction in income inequality was estimated (given certain normative assumptions) to be between 1 and 2 percent of aggregate income nationally. This estimate can be compared with the efficiency costs from the labour market implications of the program. Given the existing policy debate on the UI program, this should prove to be both an interesting and important component of any future policy discussions concerning the UI systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Galen J. Countryman, 1999. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Benefits on Income Inequality in the Canadian Provinces," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(4), pages 539-556, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:539-556
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0317-0861%28199912%2925%3A4%3C539%3ATEOUIB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
    Download Restriction: only available to JSTOR subscribers
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lars Osberg, 1998. "Economic Insecurity," Discussion Papers 0088, University of New South Wales, Social Policy Research Centre.
    2. Shelley A. Phipps, 1990. "The Impact of the Unemployment Insurance Reform of 1990 on Single Earners," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 16(3), pages 252-261, September.
    3. Lars Osberg, 1979. "Unemployment Insurance in Canada: A Review of the Recent Amendments," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 5(2), pages 223-235, Spring.
    4. Atkinson, Anthony B & Micklewright, John, 1991. "Unemployment Compensation and Labor Market Transitions: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 1679-1727, December.
    5. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    6. Shorrocks, A F, 1980. "The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(3), pages 613-625, April.
    7. Jenkins, S., 1988. "The Measurement Of Economic Inequality," Papers 170, Australian National University - Department of Economics.
    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. Cécile BATISSE & Nong ZHU, 2009. "L’effet des politiques sociales sur l’emploi des nouveaux immigrants à Montréal :une analyse longitudinale et conjoncturelle," Working Papers 200925, CERDI.
    2. Nong Zhu & Cécile Batisse, 2011. "L'effet des politiques sociales sur l'emploi des nouveaux immigrants à Montréal :une analyse longitudinale et conjoncturelle," CERDI Working papers halshs-00554261, HAL.
    3. Nong Zhu & Cecile Batisse, 2014. "L'effet des politiques sociales sur l'emploi des nouveaux immigrants à Montréal," CIRANO Working Papers 2014s-05, CIRANO.
    4. Eric Levin & Robert Wright, 2001. "Unemployment insurance, moral hazard, and economic growth," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 7(4), pages 373-384, November.
    5. Glawion, Rene & Puche, Marc & Haller, Frédéric, 2020. "A General Equilibrium Model of Earnings, Income, and Wealth," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224580, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Nong Zhu & Cécile Batisse, 2011. "L'effet des politiques sociales sur l'emploi des nouveaux immigrants à Montréal :une analyse longitudinale et conjoncturelle," Working Papers halshs-00554261, HAL.
    7. Vanesa Jorda & Jose M. Alonso, 2020. "What works to mitigate and reduce relative (and absolute) inequality?: A systematic review," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-152, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    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. Michael Gerfin, 1994. "Income Distribution, Income Inequality and Life Cycle Effects - A Nonparametric Analysis for Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 130(III), pages 509-522, September.
    2. Essama-Nssah, B., 2002. "Assessing the distributional impact of public policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2883, The World Bank.
    3. Papatheodorou, Christos & Pavlopoulos, Dimitris, 2003. "Accounting for inequality in the EU: Income disparities between and within member states and overall income inequality," MPRA Paper 209, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Josep Oliver Alonso & Xavier Ramos & José Luis Raymond-Bara, 2001. "Recent trends in Spanish Income Distribution: A Robust Picture of Falling Income Inequality," Working Papers wp0107, Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona.
    5. Camacho Cuena, Eva & Neugebauer, Tibor & Seidl, Christian, 2005. "Compensating justice beats leaky buckets: an experimental investigation," Economics Working Papers 2005-06, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    6. Peter Lambert, & Giuseppe Lanza, 2003. "The effect on inequality of changing one or two incomes," IFS Working Papers W03/15, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    7. Camacho Cuena, Eva & Neugebauer, Tibor & Seidl, Christian, 2004. "Leaky bucket Paradoxes in income inequality perceptions: an experimental investigation," Economics Working Papers 2004-04, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    8. Andonie, Costel & Kuzmics, Christoph & Rogers, Brian W., 2019. "Efficiency-based measures of inequality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 60-69.
    9. Casilda Lasso de la Vega & Ana Urrutia & Oscar Volij, 2011. "An Axiomatic Characterization Of The Theil Inequality Order," Working Papers 1103, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    10. Tugce, Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-49, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    11. Maria Cubel & Peter Lambert, 2002. "Progression-neutral income tax reforms and horizontal inequity," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 1-8, December.
    12. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    13. Hoy, Michael & Huang, Rachel J., 2017. "Measuring discrimination using principles of stochastic dominance," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 39-52.
    14. Frankel, David M. & Volij, Oscar, 2011. "Measuring school segregation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 1-38, January.
    15. Sorger, Gerhard & Stark, Oded, 2013. "Income redistribution going awry: The reversal power of the concern for relative deprivation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-9.
    16. Lorena Remuzgo & Jose Maria Sarabia, 2015. "A general factorial decomposition of the second Theil index of inequality with applications in environmental economics," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(2), pages 1369-1378.
    17. Nicole Palan, 2010. "Measurement of Specialization – The Choice of Indices," FIW Working Paper series 062, FIW.
    18. Kleiber, Christian, 2001. "Corrigendum to "The Existence of Population Inequality Measures": [Economics Letters 57 (1997) 39-44]," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 429-429, June.
    19. Ji-Won Park & Chae Un Kim, 2021. "Getting to a feasible income equality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-16, March.
    20. Maria Ana Lugo & Esfandiar Maasoumi, 2008. "Multidimensional Poverty Measures from an Information Theory Perspective," Working Papers 85, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    More about this item

    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:cpp:issued:v:25:y:1999:i:4:p:539-556. 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: Iver Chong The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Iver Chong to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    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.