IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lis/liswps/177.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Changing Labor Markets and Social Policies on Income Inequality and Poverty: Hungary and the Other Visegrad Countries Compared

Author

Listed:
  • István Tóth
  • Michael Förster

Abstract

The transition to a market economy has lead to liberalization in a great many spheres of society in the reform economies of Central and Eastern Europe. At the same time, financial insecurity of many households persisted or increased, and certain parts of the population face for the first time risks of impoverishment. To respond to this situation and to design effective programs combating poverty under budgetary constraints is therefore one of the prime objectives of social policy in these countries. We argue in the paper that there may be two major determinants of income inequalities and poverty. First and foremost, labour and capital markets play a very important role, through the allocation of jobs and earnings opportunities to the various segments of the population. Secondly, social policies, via the redistribution of taxes through the state budget from those having higher incomes to those having lower incomes also play a role in shaping income inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • István Tóth & Michael Förster, 1998. "The Effects of Changing Labor Markets and Social Policies on Income Inequality and Poverty: Hungary and the Other Visegrad Countries Compared," LIS Working papers 177, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lis:liswps:177
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/177.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy Smeeding & Gunther Schmaus & Brigitte Buhmann & Lee Rainwater, 1988. "Equivalence Scales, Well-Being, Inequality and Poverty: Sensitivity Estimates Across Ten Countries Using the LIS Database," LIS Working papers 17, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Timothy Smeeding & Barbara Torrey & Debra Bailey Whitman, 1995. "Rowing Between Scylla and Charybdis: Income Transitions in Central European Households," LIS Working papers 132, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Atkinson,Anthony Barnes & Micklewright,John, 1992. "Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Distribution of Income," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521433297, Enero-Abr.
    4. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    5. Adam Szulc, 1996. "Economic Transition and Poverty: The Case of the Vysehrad Group Countries," LIS Working papers 138, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. repec:bla:revinw:v:34:y:1988:i:2:p:115-42 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Michael Förster, 1993. "Comparing Poverty in 13 OECD Countries Traditional and Synthetic Approaches," LIS Working papers 100, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Timothy M. Smeeding & Peter Gottschalk, 1998. "The International Evidence on Income Distribution in Modern Economies: Where Do We Stand?," International Economic Association Series, in: Yair Mundlak (ed.), Contemporary Economic Issues, chapter 3, pages 39-61, Palgrave Macmillan.
    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. Kattuman, Paul & Redmond, Gerry, 2001. "Income Inequality in Early Transition: The Case of Hungary 1987-1996," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 40-65, March.
    2. Adam Szulc, 2008. "Checking the consistency of poverty in Poland: 1997-2003 evidence," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 33-55.
    3. István Tóth & Michael Förster, 2000. "Trends in Child Poverty and Social Transfers in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland: Experiences from the Years after Transition," LIS Working papers 226, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    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. Stephen P. Jenkins & John Micklewright, 2007. "New Directions in the Analysis of Inequality and Poverty," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 700, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    3. Cem Baslevent & Meltem Dayoglu, 2005. "The Effect of Squatter Housing on Income Distribution in Urban Turkey," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(1), pages 31-45, January.
    4. Stephen Bazen & Patrick Moyes, 2012. "Elitism and stochastic dominance," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(1), pages 207-251, June.
    5. Timothy M. Smeeding & Katherin Ross Phillips, 2002. "Cross-National Differences in Employment and Economic Sufficiency," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 580(1), pages 103-133, March.
    6. Ceema Zahra Namazie, 2002. "Early Evidence of Welfare Changes in the Kyrgyz Republic: Have Things Got Worse with Reforms?," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 63, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    7. Peter Saunders, 1994. "Immigrants and the Distribution of Income: National and International Comparisons," LIS Working papers 123, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Anthony Atkinson & Timothy Smeeding & Lee Rainwater, 1994. "Income Distribution in European Countries," LIS Working papers 121, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    9. Núñez Velázquez, José Javier, 2009. "Estado actual y nuevas aproximaciones a la medición de la pobreza/Current Status and New Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 27, pages 325-346, Agosto.
    10. Magne Mogstad & Audun Langørgen & Rolf Aaberge, 2007. "Region-specific versus country-specific poverty lines in analysis of poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 5(1), pages 115-122, April.
    11. Vecchi, Giovanni & Coppola, Michela, 2006. "Nutrition and growth in Italy, 1861-1911: What macroeconomic data hide," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 438-464, July.
    12. Gordon Anderson, 2003. "Poverty in America 1970-1990: who did gain ground? An application of stochastic dominance criteria employing simultaneous inequality tests in a partial panel," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(6), pages 621-640.
    13. Achille Lemmi & Donatella Grassi & Alessandra Masi & Nicoletta Pannuzi & Andrea Regoli, 2019. "Methodological Choices and Data Quality Issues for Official Poverty Measures: Evidences from Italy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 299-330, January.
    14. Coral del Río & Javier Ruiz-Castillo, 2001. "TIPs for poverty analysis. The case of Spain, 1980-81 to 1990-91," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 25(1), pages 63-91, January.
    15. Anh Thu Quang Pham & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya, 2018. "Measurement of Poverty in Multiple Dimensions: The Case of Vietnam," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 953-990, August.
    16. Cowell, Frank & Litchfield, Julie & Mercader-Prats, Magda, 1999. "Income inequality comparisons with dirty data: the UK and Spain during the 1980s," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 2240, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Whitehouse, Edward, 2000. "How Poor are the Old? A Survey of Evidence from 44 Countries," MPRA Paper 14177, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Robert E. Goodin & Bruce Headey & Ruud Muffels, 1997. "Poverty, Inequality, and Income Redistribution in the 'Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, 1985 to 1989," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 66(1), pages 92-101.
    19. Kattuman, Paul & Redmond, Gerry, 2001. "Income Inequality in Early Transition: The Case of Hungary 1987-1996," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 40-65, March.
    20. Margit Kraus & Katja Hölsch, 2003. "Poverty Alleviation and the Degree of Centralisation in European Schemes of Social Assistance," LIS Working papers 342, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    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:lis:liswps:177. 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: Piotr Paradowski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lisprlu.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.