Fiscal redistribution in the developed countries: New insights from the Luxembourg Income Study

This paper offers a detailed discussion of fiscal redistribution in developed countries, employing data that have been computed from the LIS's micro-level database. LIS data are detailed enough to allow us not only to measure overall redistribution but also to explore whether redistribution has been achieved primarily through taxes or transfers; to determine whether it is associated with the size or the internal target efficiency of social benefits; to compare the redistributive effect of the most important individual transfers; to focus separately on households in poverty and those headed by persons of working age; and to explore trends in redistribution between the late 1970s and early 2000s. The paper concludes by demonstrating the practical usefulness of the data presented by conducting an empirical analysis of several proposed explanations for cross-country and over-time variance in fiscal redistribution.