NERI Seminar Dublin - The Tax and Benefits System from a Lifetime Perspective

Brendan Burgess

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Interesting seminar next Wednesday

[broken link removed]

Topic: The Tax and Benefit System from a Lifetime Perspective

Speaker: Barra Roantree, IFS, London

Date: 13th July, 2016

Time: Tea and coffee from 15:50. The seminar will commence at 16:00

Abstract

Most analysis of the effects of the tax and benefit system is based on snapshot information about a single cross-section of people. Such an approach gives only a partial picture because it cannot account for the fact that circumstances change over life. This paper investigates how our impression of inequality, and the redistribution undertaken by the tax and benefit system changes when viewed from a lifetime perspective. To do so, we simulate lifecycle data designed to be representative of the experiences of the baby-boom cohort, born 1945–54. We examine the properties of the current tax and benefit system as well as historical and hypothetical reforms from both a lifetime and a snapshot perspective. We find that much of what the tax and benefit system achieves is effectively to redistribute across periods of life and, as a result, it is much less effective at reducing lifetime inequality than inequality at a snapshot. The report is available at http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/7986 [broken link removed]
 
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