Economics

Budget Incidence Fiscal Redistribution Database

Leiden Budget Incidence Fiscal Redistribution Database (2011), assembled by Chen Wang and Koen Caminada (Version 1, August 2011), presents the disentanglement of income inequality and the redistributive effect of social transfers and taxes in 36 LIS countries for the period 1970-2006.

The data source for our database is the microdata accessed between January and August, 2011, through the secured remote-execution system from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database. You can also access our database via the website of the LIS: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

This data set offers a number of measures of fiscal redistribution in the developed countries, drawing upon data from 177 Luxembourg Income Study surveys conducted in 36 countries between 1967 and 2006. In this dataset we have computed five kinds of results, namely income inequality before social transfers and taxes, income inequality after social transfers and taxes, the overall redistributive effect, the partial effect of redistribution by several social transfers and the partial effect of redistribution by several income taxes (see for a specification below). Specifically, we have computed:

A measure of overall fiscal redistribution, as reflected in the difference between the Gini indexes of pre-tax-transfer primary income and post-tax-transfer disposable income. We offer measures of both absolute fiscal redistribution (Gini pri - Gini dpi) and relative fiscal redistribution ((Gini pri - Gini dpi)/ Gini pri).
[Table A1 in Excel Spreadsheet]
The shares of absolute and relative fiscal redistribution resulting from direct taxes and social transfers.
Table A2 in Excel Spreadsheet]
The average size of social transfers as a proportion of households’ pre-tax income, and a summary index of the degree to which transfers are targeted toward low-income groups. Our measure ranges from -1.0 (the poorest recipient receives all transfer income) to +1.0 (the richest recipient receives all transfer income).
[Table A3 in Excel Spreadsheet]
A measure of the extent of fiscal redistribution that is associated with several taxes and transfers (codes refer to LIS Household Income Components List; see Annex A below):
- Sickness benefits (V16)
- Occupational injury and disease benefits (v17)
- Disability benefits (v18)
- State old-age and survivors benefits (v19)
- Child/family benefits (v20)
- Unemployment compensation benefits (v21)
- Maternity and other family leave benefits (v22)
- Military/veterans/war benefits (v23)
- Other social insurance benefits (v24)
- Social assistance cash benefits (v25)
- Near-cash benefits (v26)
- Mandatory payroll taxes (v7+v13)
- Income taxes (v11)
[Table A4 in Excel Spreadsheet]

In measuring income, we have employed an equivalency scale that divides household size by the square root of the number of household members, weighting households by the number of members they include. As to missing data, we have included households which report zero primary income (i.e., all of their income is derived from the state) but have excluded households that report zero disposable income. We have employed standard LIS top- and bottom-coding conventions, top-coding income at 10 times the median of non-equivalized income and bottomcoding income at 1 percent of equivalized mean income.

A more detailed description of these data and method is available in Chen Wang and Koen Caminada, ‘Disentangling income inequality and the redistributive effect of social transfers and taxes in 36 LIS countries’, Leiden Department of Economics Research Memorandum #2011.02. Please cite this working paper when referring to the data set, along with the web address (our work is published in International Social Security Review 65(3), 2012 and in International Journal of Social Welfare, 23(3), 2014).

Questions / contact
Any questions about Leiden LIS Budget Incidence Fiscal Redistribution Dataset may be addressed to:

CHEN WANG, Economics Department, Leiden University, PO Box 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: c.wang@law.leidenuniv.nl
or
KOEN CAMINADA, Economics Department, Leiden University, PO Box 9520, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands. E-mail: c.l.j.caminada@law.leidenuniv.nl

Download Leiden LIS Budget Incidence Fiscal Redistribution Data (Excel File)