Olivier Bargain - Böcker

An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.The primary goal of economics is, or should be, to improve the living conditions and overall well-being of individuals, but most analyses of inequality, poverty, and the redistributive effects of public policies are conducted instead at the household level. Similarly, the bulk of our data - whether drawn from surveys or administrative records - pertains to households rather than individuals. This approach might be acceptable if households were inherently equitable spaces. However, extensive research across the human and social sciences has revealed significant inequalities within families. Against this backdrop, The Economics of Power and Poverty in the Home begins by exploring what can be measured about the sharing of resources and the distribution of well-being within households, with particular attention to gender disparities and child poverty. Taking stock of a wide range of economic and social science research, it offers a critical assessment of available microeconomic models and measurement tools, examining what they can illuminate about intra-household dynamics. Olivier Bargain then investigates the key demographic, economic, and social factors that shape inequalities within households, including women's participation in the labour market and their control over income and assets, as well as broader contextual influences such as economic crises, social movements, media and role models, and the enduring impact of formal and informal norms. Some of these factors are also relevant as potential markers for policy intervention and the targeting of social programs, especially when they help to identify instances of acute inequities within families. Turning explicitly to redistributive policies, the volume analyses how cash transfers, in-kind benefits, and taxation can shift power dynamics within households and affect the poverty status of women and children. Throughout, the book critically engages with recent developments in academic and policy debates, and outlines directions for future research. It concludes by addressing the normative challenges households present for the design of equitable public policies, such as the complexities of redistributing resources both between and within households.

This volume contains eight contributions aimed to advance policy analysis using the European tax-benefit micro-simulation model, EUROMOD. Microsimulation allows computing the whole set of taxes and benefits of a country and the resulting budget constraint for each household of a representative dataset. Thus, it can be used to evaluate how existing fiscal policies alter inequality, poverty and the overall income distribution. In addition, the simulation of financial incentives considerably improves the econometric estimations of labor supply behaviors, fertility choices, and marital decisions, thereby allowing better prediction to policy changes. EUROMOD goes once step further in the process of helping policy design: based on homogenized datasets and harmonized definitions of tax-benefit instruments, it allows to perform comprehensive international comparisons of EU-15 countries and to evaluate the optimality of tax-benefit policies. For instance, one can assess the effect of a common reform in particular institutional settings or the transmission of a tax-benefit system from one country to another. After an introductory chapter that present the history and the scope of the EUROMOD project, seven chapters on different policy issues follow. Among the discussed themes are: the relevance of the British tax credit to encourage female employment in continental Europe, the impact of hypothetical child benefits on child poverty in Southern Europe, the variety of effects of the same standard pension reform once implemented in different European countries, the role of the fiscal drag as an automatic stabilizer and its effect on labor costs, the revelation of social preferences from actual implicit tax rates. It aims to advance policy analysis using the European Tax-benefit Model. It evaluates how existing fiscal policies alter inequality, poverty and the overall income distribution. It investigates how financial incentives considerably improve the econometric estimations of labor supply behaviors, fertility and matrial choices.