Justin van de Ven

Means Testing Retirement Benefits: fostering equity or discouraging savings?*

Means testing plays an important role in the UK state pension system. We use a dynamic programming model to consider the long-term behavioural effects of a recent policy reform that reduced the marginal tax rates on private income of means tested retirement benefits from 100% to 40%. Our analysis suggests that the policy reform will encourage the poorest third of all households (based on wealth at age 65) to both save more and delay retirement, and have the opposite effects on richer households. In aggregate, the off-setting behavioural responses that we identify imply an overall delay in the timing of retirement, a fall in average savings, and a small effect on the government budget. We find that, on balance, the policy reform provides a reasonable compromise between the distortions associated with high marginal tax rates, and the costs implied by universal benefits provision.

Close Equals and Calculation of the Vertical, Horizontal and Reranking Effects of Taxation

This paper examines the Gini-based method of decomposing the redistributive effect of taxation into vertical, horizontal, and reranking components. The consequences of different bandwidth choices, used to identify close-equals groups to estimate the horizontal effect, are discussed. Two opposing forces are identified which militate against choosing a very small or large bandwidth. It is suggested that the best procedure is to use the bandwidth that maximises the estimated vertical component, compute the reranking component exactly as a sample statistic and obtain the horizontal effect by subtraction. The technique is used to analyse the progressivity of tax and transfer payments in Australia. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Simulating Household Savings and Labour Supply: An Application of Dynamic Programming

This paper describes a fully behavioural microsimulation model that has recently been developed at the National Institute for considering responses to changes in pension policy of household savings and labour supply. The model generates household decisions regarding labour/leisure, and consumption/savings by solving a dynamic programming problem over the simulated lifetime. This analytical framework incorporates a degree of complexity that is usually omitted from econometric analyses that are common in the literature.

Decomposing Redistributive Effects of Taxes and Transfers in Australia: Annual and Lifetime Measures

This paper decomposes the redistributive effect on annual and lifetime inequality of a range of taxes and transfers in Australia, using a dynamic cohort lifetime simulation model. The redistributive effect is decomposed into vertical, horizontal and reranking effects. Horizontal inequities in the tax and transfer system are found to be negligible. The extent of reranking is greater in the lifetime than in the annual context and is affected by the equivalence scales used to adjust household incomes. If no adjustment is made to household incomes, reranking is about nine per cent of the reduction in lifetime inequality. However, if each child is counted as equivalent to one-third of an adult, reranking is found to be less than one per cent. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia

The Distributional Effects of Inflation in Australia 1980–1995

This paper exemines the redistributional effect of price changes in Australia over the sixteen year period from 1980 to 1995.

Equivalence Scales and Taxation: A Simulation Analysis

What constitutes the appropriate adjustment for non-income differences between families? This is a fundamental question that underlies many studies of redistributive equity; and yet, despite a considerable research effort, a generally agreed solution has remained elusive. Elsewhere (Muellbauer and van de Ven, 2002), we have attempted to address this problem by considering the equivalence scales that are implicit in transfer policy. In this paper we expand upon our earlier discussion, by considering the generality of the equivalence scale framework as it relates to tax and benefit systems, and by using simulated data to explore our suggested methods for estimation.

The Demand for Water by Single‐Metered and Group‐Metered Households

This paper examines water consumption in group‐metered households. A utility‐maximising model is developed in which the marginal price schedule is approximated by a polynomial function of water consumption. The model is modified to allow for an incentive for group‐metered households to consume more water than if they were separately metered. This occurs if households do not expect their own increase in water consumption to be matched by other households sharing the meter, so that part of the marginal cost of water is shifted to other households. Estimates using Western Australian data are, however, unable to detect any significant effect of this kind, perhaps because the price response itself is small.

Expenditure and Disposable Income Trends of UK Households: Evidence from Micro-Data

The view that there is an ‘under-savings’ problem in the UK domestic sector has had an important bearing on the contemporary agenda for policy reform. This paper considers the temporal variation of household expenditure and disposable income described by micro-data observed during the past four decades (1971 to 2009). I find a very close correspondence between the growth of expenditure and disposable income over the sample period, with the implication that households have not offset the well-documented decline in occupational pension provisions during the period through increased private saving out of disposable income.

Retirement Incomes: Private Savings versus Social Transfers

This paper is concerned with the conditions under which a compulsory pay-as-you-go pension system, in which the current generation of workers finances the pensions of those who are currently retired, is superior to the use of private saving.

A General Equilibrium Analysis of Annuity Rates in the Presence of Aggregate Mortality Risk

This paper explores the pricing of annuities in a structural overlapping generations model in which the mortality rate of people when old is uncertain. A market clearing price for annuities is established below the fair price. At this price the willingness of old people to pay the young to carry old peoples aggregate mortality risk is balanced by the willingness of the young to bear the risk. The model suggests that aggregate mortality risk is unlikely to be a major influence on annuity pricing.