Samuel Calonge

Income-related inequalities in health: some international comparisons

This paper presents evidence on income-related inequalities in self-assessed health in nine industrialized countries. Health interview survey data were used to construct concentration curves of self-assessed health, measured as a latent variable. Inequalities in health favoured the higher income groups and were statistically significant in all countries. Inequalities were particularly high in the United States and the United Kingdom. Amongst other European countries, Sweden, Finland and the former East Germany had the lowest inequality. Across countries, a strong association was found between inequalities in health and inequalities in income.

Equity in the finance of health care: some further international comparisons

This paper presents further international comparisons of progressivity of health care financing systems. The paper builds on the work of Wagstaff et al. [Wagstaff, A., van Doorslaer E., et al., 1992. Equity in the finance of health care: some international comparisons, Journal of Health Economics 11, pp. 361-387] but extends it in a number of directions: we modify the methodology used there and achieve a higher degree of cross-country comparability in variable definitions; we update and extend the cross-section of countries; and we present evidence on trends in financing mixes and progressivity.

Redistributive effect progressivity and differential tax treatment: personal income taxes in twelve OECD countries

This paper decomposes the redistributive effect of the personal income taxes (PITs) of twelve OECD countries into four components: (i) an average rate effect, (ii) a departure-from-proportionality or progressivity effect, (iii) a horizontal equity effect and (iv) a reranking effect. The product of (i) and (ii) indicates the vertical redistribution associated with the PIT and the sum of (iii) and (iv) indicates the impact on the distribution of income of differential tax treatment. The average tax rate is found to be low in France and high in the Nordic countries, and the PIT is found to be most progressive in France, Ireland and Spain, and least progressive in Denmark and Sweden. Taking (i) and (ii) together, Denmark and the US achieve broadly similar levels of vertical redistributive effect. Differential treatment is found to have a much smaller effect on income redistribution (as a proportion of redistributive effect) than the vertical redistribution caused by progressivity, though there are differences between countries. These differences appear to be due principally to a different emphasis on deductions, such as tax deductibility of mortgage interest payments and insurance premiums, and on local income tax.

A Differential Redistributive Analysis of Bilinear Dual-Income-Tax Reforms

We analyze differential redistributive effects of bilinear tax reforms that are applied to dual income taxes or, more generally, to two different one-dimensional taxes. To do so we analyze the one-dimensional income tax case, and then we introduce a partial order, based on the Lorenz dominance criterion, which induces a lattice structure within the set of bilinear tax reforms whenever certain conditions on the tax reform policies and the dual income distribution hold. We illustrate this result empirically in the case of the Spanish dual personal income tax. We also analyze voting preferences and revenue elasticities, and we discuss the robustness of our theoretical predictions when some assumptions of the model are weakened.