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This article analyses programmes of cash allowances for children and compares their effectiveness in combating child poverty in Russia and four European Union (EU) countries representing alternative family policy models – Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Using microsimulation models, this article estimates the potential gains if the Russian system were re-designed along the policy parameters of these countries and vice versa. The results confirm that the poverty impact of the programme design is smaller than that of the level of spending. Other conditions being equal, the best distributional outcomes for children are achieved by applying the mix of universal and means-tested child benefits, such as those employed by the United Kingdom and Belgium. At the same time, the Russian design of child allowances does not appear to be less effective in terms of its impact on child poverty when transferred to European countries in place of their current arrangements.

This paper analyses programmes of cash allowances for children and compares their effectiveness in combating child poverty in Russia and four EU countries Sweden, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom. These countries are selected as representatives of alternative family policy models. Using microsimulation models (RUSMOD and EUROMOD), this paper estimates the potential gains if the Russian system were re-designed along the policy parameters of these countries and vice versa. Such an exercise rests on the idea of policy learning and provides policy relevant evidence on how a policy would perform, given different national socio-economic and demographic settings. The results confirm that the poverty impact of the program design is smaller than that of the level of spending. Other conditions being equal, the best outcomes for children are achieved by applying the mix of universal and means-tested child benefits, such as those employed by the UK and Belgium. At the same time, the Russian design of child allowances does not appear to be less effective in terms of its impact on child poverty when transferred to European countries in place of their current arrangements.

The Russian tax-benefit system consists of numerous types of support available to a large circle of beneficiaries; they are regulated by a number of legislative acts that focus on certain types of assistance rather than on vulnerable groups. In addition, the decentralization reform of social protection carried out in 2005 motivated many regional governments to implement their own social programs that differ in terms of design and generosity. So far, however, little is known about the impact of the tax-benefit policies on income distribution and poverty in Russia. This paper describes the construction of a tax-benefit microsimulation model for Russia (RUSMOD) which is based upon the EUROMOD platform. RUSMOD simulates the eligibility and receipt of most of the existing monetary policies at the federal and regional levels and assesses their potential redistributive effect. This paper aims to provide necessary background material on the construction of the model to anyone wishing to work with RUSMOD.

This study compares poverty and income distribution among gender subgroups in Russia and four East European countries—Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland—in 2000. Does the gender poverty gap exist in these countries and if yes, how big is it? How much does the level of gender inequality contribute to explaining the level of aggregate inequality and poverty within each country? To what extent may the differences emerging in cross-country comparisons of poverty and inequality be explained by differences in the gender composition of households, e.g., the prevalence of female-dominated households? These are the questions I seek to answer in this paper.
Equivalent expenditure is adopted as a measure of economic welfare of households with different gender ratios. The gender gap is defined as the degree of distance between the economic welfare of households dominated by women and households dominated by men. Headcount poverty and average poverty shortfalls are calculated using relative poverty lines. Inequality is measured by Gini and Theil L coefficients.

In this report - constituting Deliverable 9.3 for Work Package 9 of the InGRID-2 project - we document the development of the new EUROMOD module on parental leave benefits (PLBs). The previous versions of EUROMOD did not cover contributory maternity, paternity or parental benefits for all the EU countries because the EUROMOD input data do not contain necessary information on the employment history of respondents. We extended EUROMOD with the module that simulates these policies for potential recipients (and whenever possible for current recipients) using information about current employment of EU-SILC respondents and some common assumptions to calculate eligibility and entitlements. The main objective of the module is to provide an opportunity for the assessment of the financial consequences of a simulated childbirth on household disposable income and thereby enable an assessment of the scale and distribution of replacement incomes in a cross-country comparative framework.

This paper looks at the effects of tax-benefit systems and social stratification determinants on the probability of poverty among mothers after childbirth and divorce/separation. The analysis was carried out for twelve EU countries, which represent a variety of welfare regimes providing different degrees of defamilialisation. We applied the stress-testing methodology using microsimulation techniques as proposed by Atkinson (2009) and carried out a regression analysis of the simulated results. We show that the degree of income replacement provided by the welfare state is higher for childbirth than for divorce. Countries with low post-childbirth poverty include those with an explicit pro-natalist orientation and socio-democratic regimes. High post-childbirth poverty rates are found in pro-traditional and South European conservative countries, and especially in the liberal regimes. The same is true for the post-divorce poverty rates. Moreover, our findings confirm that the mother's occupational class has a statistically significant effect for predicting poverty in the case of both events, with a stronger social gradient in case of divorce. Cross-country variation in the social gradient for post-childbirth poverty was insignificant. For post-divorce poverty we find weaker social class effects in the highly defamilialised welfare systems (Scandinavian countries and France) and stronger social class effects in the UK and the post-socialist countries.

This paper looks at the effects of tax-benefit systems and social stratification determinants on the probability of poverty among mothers after childbirth and divorce/separation. The analysis was carried out for twelve EU countries, which represent a variety of welfare regimes providing different degrees of defamilialisation. We applied the stress-testing methodology using microsimulation techniques as proposed by Atkinson (2009) and carried out a regression analysis of the simulated results. We show that the degree of income replacement provided by the welfare state is higher for childbirth than for divorce. Countries with low post-childbirth poverty include those with an explicit pro-natalist orientation and socio-democratic regimes. High post-childbirth poverty rates are found in pro-traditional and South European conservative countries, and especially in the liberal regimes. The same is true for the post-divorce poverty rates. Moreover, our findings confirm that the mother's occupational class has a statistically significant effect for predicting poverty in the case of both events, with a stronger social gradient in case of divorce. Cross-country variation in the social gradient for post-childbirth poverty was insignificant. For post-divorce poverty we find weaker social class effects in the highly defamilialised welfare systems (Scandinavian countries and France) and stronger social class effects in the UK and the post-socialist countries.

In this paper we introduce UKMOD, a new tax-benefit model for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the whole of the UK. The model originates and replaces as a stand-alone model the UK component of EUROMOD, the tax-benefit model for the European Union member states, which from 2021 is not updated anymore. We describe the main departures from EUROMOD, discuss some key assumptions including data issues, and provide information on the nowcasting and macro-validation procedure applied.

Low oil prices and the recession in Russia which started in 2014 are increasing pressures for fiscal consolidation, after more than a decade of prosperity. This article assesses the distributional impact of the main tax and social spending programmes in Russia in 2014 by applying a state-of-the-art incidence analysis. Overall, the Russian welfare state achieves a moderate reduction in inequality through tax-benefit policies by international standards. Most redistribution occurs through pensions. Major limits on the redistributive effect of tax-benefit policy include the large share of tax revenues that come from (regressive) indirect taxes, the neutral impact of personal income taxes and the low share of spending that goes on social assistance targeted to low-income groups. The tax-benefit policy also has an important impact on the age distribution of income, as households of working-age people (with and without children) subsidize pensioner households.

The distributional impact of policy changes is usually considered in terms of equivalised household income, assuming that each individual within the household is being affected in the same way, as a result of complete income pooling. The aim of this paper is to extend this approach by introducing a gender perspective in the analysis of policy effects. We use EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU, to estimate the effects of changes in tax-benefit policies over the period 2008-2014 separately for men and women. The paper consists of two parts. First, we apply the standard approach based on the equal income sharing assumption but focus on lone parent families - a specific household type which makes gendered policy effects easier to observe. This analysis is performed for 18 EU countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Finland and Sweden. Second, we estimate the policy effects for men and women in couples. To obtain gender specific effects, we redefine income at the individual level by allocating income components to each adult within the household according to a set of assumptions. We present three alternative scenarios of intra-household income sharing. All scenarios assume that all individual incomes (e.g. earnings, individual benefits) are retained by their recipients, while common incomes (e.g. family benefits, housing allowances) are distributed following three different sets of sharing rules, which are defined in relation to the primary and the secondary earner status. We compare the outcomes of men and women in these three scenarios and in the baseline which assumes equal income sharing. This analysis is performed for six countries which differ in terms of the degree of defamilialisation their welfare regimes provide: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Spain, France, Romania and Finland.

The consequences of high divorce rates for intergenerational mobility depend on two factors. The first has been widely studied and regards the differing incidence of divorce according to socio-economic background. The second has been studied less and is the heterogeneity in the effects of divorce according to parental background. This paper investigates whether signs from earlier research that children from higher social backgrounds suffer more from divorce can indeed be interpreted as such. We follow a cohort of British children born in 1970 (N = 11,073) and look at how educational and occupational outcomes differ depending on family structure, socio-economic background, and the interaction between them. We improve on earlier studies by including a rich set of pre-divorce characteristics and are able to show that heterogeneity in the effects of divorce indeed exists and is not likely to be due to selection effects. Children whose parents are more highly educated have a larger 'divorce penalty' when it comes to educational and occupational attainment. A large part of the heterogeneity can be explained by the parents' income at age 16, parental monitoring, the child's participation in extra-curricular activities and his or her views regarding the benefits of education at age 16. The results suggest that, in contrast to the emphasis put in much recent research, divorce seems to have been a factor contributing to increased intergenerational mobility in the period under study. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project Families and Societies.

Ce travail se fonde sur l'exploitation des enquêtes GGS menées en France en 2005 et en Russie en 2004 en se plaçant du point de vue des enfants. La comparaison de la situation familiale des enfants selon leur âge dans les deux pays montre que les situations de monoparentalité sont plus fréquentes en Russie mais que, contrairement à ce que l'on observe en France, les enfants vivent alors très souvent au sein de ménages multigénérationnels. La probabilité pour un enfant né au sein d'un couple cohabitant (marié ou non) de voir ses parents se séparer avant sa majorité augmente dans les deux pays et particulièrement en Russie pour les enfants nés dans les années 1980. Les enfants les plus exposés au risque de séparation ont des parents qui présentent quelques points communs dans les deux pays : tel est le cas si leur mère s'est mise en couple assez jeune, avec un conjoint ayant déjà au moins un enfant, plus âgé qu'elle, ou si elle n'a pas vécu toute son enfance avec ses deux parents. En France, mais non en Russie, le mariage et la pratique (même peu fréquente) d'une religion réduisent de manière significative la probabilité d'une rupture.