The socio-fiscal system is likely to affect women and men differently, due to differences in life circumstances and behaviour which mean that men and women do not benefit from the same benefits or tax arrangements, and do not necessarily respond in the same way to a change in public policy. However, identifying the effects of a change to our Socio-fiscal system / tax-and-transfer system on gender inequalities is relatively complex to achieve in practice: indeed, because men and women live and interact within collective units (households), resources are very often pooled, even if only partially. To measure the consequences of a change to the Socio-fiscal system / tax-and-transfer system at an individual level, it is necessary to analyse how resources and the tax burden are distributed amongst the individuals comprising the collective entity that is either the beneficiary or the taxpayer. We propose a methodology based on four different allocation rules, which enables us to obtain ranges for the effect of a budgetary measure on women, on the one hand, and men, on the other. When applied to the 2015 income tax reform, we find that this measure would have resulted in higher average gains for men, with a difference ranging from 1.20 to 8.10 euros per year.
Analysing socio-fiscal measures from the perspective of gender inequality
This note sets out a methodology based on four different allocation rules, which makes it possible to derive intervals for the impact of a budgetary measure – in this case, the 2015 income tax reform – on women on the one hand, and men on the other.
Reference IPP Policy Brief No. 23
Presentation
Key Results
- A gender analysis is now mandatory for all new draft legislation, but its implementation in the case of finance bills remains unsatisfactory.
- Identifying the individual impact of a socio-fiscal reform requires an understanding of how income – and in particular benefits and taxes – is distributed amongst the members of a household or tax household. However, at present, few studies provide a precise picture of this distribution.
- A multi-method approach, involving the use of different assumptions regarding the distribution of income within collective units and a comparison of their results, makes it possible to obtain a range of values within which the true effect of a budgetary measure on sub-populations is likely to fall.
- It is thus found that, regardless of the assumption made regarding the pooling of resources within tax households, the gains associated with the 2015 income tax reform are slightly higher for men.
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