Discussion Papers no. 746

The distributional impact of public services in European countries

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of including the value of public health care, long-term care, education and childcare on estimates of income inequality and financial poverty in 23 European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of including the value of public health care, long-term care, education and childcare on estimates of income inequality and financial poverty in 23 European countries. The valuation of public services and the identification of target groups rely on group-specific accounting data for each of the 23 countries. To account for the fact that the receipt of public services like education and care for the elderly is associated with particular needs, we introduce a theory-based common equivalence scale for European countries, termed the needs-adjusted EU scale (or NA scale). Even though the ranking of countries by estimates of overall inequality and poverty proves to be only slightly affected by the choice between the conventional EU scale and the NA scale, poverty estimates by household types are shown to be significantly affected by the choice of equivalence scale.

About the publication

Title

The distributional impact of public services in European countries

Authors

Rolf Aaberge, Audun Langørgen, Petter Lindgren

Series and number

Discussion Papers no. 746

Publisher

Statistics Norway

Topic

Discussion Papers

ISSN

1892-753X

Number of pages

55

Language

English

About Discussion Papers

Discussion papers comprise research papers intended for international journals and books. A preprint of a Discussion Paper may be longer and more elaborate than a standard journal article as it may include intermediate calculations, background material etc.

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