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Direct provision of public services can alter the balance of resources across income groups. We focus on the issues arising when taking account of the impact of publicly provided education services across the income distribution. We combine OECD information on spending per student in particular levels of the education system with micro data from nationwide income surveys to track the allocation of resources. We pay particular attention to the role of third level education, and provide comparable results for seven European countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK).

Social transfers vary enormously across the EU, as has been demonstrated in earlier research. This paper analyses the comparative effects of cash transfers on inequality and poverty, using consistent household data. The analysis shows that the distributional impact of these transfers is greater in countries that spend a higher proportion of income on them but that there are other important determinants, including the distribution of funds between different types of transfers and the degree of targeting for each transfer.

[Note:] This paper is an adapted version of the substantive part of the Final Report to the European Commission of the project 'Accurate Income Measurement for the Assessment of Public Policies (AIM-AP)', under Priority 7 'Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based Society' of Framework Programme 6 [Project no. 028412].

This paper considers the effects on current pensioner incomes of reforms designed to improve the long-term sustainability of public pension systems in the European Union. We use EUROMOD to simulate a set of common illustrative reforms for four countries selected on the basis of their diverse pension systems and patterns of poverty among the elderly: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the UK. The variations in fiscal and distributive effects on the one hand suggest that different paths for reform are necessary in order to achieve common objectives across countries, and on the other provide indications of the appropriate directions for reform in each case.

This paper considers the effects on current pensioner incomes of reforms designed to improve the long-term sustainability of public pension systems in the European Union. We use EUROMOD to simulate a set of common illustrative reforms for four countries selected on the basis of their diverse pension systems and patterns of poverty among the elderly: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the UK. The variations in fiscal and distributive effects on the one hand suggest that different paths for reform are necessary in order to achieve common objectives across countries, and on the other provide indications of the appropriate directions for reform in each case.