Abstract:

Major international organisations, such as the United Nations or the European Commission, have at the centre of their agendas the goal of achieving gender equality to ensure fair social development through equity and, ultimately, stable economic growth. Our main objective is to broaden the perspective from which the gender pay gap is analysed by looking at gender differences in disposable income, the gender income gap. We introduce the idea that public intervention through tax-benefit policies can contribute to the reduction of the gender wage gap, as well as provide empirical evidence that the reduction of the gender wage gap is conducive to the reduction of social inequality in general. The objective is to quantify the effect that each policy in the tax-benefit system has on the gender income gap. An analysis is carried out for all EU countries. The database used is EUROMOD, a tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union. We have analysed how the gender income gap changes by country, by type of benefit (contributory vs. non-contributory), by policy and by socio-demographic characteristics. Furthermore, we aim to determine whether the reduction in the gender earnings gap is related to a reduction in the levels of inequality in European countries. Ultimately, the results obtained provide empirical evidence that public intervention through tax-benefit policies can contribute to the reduction of the gender income gap. They also support the idea that social inequality is reduced by reducing the income gap between men and women.

Reference:

Fuenmayor, A.; Granell, R.; Savall, T. (2020): Tax-benefit Systems and Gender Gap. An Across-Europe Study, Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, 235(4), pp. 87-118. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.7866/HPE-RPE.20.4.5