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- Bengtsson, Niklas, 1980-
(författare)
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Essays in Development and Labor Economics
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three self-contained essays. Essay I. This essay uses time-series of rainfall to estimate the response of body weight to transitory changes in household income in rural Tanzania. The response is positive on average, but is markedly higher among female children. For female children, a ten-percent increase in household income implies an increase in body weight by about 0.4 kilos. In contrast, the body weight of adolescents and young adults is virtually invariant to transitory income changes. Essay II. In this essay, the impact of a village-level assistance program run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania is estimated. We find that the program increased literacy by 15-20 percentage points and educational attainment by 10-15 percentage points, but only among Protestant children. Catholic children living in the same targeted villages were unaffected. The results support the concern that faith organizations might overstate their ability to aid households of different faith. Essay III. This essay exploits a rapid introduction of an unconditional cash grant (child support) in South Africa in order to estimate the marginal propensity to consume and earn out of a permanent change in unearned income. We find that the marginal propensity to earn is about -0.25 to -0.4. A very small fraction of the grant is saved. All in all, the marginal propensities estimated here are all similar to those reported in comparable papers using US data. However, they stand in contrast to some results on conditional cash transfers in other developing countries.
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| 2. |
- Bengtsson, Niklas, et al.
(författare)
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Lifetime versus Annual Tax-and-Transfer Progressivity : Sweden, 1968-2009
- 2016
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Economics. - : Wiley. - 0347-0520 .- 1467-9442. ; 118:4, s. 619-645
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we analyze the evolution of tax-and-transfer progressivity in Sweden over both annual and lifetime horizons. Using a rich micro panel covering the period 1968-2009, we calculate tax rates over a cohort's entire working life cycle. Our main finding is that taxes are considerably less progressive over the lifetime than in any single year. Social insurance transfers to transitory low-income earners account for most of this result. We offer a number of robustness checks of the measurement of lifetime incomes and progressivity, but none of them changes our overall findings.
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| 3. |
- Bengtsson, Niklas, et al.
(författare)
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Lifetime versus Annual Tax Progressivity : Sweden, 1968–2009
- 2012
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper analyzes the evolution of tax progressivity in Sweden from both annual and lifetime perspectives. Using a rich micro panel with administrative records of incomes, taxes and benefits over the period 1968–2009, we calculate tax rates across the income distribution accounting for different tax bases as well as the role of transfers. The uniquely long time span also allows us to compute tax progressivity as realized over a cohort’s entire life cycle. Our main finding is that taxes are considerably less progressive over the lifetime than in any single year. In fact, life cycle taxes are close to proportional, bearing a redistributive effect of only a few percent. Intragenerational income mobility seems to be driving this result, although the Swedish economic crisis of the 1990s and the tax reforms of 1971 and 1991 are also important. Labor income taxes contribute less to progressivity in recent years, whereas transfers to unemployed and old-age pensioners have become increasingly important. These findings are robust to the use of different tax rates, tax bases, sample populations, rates of discounting and controls for reranking.
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