Second earners and in-work poverty in Europe

Dual or multiple earnership has been considered an important factor to prevent in-work poverty. The aim of this paper is to quantify the impact of second earnership on the risk of in-work poverty and the role of the tax-benefit system in moderating this risk. Our analysis refers to 2014 and employs EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the European Union and the United Kingdom. In order to assess the role of second earners in preventing in-work poverty we simulate a counterfactual scenario where second earners become unemployed. Our results show that the effect of net replacement rates (i.e. the ratio of household income before and after the transition of second earners to unemployment) on the probability of in-work poverty is negative and statistically significant, but in relative terms it appears to be small compared to the effects of individual labour market characteristics, such as low pay and part-time employment

Tax-benefit microsimulation and income redistribution in Ecuador

The aim of this paper is to explore the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in Ecuador using two different approaches: direct use of reported taxes and benefits in survey data, and use of simulated taxes and benefits. We make use of representative household microdata from ENIGHUR 2011-2012, which contains detailed information on labour and non-labour income, taxes and social insurance contributions, public pensions, social benefits and expenditure, as well as personal and household characteristics. First, ECUAMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for Ecuador is used to simulate cash benefit entitlements, personal income tax and social insurance contribution liabilities, as well as indirect taxes. Then, the redistributive effect of simulated tax-benefit policies is compared to that obtained from taxes, social insurance contributions and benefits taken directly from the data. Our results show that simulated taxes and social insurance contributions capture better the number of taxpayers and aggregate revenue amounts from official statistics, compared to information taken directly from the data. Moreover, using reported data on taxes and social insurance contributions underestimates their redistributive effect, compared to simulated policies. Underreporting of income components in survey data and the difficulty of simulating complex eligibility rules for benefits in microsimulation models are some of the factors driving the differences between the two approaches. Our paper concludes with a discussion of the advantages offered by microsimulation for policy analysis

Work incentives at the extensive and intensive margin in Europe: the role of taxes, benefits and population characteristics

Tax and benefit systems play an important role in determining work incentives at both, the extensive and the intensive margin of labour supply. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of work incentives in the EU. Our analysis makes use of microsimulation techniques and representative household surveys from all 28 EU countries to compare the distribution of short- and long-term participation tax rates and marginal effective tax rates across population subgroups. We focus on people currently in work and characterise the population facing low work incentives in each country. Our results highlight the large variation in the distribution of work incentives across EU countries, explained not only by differences in the design of tax-benefit systems, but also by the characteristics of the labour force across countries. Unemployment insurance benefits contribute substantially to short-term participation tax rates and explain on average 20 percentage point difference between work incentives of short- vs. long-term unemployment. Our analysis further highlights the need to use microdata to study differences across countries in terms of the population subgroups facing low incentives to work with the aim to inform the policy debate on potential reforms to make work pay

‘Fair’ welfare comparisons with heterogeneous tastes: subjective versus revealed preferences

Multidimensional welfare analysis has recently been revived by money-metric measures based on explicit fairness principles and the respect of individual preferences. To operationalize this approach, preference heterogeneity can be inferred from the observation of individual choices (revealed preferences) or from self-declared satisfaction following these choices (subjective well-being). We question whether using one or the other method makes a difference for welfare analysis based on income-leisure preferences. We estimate ordinal preferences that are either consistent with actual labor supply decisions or with income-leisure satisfaction. For ethical priors based on the compensation principle, we compare the welfare rankings obtained with both methods. The correlation in welfare ranks is high in general and reranking is insignificant for 77% of the individuals. The remaining discrepancies possibly pertain to a variety of factors including constraints (health issues, labor market rationing), irrational behavior and alternative life choices to the pursuit of well-being. We discuss the implications of using one or the other preference elicitation method for welfare analysis

Financial disincentives to formal employment and tax-benefit systems in Latin America

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the financial disincentives to enter formal employment implied by the design of the tax-benefit system in five Latin American countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Then, it analyzes the extent to which formalizing informal workers would contribute to increase fiscal capacity in the region. The results show a wide variation in financial disincentives to enter formal employment, with formalization tax rates ranging between 8.5 percent in Venezuela and 42 percent in Colombia. Formalization tax rates are particularly high for self-employed informal workers, and mainly driven by the high costs associated with social insurance contributions. The analysis further shows that potential entries to formal employment would raise tax revenue in all countries, but mainly through the effect of increased social insurance contributions, whereas personal income tax revenue would have a marginal contribution, except in Bolivia and Venezuela. Interestingly, potential formalization of informal workers with the highest probability of being formal would allow capturing a substantial share of the additional tax revenue lost due to informality

Developing an integrated microsimulation model for the impact of fiscal policies on child health in Europe: the example of childhood obesity in Italy.

Background We developed an integrated model called Microsimulation for Income and Child Health (MICH) that provides a tool for analysing the prospective effects of fiscal policies on childhood health in European countries. The aim of this first MICH study is to evaluate the impact of alternative fiscal policies on childhood overweight and obesity in Italy. Methods MICH model is composed of three integrated modules. Firstly, module 1 (M1) simulates the effects of fiscal policies on disposable household income using the tax-benefit microsimulation program EUROMOD fed with the Italian EU-SILC 2010 data. Secondly, module 2 (M2) exploits data provided by the Italian birth cohort called Nascita e Infanzia: gli Effetti dell'Ambiente (NINFEA), translated as Birth and Childhood: the Effects of the Environment study, and runs a series of concatenated regressions in order to estimate the prospective effects of income on child body mass index (BMI) at different ages. Finally, module 3 (M3) uses dynamic microsimulation techniques that combine the population structure and incomes obtained by M1, with regression model specifications and estimated effect sizes provided by M2, projecting BMI distributions according to the simulated policy scenarios. Results Both universal benefits, such as universal basic income (BI), and targeted interventions, such as child benefit (CB) for poorer households, have a significant effect on childhood overweight, with a prevalence ratio (PR) in 10-year-old children-in comparison with the baseline fiscal system-of 0.88 (95%CI 0.82-0.93) and 0.89 (95%CI 0.83-0.94), respectively. The impact of the fiscal reforms was even larger for child obesity, reaching a PR of 0.67 (95%CI 0·50-0.83) for the simulated BI and 0.64 (95%CI 0.44-0.84) for CB at the same age. While both types of policies show similar effects, the estimated costs for a 1% prevalence reduction in overweight and obesity with respect to the baseline scenario is much lower with a more focalised benefit policy than with universal ones. Conclusions Our results show that fiscal policies can have a strong impact on childhood health conditions. Focalised interventions that increase family income, especially in the most vulnerable populations, can help to prevent child overweight and obesity. Robust microsimulation models to forecast the effects of fiscal policies on health should be considered as one of the instruments to reach the Health in All Policies (HiAP) goals

The Variant rs1867277 in FOXE1 Gene Confers Thyroid Cancer Susceptibility through the Recruitment of USF1/USF2 Transcription Factors

In order to identify genetic factors related to thyroid cancer susceptibility, we adopted a candidate gene approach. We studied tag- and putative functional SNPs in genes involved in thyroid cell differentiation and proliferation, and in genes found to be differentially expressed in thyroid carcinoma. A total of 768 SNPs in 97 genes were genotyped in a Spanish series of 615 cases and 525 controls, the former comprising the largest collection of patients with this pathology from a single population studied to date. SNPs in an LD block spanning the entire FOXE1 gene showed the strongest evidence of association with papillary thyroid carcinoma susceptibility. This association was validated in a second stage of the study that included an independent Italian series of 482 patients and 532 controls. The strongest association results were observed for rs1867277 (OR[per-allele] = 1.49; 95%CI = 1.30–1.70; P = 5.9×10−9). Functional assays of rs1867277 (NM_004473.3:c.−283G>A) within the FOXE1 5′ UTR suggested that this variant affects FOXE1 transcription. DNA-binding assays demonstrated that, exclusively, the sequence containing the A allele recruited the USF1/USF2 transcription factors, while both alleles formed a complex in which DREAM/CREB/αCREM participated. Transfection studies showed an allele-dependent transcriptional regulation of FOXE1. We propose a FOXE1 regulation model dependent on the rs1867277 genotype, indicating that this SNP is a causal variant in thyroid cancer susceptibility. Our results constitute the first functional explanation for an association identified by a GWAS and thereby elucidate a mechanism of thyroid cancer susceptibility. They also attest to the efficacy of candidate gene approaches in the GWAS era

Global, regional, and national burden of neurological disorders during 1990-2015 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015

Background Comparable data on the global and country-specific burden of neurological disorders and their trends are crucial for health-care planning and resource allocation. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study provides such information but does not routinely aggregate results that are of interest to clinicians specialising in neurological conditions. In this systematic analysis, we quantified the global disease burden due to neurological disorders in 2015 and its relationship with country development level. Methods We estimated global and country-specific prevalence, mortality, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), years of life lost (YLLs), and years lived with disability (YLDs) for various neurological disorders that in the GBD classification have been previously spread across multiple disease groupings. The more inclusive grouping of neurological disorders included stroke, meningitis, encephalitis, tetanus, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease, migraine, tension-type headache, medication overuse headache, brain and nervous system cancers, and a residual category of other neurological disorders. We also analysed results based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a compound measure of income per capita, education, and fertility, to identify patterns associated with development and how countries fare against expected outcomes relative to their level of development. Findings Neurological disorders ranked as the leading cause group of DALYs in 2015 (250.7 [95% uncertainty interval (UI) 229.1 to 274.7] million, comprising 10.2% of global DALYs) and the second-leading cause group of deaths (9.4 [9.1 to 9.7] million], comprising 16.8% of global deaths). The most prevalent neurological disorders were tensiontype headache (1505 9 [UI 1337.3 to 1681.6 million cases]), migraine (958.8 [872.1 to 1055.6] million), medication overuse headache (58.5 [50.8 to 67.4 million]), and Alzheimer's disease and other dementias (46.0 [40.2 to 52.7 million]). Between 1990 and 2015, the number of deaths from neurological disorders increased by 36.7%, and the number of DALYs by 7.4%. These increases occurred despite decreases in age-standardised rates of death and DALYs of 26.1% and 29.7%, respectively; stroke and communicable neurological disorders were responsible for most of these decreases. Communicable neurological disorders were the largest cause of DALYs in countries with low SDI. Stroke rates were highest at middle levels of SDI and lowest at the highest SDI. Most of the changes in DALY rates of neurological disorders with development were driven by changes in YLLs. Interpretation Neurological disorders are an important cause of disability and death worldwide. Globally, the burden of neurological disorders has increased substantially over the past 25 years because of expanding population numbers and ageing, despite substantial decreases in mortality rates from stroke and communicable neurological disorders. The number of patients who will need care by clinicians with expertise in neurological conditions will continue to grow in coming decades. Policy makers and health-care providers should be aware of these trends to provide adequate services.Peer reviewe

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic