Good housekeeping: ensuring the basis for sustained poverty reduction

Reducing levels of child poverty (as well as poverty in general) in a way that can be sustained over time requires not only policy measures that create opportunities and future capabilities. It also depends on having a social protection system that keeps pace with economic and social change and is appropriate across all communities, and which does not itself preclude individual risk-taking and initiative. Some conflict is inevitable between the goal of providing adequate social protection for those unable to support themselves and that of maintaining incentives to work and to save for those who have the potential to do so. Nevertheless, there are aspects of the design and evolution of cash benefits (and associated policies) that can improve the terms of the trade-off between the two goals. This paper draws on the experience of the United Kingdom's child poverty agenda over the last eight years, and on assessments of the prospects for a sustained reduction in child poverty in the future, to explore what these features might be. It also considers evidence from international comparisons of poverty and social protection systems

Towards a European Union Child Basic Income? Within and between country effects

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the within and between country distributional implications of an illustrative Child Basic Income (CBI) operated at EU level. Using EUROMOD, we establish that a universal payment of €50 per month per child aged under 6 could take 800,000 children in this age group out of poverty. It could be financed by an EU flat tax of 0.2% on all household income, assuming that it would also be taxed nationally as income. Most member states and virtually all families with children aged under 6 would be net gainers. We simulate two versions of EU CBI, with the benefit rate of €50 per month adjusted or not for differences in purchasing power between member states. In general, fiscal flows between member states, and also poverty reduction, would be smaller under the adjusted version. The political feasibility of such a scheme might be questioned, especially within the net contributor countries. Nevertheless, for those seeking ways to strengthen solidarity across national boundaries, a scheme supporting the incomes of families with young children, wherever in the EU they might reside "could be a demonstration of the EU's commitment to children, to the future" (EC 2012a: 62)

EUROMOD: the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model

This paper aims to provide an introduction to the current state of the art of EUROMOD, the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model. It explains the original motivations for building a multi-country EU-wide model and summarises its current organisation. It provides an overview of EUROMOD components, covering its policy scope, the input data, the validation process and some technical aspects such as the tax-benefit programming language and the user interface. The paper also reviews some recent applications of EUROMOD and, finally, considers future developments

Micro-simulating child poverty in 2010 and 2020

The 2008 Pre-Budget Report (PBR) said that 'the Government will take stock of progress towards its 2010 and 2020 child poverty target in the [2009] Budget'. As background to that exercise, this paper updates our previous analysis of the prospects for child poverty in the UK in 2010-11 and 2020-21

An equivalence relation of boundary/initial conditions, and the infinite limit properties

The 'n-equivalences' of boundary conditions of lattice models are introduced and it is derived that the models with n-equivalent boundary conditions result in the identical free energy. It is shown that the free energy of the six-vertex model is classified through the density of left/down arrows on the boundary. The free energy becomes identical to that obtained by Lieb and Sutherland with the periodic boundary condition, if the density of the arrows is equal to 1/2. The relation to the structure of the transfer matrix and a relation to stochastic processes are noted.Comment: 6 pages with a figure, no change but the omitted figure is adde

Exact Solution of Heisenberg-liquid models with long-range coupling

We present the exact solution of two Heisenberg-liquid models of particles with arbitrary spin $S$ interacting via a hyperbolic long-range potential. In one model the spin-spin coupling has the simple antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange form, while for the other model the interaction is of the ferromagnetic Babujian-Takhatajan type. It is found that the Bethe ansatz equations of these models have a similar structure to that of the Babujian-Takhatajan spin chain. We also conjecture the integrability of a third new spin-lattice model with long-range interaction.Comment: 7pages Revte