Fiscal redistribution cycles: four decades of social assistance in the UK
研究了英国过去四十年通过社会救助进行的财政再分配演变，发现其受经济和政治周期驱动，并分析了预算力度和转移累进性对再分配趋势的影响。
Abstract This paper describes the evolution of fiscal redistribution (FR) in the UK through social assistance transfers over the last four decades and the contribution of each of its determinants: budget effort (the share of national income devoted to redistributive transfers) and transfer progressivity (the extent to which these transfers are concentrated on lower-income households). Trends in FR have been driven by a combination of economic and political cycles. Over the 1980s and 1990s, the heavy reliance on means-tested transfers indexed to prices resulted in FR fluctuating over the ‘economic cycle’. Over recent decades, FR has been driven primarily by ‘political cycles’. Under a Labour government (1997–2010), a large expansion of coverage of in-work benefits resulted in an unprecedented, sustained increase in effort which, despite decreasing progressivity, was large enough to ensure a continuous rise in FR. This increase was reversed under a Conservative-led government from 2010 in the context of fiscal austerity, which decreased effort and increased progressivity as remaining transfers were concentrated more on lower-income households. A striking feature over the last four decades has been the sharp decline in FR to the poorest income decile under different political leadership as emphasis has shifted to reducing in-work rather than out-of-work poverty and ‘making work pay’.