Essays on household incomes and public policies

This thesis studies some of the key factors that influence the distribution of household net incomes in the EU countries. Part of the work analyses the impact of education changes on income inequality. The remaining part of the thesis analyses from different angles the role of tax-benefit policies for household incomes. The thesis consists of four self-contained papers. In the methodology of all papers, I combine a tax-benefit model EUROMOD with household micro-data. Chapter 1 is concerned with the impact on income inequality of the substantial increase in the number of university graduates in Great Britain. Chapter 2 studies the impact on the income distribution of automatic stabilisers and discretionary changes to tax-benefit policies in the EU-28. Chapter 3 evaluates ex-post the performance of the main means-tested benefits in Bulgaria in terms of targeting and poverty reduction. Finally, Chapter 4 studies how income poverty is affected by hypothetical changes to the scale of both tax and benefit policies and investigates which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries.