Population sub-groups
Abstract The NTA project has examined how resources are allocated in the life cycle by comparing mean flows across age groups. However, in unequal societies such as many in Latin America, Africa and Asia, measuring mean flows by age may cover the true distribution of transfers received and paid across population subgroups within each age. Recently, some of the NTA countries - Brazil, Chile, the U.S, Uruguay, South Africa and others - started to address this issue by estimating National Transfer Accounts by socioeconomic status (SES) and race. The initial findings suggest there are different patterns of intergenerational allocations within each country. For example, Turra and Queiroz (2006) found that private transfers in Brazil have greater importance for children in wealthier families. Children of poorer families rely more heavily on public transfers. On the other hand, the consumption of the elderly depends largely on public transfers, regardless of their socioeconomic status. More recent studies (Turra and Holz 2009; Holz and Bravo 2009) have decomposed mean flows of public transfers into age-income-specific coverage (utilization) rates and payments per beneficiary to determine which public services are truly universal, which are not, and to measure how changes in these components could affect the magnitude and direction of the mean flows in the future.
The main objectives of this working group is to promote a discussion about alternative methods to measure National Transfer Accounts by population groups, identify some potential research questions, and compare the current estimates available.
Specific Topics for Discussion
1. What are the best SES measures to use in the NTA project?
2. Should we consider individual transitions among socioeconomic subgroups (social mobility)? Do we have longitudinal data to do it?
3. How can we summarize the NTA results, when using many variables (e.g. age + income + race)? Should we estimate, for example, the variance between and within subgroups?
4. What is best approach to measure progressiveness of the incidence of public transfers by age, using NTA profiles of taxes and benefits?
5. How different social security structures (eligibility, market discrimination, etc) affects the distribution of benefits between SES, by age
---------- First Meeting: [presentation Cassio and Mauricio]
The second meeting is schedule for Wednesday, 6/9, at 15:00!
report based on the second meeting
---------- Papers: