Data Center on Fiscal Policy, Poverty, and Inequality

Tulane University, New Orleans LA

Investigators

Abstract

The United Nations? Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires all countries to commit themselves to end poverty and reduce inequalities. To make this possible, governments and policymakers need tools to assess the effectiveness of their tax and transfer systems at achieving these goals. The Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Institute collects and analyzes data on tax and transfer systems in over 60 countries around the world to assess the efficiency of policies that promote equitable growth, expand opportunities, and reduce inequality. This data set is also made available to researchers and policy makers. This research project will develop a state of the art visualization tool as well as STATA modules to make the CEQ Institute data easily accessible and useful to researchers, policy makers, and the public. It will also develop on-line training videos to help users of the CEQ data. Through software that can be used by researchers to analyze taxes and transfers in a country, as well as state-of-the-art data visualizations that allows users to compare results already produced in more than 60 countries, the CEQ Data Center will provide policymakers with a credible yardstick to measure the effectiveness of a country's tax and transfer system in reducing poverty and providing equitable opportunities for all. In addition to improving governments? efforts world-wide to achieve stable and equitable growth, the results of this research would also establish the US as a global leader in promoting inclusive growth and reducing poverty and inequality. The proposed research project will develop visualization modules based on the Tableau format, write enhance STATA modules to analyze the CEQ data set and its micro components and develop training videos on the use of the data sets. These activities will enhance the availability and usefulness of the CEQ data to researchers and policy makers. The interactive data visualizations of novel results and microdata sets available through the CEQ Data Center combined with the enhanced CEQ STATA Package and training videos will make the data easily accessible and useful. Development of these tools will advance knowledge by enabling policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to analyze: (i) the poverty impacts of the tax and transfer system as a whole and of its components; (ii) the effectiveness, relative to what could have been achieved with the same amount of spending, of different public programs at reducing poverty; (iii) incidence of the burden of taxation and benefits from government spending, as well as how these benefits are distributed across socioeconomic groups and geographic areas; and (iv) whether or to what extent the poor pay more in taxes than they receive from government benefits. The results of this research will not only guide governments in developing more effective anti-poverty programs world-wide; they will also establish the US as the global leader in policies to achieve equitable and stable growth. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.