外文文献翻译——拉丁美洲的财政再分配和收入不平等.doc

此处为论文中文题目，要求居中填写主标题不超过24个汉字；可加副标题（副标题前加破折号），副标题与主标题间空一行的位置主标题：黑体，小二，居中副标题：楷体_GB2312，四号，居中阅后删除此文本框。本 科 生 毕 业 论 文（设计）外 文 文 献 翻 译 拉丁美洲的财政再分配和收入不平等学生姓名 丁超学 号 0802100112指导教师 叶宁二级学院 财政与公共管理学院专业名称 财政学班 级 08财政2012年03月拉丁美洲的财政再分配和收入不平等 Edwin Gon' I, J. Humberto Lo´ Pez, Luis ServeN, Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequality in Latin AmericaG. World Development. Vol. 39, No. 9, pp. 15581569, 2011.我们分析的对象是长期的南美财政分配体系绩效评估。为了这个目的,我们记录了有关拉丁美洲在实施各种财政干预收入不平等政策前后发生的事例。我们用一个比较的角度，把来自拉丁美洲和西欧的两组国家的经验进行了对比。我们根据是否有合适的可用的收入分配的数据来确定选取哪些国家作为对比样本。它包含了拉丁美洲前六大经济体,它们一共占拉丁美洲75%的人口和2008年80%的国内生产总值,相当于15个西欧国家。不过,并不是所有的排名靠后的国家都拥有完整的信息,因此,下面介绍的一些排名靠后的拉美国家与一些较小的欧洲经济体相比呈现出落后的局面。但是附录数据源进行了较详细的论述。在进行下一步之前,对一些术语进行定义会非常有用。我们把“市场收入”这个术语定义为税前和政府转移支付前的收入因此，税前收入分配在很大程度上取决于市场对个人资产和努力工作的回报以及那些私人资产的潜在分配。然而,从福利的角度看则取决于相应的更多的可支配收入改善措施。换言之，取决于家庭收入是否已经收到政府的现金救济(例如,养老、失业保险、社会救助转让)和直接税款返还。可支配收入，而不是市场收入,更能测量不同家庭的消费能力。此外,我们还对家庭收入有以下其他两种不同的定义。第一个是总收入,等于市场收入加上政府现金收益，或者等于税前的全部家庭收入。第二个我们不得不提的,由于目前没有一个更恰当的词语来形容,我们暂且称之为税后收入,它是指扣除税收后（包括直接税和间接税）的收入总额, 从而提供了一个衡量家庭消费能力的替代指标。通过比较多种收入分配不平等的定义，我们可以得到一个简易的测量方法来分辨三种财政干预措施直接税、间接税和财政转移支付队收入分配的影响。如表1，它记录了四个替代措施的基尼系数值。收入不平等经常被用于测量可支配收入的分配情况。相对应的基尼系数出现在表中第3列,这反映了,根据这个收入的定义,拉丁美洲比欧洲收入更加不平等。拉丁美洲国家的平均可支配收入的基尼系数为0.50，相较而言，欧洲国家只有0.31。事实上,本例中拉美国家中基尼系数最低的国家(智利)仍然高于欧洲国家中基尼系数最高的国家(葡萄牙)。可支配收入的分配是市场收入的分配和国家通过直接税和现金转移支付的再分配行动的综合作用的结果。表1中第1列和第2列帮助我们了解每个因素所起的作用。第1列中显示的市场收入的基尼系数与第3列中新兴地区的市场收入的基尼系数形成了鲜明对比,事实上,拉丁美洲国家的市场收入的平均基尼系数0.52,只高于可支配收入的平均基尼系数的2%，而欧洲国家的市场收入的基尼系数远远高于可支配收入的基尼系数:案例中前15个国家的市场收入的平均基尼系数0.46，远远高出可支配收入的平均基尼系数15%。因此,一个重要的讯息是:在两组国家间，市场收入的差距比从可支配收入的差距小。换句话说,大部分的不同层次的可支配收入不平等在这两个地区的不同影响是由于税收和转移支付引起的：在欧洲，税收和转移支付大大减少了收入不平等，而在拉丁美洲作用很小。事实上，不考虑直接税和转移支付时，很多欧洲国家拥有的基尼系数通常跟拉丁美洲相似。这种情况下，举例来说，爱尔兰和英国，其市场收入的基尼系数分别为0.53和0.52。即使在北欧国家，他们的权益水平普遍称赞，表现出相对较高的市场收入的不平等。即便是北欧国家,通常被人们以公平水平所称道,也显示出较高的市场收入不平等。丹麦，芬兰和瑞典的基尼指数分别为0.49，0.49和0.45。在市场收入方面，样本中的最平等的国家是奥地利和荷兰，他们的基尼系数分别为0.38和0.39。这些数值与相同组的欧洲国家可支配收入的基尼系数形成了鲜明的对比，所不同的是在丹麦和爱尔兰，税收和转移支付把基尼系数分别拉低了20个百分点和19个百分点。甚至某些欧洲国家（意大利、希腊、葡萄牙）仍设法通过税收福利制度来重新分配以拉低10个百分点以上的基尼指数。自然而然的问题是税收和转移支付对拉丁美洲和欧洲的税收福利制度的再分配影响是否显着不同，主要受税收影响还是主要受转移支付的影响，或者两者兼而有之。通过比较列（2）中总收入的基尼系数和市场收入的基尼系数，我们可以推断公共转移支付的再分配效应。这再次揭示了这两个地区之间巨大的差异。公共转移支付仅略微降低了拉丁美洲的收入不平等总收入的基尼系数是最多比市场收入低一到两个百分点，而在一些国家（阿根廷、哥伦比亚、秘鲁）前者和后者之间几乎没有差异。然而，在欧洲国家转移支付发挥了很大的作用，总收入的基尼系数平均比市场收入的基尼系数低10个百分点。这隐藏了在不同国家间的高度差异：丹麦、芬兰、爱尔兰、英国和瑞典的公共转移支付使总收入的基尼系数比市场收入的基尼系数低12-14。在比利时、德国、卢森堡，大约也有10-11的影响。而另一个极端是，在葡萄牙公共转移支付使总收入的基尼系数比市场收入的基尼系数仅低6%。至于直接税的影响,地区之间的差距不是很明显。表1中列（2）、列（3）可以显示直接税对总收入和可分配收入的再分配影响程度。在本案例中，我们得出的结论是，直接税对减少收入不平等的作用，欧洲国家比拉丁美洲更明显。例如，在奥地利、比利时、丹麦、卢森堡直接税把家庭收入的基尼系数降低了6-7，而15个欧洲国家的平均降低了5%。反过来，在拉美国家，虽然直接税也发挥了作用除巴西以外，但他们对缩小收入差距的影响是非常微弱的：平均起来,其作用仅仅使基尼系数下降了1%。因此，从前面的涉及直接税和转移支付对再分配作用的讨论中我们得到了第二个重要的信息。在拉美国家，直接税和转移支付发挥的作用大致相同，但在欧洲国家转移支付比直接税发挥了更大的作用：在欧洲国家市场收入和可支配收入之间平均存在15%的差异，其中大约有三分之二（10%）是由转移支付引起的。正如我们将在下面讨论的，这两个基本信息保持不变，如果我们采取非常规的，更广泛的财政再分配措施，还应包括间接税以及实物转移。Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequalityin Latin America Edwin Gon' I, J. Humberto Lo´ Pez, Luis ServeN, Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequality in Latin AmericaG. World Development. Vol. 39, No. 9, pp. 15581569, 2011.Edwin Gon' I, J. Humberto Lo´ Pez, Luis ServeNThe centerpiece of our analysis is an assessment of the redistributive performance of Latin Americas fiscal systems. For this purpose, we document the facts concerning income inequality across Latin America before and after various fiscal interventions. We use a comparative perspective putting side by side the experience of two groups of countries from Latin America and Western Europe.The country sample we use for this analysis is determined by the availability of suitable income distribution data. It comprises the six largest Latin American economies, 11 which together account for 75% of the regions population and over 80% of its 2008 GDP, and up to 15 countries from Western Europe. However, not all of the latter countries possess complete information, and, therefore, some of the cross regional comparisons presented below cover a smaller group of European economies. The Appendix describes in detail the data sources.Before proceeding, it will be useful to define some terms. We use the term market income to refer to income before taxes and government transfersthus its distribution is largely determined by market rewards to the private assets and efforts of individuals, and by the underlying distribution of those private assets. However, from a welfare perspective a more relevant measure is disposable incomethat is, household income after government cash benefits (e.g., pensions, unemployment insurance, social assistance transfers) have been received and direct taxes have been paid. Disposable income, rather than market income, is the relevant measure of the spending capacity of the different households. In addition, we use below two other definitions of household income. The first one is gross income, equal to market income plus government cash benefits or, equivalently, total household income before taxes. The second is what we shall call, for want of a better term, post-tax income, which deducts from gross income all taxes, both direct and indirect, and thus offers a proxy for households purchasing power. It allows a comprehensive view of the incidence of the overall tax burden, particularly in countries that rely heavily on indirect taxation.Comparing the degree of inequity of the distribution of the various income definitions we can get a summary measure of the distributional effects of the three fiscal interventions that distinguish themdirect taxes, indirect taxes, and transfers.This is done in Table 1, which reports the value of the Gini coefficients for the four alternative measures of income. Income inequality is commonly measured in terms of the distribution of disposable income. The corresponding Gini coefficients appear in column 3 of the table, and they confirm that, by this definition of income, Latin America is much more unequal than Europe. The Gini coefficients of disposable income average .50 for the Latin American countries considered, against just .31 for the European countries. In fact, the Latin American country with the lowest Gini coefficient in this sample (Chile) has inequality levels above those of the most unequal European country (Portugal).The distribution of disposable income is the combined result of the distribution of market income and the redistributive action of the state through direct taxes and cash transfers. Columns (1) and (2) in Table 1 help identify the role of each of these ingredients. The Gini coefficients of market income, shown in column 1, reveal a much less marked contrast across regions than that emerging from column (3). In fact, whereas the average Gini coefficient of market income for the Latin American countries, at .52, is only 2% points above that of disposable income, the Gini coefficients of market income for the European countries are substantially higher than those for disposable income: the average of the former for the 15 countries in the sample is now .46, a whopping 15% points higher than the average of the latter.Thus, one important message from this analysis is that the equity gap between the two groups of countries is much narrower in terms of market income than in terms of disposable income. In other words, most of the difference between the levels of disposable income inequality in the two regions is due to the different impact of taxes and transfers: they reduce market income inequality considerably in Europe, and very little in Latin America. Indeed, before direct taxes and transfers are considered, several countries in Europe possess Gini indices comparable to those typically found in Latin America. This is the case, for example, of Ireland and the UK, whose Ginicoefficients of market income are estimated at .53 and .52, respectively. Even the Nordic countries, commonly praised for their levels of equity, show relatively high inequality of market incomes. The Gini indices of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden are .49, .49 and .45, respectively. The most egalitarian countries in the sample in terms of market incomes are Austria and the Netherlands, with Gini coefficients of .38 and .39, respectively.These values are in sharp contrast with the Gini coefficients of disposable income of the same set of European countries, which are much lower. The difference is especially marked in the cases of Denmark or Ireland, where taxes and transfers lower the Gini coefficient by 20% and 19% points, respectively.Even the European countries that redistribute the least through the tax-benefit system (Italy, Greece and Portugal) still manage to lower their Gini indices by more than 10% points. The natural question is whether the dramatically different redistributive impact of the tax-benefit system in Latin America and Europe reflects mostly the action of transfers, taxes, or both. The redistributive effect of public transfers can be inferred comparing the Gini coefficients of gross income in column (2) of the table with those of market income. This again reveals a sharp contrast between the two regions. Public transfers contribute only slightly to lower inequality in Latin Americathe Gini coefficients of gross income are at best 12% points lower than those of market income, and in some countries (Argentina, Colombia, Peru) there is virtually no difference between the former and the latter. However, transfers play a big role in the European countries, where the difference between the Gini coefficients of the two income definitions averages 10% points. This conceals substantial variation across countries: in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the UK, and Sweden public transfers bring the Gini coefficient of gross income 1214% points below that of market income. In Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg, the effect is sizable toosome 1011% points. At the other extreme, in Portugal transfers lower the Gini coefficient by just 6% points. As for the effect of direct taxes, the contrast between regions is less dramatic. The redistributive impact of direct taxes can be inferred by comparing the Gini coefficients of gross and disposable income shown in columns (2) and (3) of Table 1. Like in the case of transfers, the conclusion is that direct taxes reduce the levels of income inequality much more in European countries than in Latin America. For example, direct taxation lowers the Gini coefficient of household income by 67%points in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Luxembourg, and by an average 5% points for the fifteen European countries considered. In turn, in the Latin American countries direct taxes are also progressivewith the exception of Brazilbut their impact on inequality is very weak: on average, the Gini coefficients decline by just 1% point, with very little variation across countries.Thus, the second important message that emerges from the previous discussion concerns the relative redistributive roles of direct taxes and transfer benefits. Among the Latin American countries considered, both are of roughly similar (and modest) magnitude, but in the European countries transfers play a much bigger role than taxes: of the 15%-point difference between the average Gini coefficients of market and disposable income across European countries, about two-thirds (10% points) are due to transfers.As we shall discuss below, these two basic messages remain unchanged if we take a less-conventional, broader view of fiscal redistribution that encompasses also indirect taxation as well as in-kind transfers.