D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their DistributionsReturn

A representative survey of adult population is used to analyse perceptions of existing income inequality and preferences for ideal income distribution in the Czech Republic. On average, Czechs view the distribution of disposable income as more unequal than it actually is. This biased perception results from underestimating total income shares belonging to bottom quintiles and overestimating the total income share belonging to the top income quintile. Whereas the majority of Czechs prefer some level of income stratification, there are about four tenths of people who would prefer to live in a completely equal society. These are primarily older, less educated and lower income people whose preferences formulated under uncertainty are mostly consistent with the maximin principle and inequality aversion. Almost a fifth of Czechs would prefer an income distribution consistent with efficiency concerns.

We present a set of practical applications of the household sector stress testing approach used at the Czech National Bank. The aim is to test households' ability to repay their loans in the event of extremely adverse economic developments. Besides this, the household sector stress test methodology has so far been used for two other purposes: (i) to construct a simple reverse stress test and explore the sensitivity of Czech households to a rise in loan interest rates and a decline in income, and (ii) to provide some supportive evidence for the calibration of debt service-to-income limits.

The paper presents an analysis of the development of the gender wage gap in the Czech Republic over the last twenty years, particular attention being paid to the period since 2009. Data on the average and median nominal wage as well as inflationary trends were gathered from the official website of the Czech Statistical Office. Having used the data, the conversion to the average and median real wage was carried out, allowing for a comparison of the current purchasing power of the Czech Republic's population with that in the year 1996. The differences between male and female average and median wages (both nominal and real) were examined. The development trend analysis of the obtained time series was performed adopting parametric (quadratic trend function) and non-parametric (moving averages) approaches. The quality of the chosen trend functions was verified using individual t-tests, total F-test, autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions and Durbin-Watson statistics. The results achieved indicate a steady downward trend in the differences between male and female wage levels since 2009.

Unconditional basic income should guarantee that all residents have sufficient material conditions for their existence. Compared to other existing social security programs, basic income is unique in its simplicity. It also supports the individuals' freedom of use of their disposible time. The article analyzes the expected impact of the introduction of an unconditional basic income on the labor market. It also compares basic income to other social security programs (wage subsidies, targeted social programs, a negative income tax and tax credits) on a theoretical level from the perspective of a recipient. Unconditional basic income's effects on labor supply would be rather negative. However, relative to other social security programs, unconditional basic income can guarantee a higher or the same utility level, but it may not motivate to participate in the labor market. Additional positives are transparency and lack of incentives to cheat. The prospect of lower administrative costs depends on the specific basic income scheme in question.

The present paper deals with the development of the gross monthly wage distribution according to the length of the practical experience of employees in the Czech Republic since the beginning of the global economic downturn in 2009, during the course of the crisis and in its aftermath. The gross monthly wage dependence on the length of the practice has been researched, the dependence intensity measurement being a part of the analysis. The trend analysis of gross monthly wage time series differentiated according to the length of the practice having been conducted, forecasts of wage levels for 2015 and 2016 were constructed with the use of the above analysis.

The equivalised total net annual incomes of the Czech households (in CZK) in 2007-2010 are analysed in the text. The set of all households is very nonhomogeneous (with respect to incomes) and the aim of the analysis is to determine more homogeneous subsets (components) and to describe the distribution of incomes in these components. The components are supposed to be artificial, the membership of households in components is not known (or observable). A multivariate mixture of normal distributions (four dimensional component distributions) is used to describe a vector of logarithms of incomes, models with 2 to 9 components are fitted. Maximum likelihood estimates of unknown parameters were found with the use of EM algorithm. Akaike information criterion was used (accompanied by bootstraped test) and models with 3 or 4 components were selected to be acceptable for the description of distribution of incomes. Cluster analysis was performed in order to classify households into components and good performance of the model was found.

This study evaluates monetary effects of an increase in Czech tax credit by CZK 500 per month for the second child and CZK 900 per month for the third and each additional child. The analysis uses a microsimulation model and survey data SILC 2011. The decline in government revenues from taxes due to these changes is estimated to be CZK 4.7 billion annually, with almost one third of the total budgetary costs (CZK 1.5 billion annually) going to families with children in the upper half of income distribution. The average household with more than one child would save approximately CZK 7,300 per year. While the poorest households with more children would gain on average only CZK 2,900 per year, wealthier households with more children would gain CZK 7,000 to 9,000 per year. There is a high share of low-educated and often single-earner households among the poorest households, who gain the least from this change. Increasing the child tax credit would also lead to an increase in the already very high tax differentials between men and women and differences in the taxation of childless people and married couples with children.

Deepening income polarization is perceived as one of economic and social threats of the global world. The aim of this paper is to present development and the current status of incomes in the Slovak Republic, which is the crucial limitation of the present and future consumption growth. The authors further focus on the income levels of elderly, which are perceived as an important group of consumers within the concept of the silver economy. Analyses in the paper are based on microdata from the Social Insurance Agency in Slovakia. According to the results the income polarization in Slovakia is deepening and economic performance of a number of districts is lowering. This results in extreme barriers for regional consumption at present, as well as threat of generation of signifi cantly low level of pensions in the future. It is obvious that structural nature of unemployment is the fundamental problem of income polarization in the Slovak Republic.

The Czech Parliament approved a wide-ranging reform of direct taxes in 2011. Absent other legislative changes, the reform will come into force on January 1, 2015. We evaluate its impacts on the tax burdens and the average and marginal tax rates in a representative sample of Czech individuals and households. The main impact of the reform is a reduction in the average tax rates for the self-employed in the 5th through 10th income deciles, most frequently by 4.4 percentage points. The variation in the change in the average tax rates among the self-employed in low incomes deciles is large and varies between minus 5 to plus 5 percentage points. The reform would reduce the taxes for most employees only slightly but it would increase the average tax rate by up to 5 percentage points for employees with earnings exceeding four times the average wage. The effective marginal tax rates faced by the self-employed would drop most commonly by either 4.4 or 10-11 percentage points, while the effective marginal tax rates faced by employees would remain unchanged. The impacts on the households are highly heterogeneous depending on the share of income from self-employment in the household's total income. The reform would reduce the budget revenues by approximately CZK 19 billion.

The article evaluates the distributional impacts of the value added tax changes in the Czech Republic using the Household Budget Survey, a representative sample of approximately 3000 households. It evaluates the impacts on the living standards both for the VAT reform that was actually approved in 2011, as well as for alternative reform proposals that were discussed during 2011 and that also considered a reduction in payroll tax rates. The estimates refl ect the recent empirical fi ndings about the incidence of consumption and payroll taxes. Unifying the VAT at a single tax rate has an almost proportional impact on the households from the 2nd to impact 10th income decile while having a disproportionately larger impact on the poorest decile. A reduction in the payroll tax would have reduced the progressivity of the tax system across the entire income range.