This article introduces fiscal impoverishment as a framework for comparative poverty research. We invert standard analyses of welfare state policy and household poverty by focusing not on poverty alleviation but poverty creation and exacerbation. Using harmonized household survey data, we show how the income and payroll taxes most rich countries rely on to finance the public sector serve to push households (further) into poverty. We estimate that across rich democracies on average about one in four households in poverty are made poorer on net after taxes and transfers; with fiscal impoverishment levels ranging from <10% in some countries to more than 70% in others, revealing extreme cross-national variation in how the pocketbooks of poor households are impacted by national tax and transfer policy. We go on to show that fiscal impoverishment does not track with standard measures of welfare state generosity but is instead largely determined by design of income tax systems, particularly a country’s relative reliance on (regressive) payroll taxes versus (progressive) income taxes. We consider the implications of fiscal impoverishment for assessing welfare state performance and for comparative poverty research.

中文翻译：

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富裕民主国家的财政贫困

本文介绍了财政贫困作为比较贫困研究的框架。我们颠倒了对福利国家政策和家庭贫困的标准分析，不关注贫困的减轻，而是关注贫困的产生和加剧。利用统一的家庭调查数据，我们展示了大多数富裕国家所依赖的收入税和工资税如何为公共部门提供资金，从而将家庭（进一步）推向贫困。我们估计，在富裕的民主国家中，平均约有四分之一的贫困家庭在扣除税收和转移支付后净值变得更加贫困；一些国家的财政贫困水平低于 10%，而另一些国家的财政贫困水平则超过 70%，这揭示了国家税收和转移政策对贫困家庭钱包的影响存在极大的跨国差异。我们接着表明，财政贫困并不符合福利国家慷慨程度的标准衡量标准，而是在很大程度上取决于所得税制度的设计，特别是一个国家对（累退）工资税与（累进）所得税的相对依赖。我们考虑财政贫困对评估福利国家绩效和比较贫困研究的影响。