Publication: The Distributional Impact of Taxes and Social Spending in Bhutan: An Application with Limited Income Data
Loading...
Published
2022-09
ISSN
Date
2022-09-26
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper analyzes the distributional impact of the tax-benefit system in Bhutan. It makes two main contributions: first, this is the first substantive study of this kind in Bhutan, and second, due to limited information on incomes in the household survey, a consumption-based model is combined with Mincer-type earnings to derive estimates of incomes. The results show that the combined impact of government taxes and social spending is to reduce inequality and slightly increase poverty as of 2017. The increase in poverty is mainly due to the burden of indirect taxes and social contributions that are not offset by other transfers. Households in the bottom 80 percent are net receivers of fiscal interventions, with fiscal benefits primarily occurring through education and health benefits, which are both progressive. Most households did not pay much into the system as of 2017, as personal income taxes have a high exemption threshold and sales taxes only apply to a selected number of goods that are mainly consumed by richer households. Due to the lack of direct transfers, the net cash position is negative for poor households, although the magnitude is very small. Simulations suggest that the recent personal income tax reduction leads direct taxes to be slightly more progressive; however, the inequality-reducing impact is dampened. The goods and services tax is expected to increase indirect taxes for households across the distribution and is less progressive than the sales tax. This could lead to a temporary increase in poverty, which could be offset through direct transfers financed by the additional revenues.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Baquero, Juan Pablo; Gao, Jia; Kim, Yeon Soo. 2022. The Distributional Impact of Taxes and Social Spending in Bhutan: An Application with Limited Income Data. Policy Research Working Papers;10190. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/38058 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Gender Gaps in the Performance of Small Firms: Evidence from Urban Peru(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper estimates the gender gap in the performance of firms in Peru using representative data on both formal and informal firms. On average, informal female-led firms have lower sales, labor productivity, and profits compared to their male-led counterparts, with differences more pronounced when controlling for observable determinants of firm performance. However, gender gaps are only significant at the bottom of the performance distribution of informal firms, and these gaps disappear at the top of the distribution of informal firms and for formal firms. Possible explanations for the performance gaps at the bottom of the distribution include the higher likelihood of small, female-led firms being home-based, which is linked to lower profits, and their concentration in less profitable sectors. The paper provides suggestive evidence that household responsibilities play a key role in explaining the gender gap in firm performance among informal firms. Therefore, policies that promote access to care services or foster a more equal distribution of household activities may reduce gender productivity gaps and allow for a more efficient allocation of resources.Publication The Exposure of Workers to Artificial Intelligence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-05)Research on the labor market implications of artificial intelligence has focused principally on high-income countries. This paper analyzes this issue using microdata from a large set of low- and middle-income countries, applying a measure of potential artificial intelligence occupational exposure to a harmonized set of labor force surveys for 25 countries, covering a population of 3.5 billion people. The approach advances work by using harmonized microdata at the level of individual workers, which allows for a multivariate analysis of factors associated with exposure. Additionally, unlike earlier papers, the paper uses highly detailed (4 digit) occupation codes, which provide a more reliable mapping of artificial intelligence exposure to occupation. Results within countries, show that artificial intelligence exposure is higher for women, urban workers, and those with higher education. Exposure decreases by country income level, with high exposure for just 12 percent of workers in low-income countries and 15 percent of workers in lower-middle-income countries. Furthermore, lack of access to electricity limits effective exposure in low-income countries. These results suggest that for developing countries, and in particular low-income countries, the labor market impacts of artificial intelligence will be more limited than in high-income countries. While greater exposure to artificial intelligence indicates larger potential for future changes in certain occupations, it does not equate to job loss, as it could result in augmentation of worker productivity, automation of some tasks, or both.Publication Geopolitical Risks and Trade(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper studies the impact of geopolitical risks on international trade, using the Geopolitical Risk (GPR) index of Caldara and Iacoviello (2022) and an empirical gravity model. The impact of spikes in geopolitical risk on trade is negative, strong, and heterogeneous across sectors. The findings show that increases in geopolitical risk reduce trade by about 30 to 40 percent. These effects are equivalent to an increase of global tariffs of up to 14 percent. Services trade is most vulnerable to geopolitical risks, followed by agriculture, and the impact on manufacturing trade is moderate. These negative effects are partially mitigated by cultural and geographic proximity, as well as by the presence of trade agreements.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Social Spending, Distribution, and Equality of Opportunities : Opportunity Incidence Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)Existing evidence forms a body of "conventional wisdom" on the redistributive impact of fiscal policies that has been recently questioned by more disaggregated analyses. This paper proposes an additional extension to the traditional benefit incidence analysis to explore further the extent to which the conventional wisdom holds, as well as to provide effective guidance in fiscal decision making. The benefit incidence analysis extension includes linking fiscal policies with the concept of equality of opportunities. The paper describes this approach and showcases the application of the proposed "opportunity incidence analysis" to six pilot countries: Liberia, Cote d Ivoire, Zambia, Tajikistan, Thailand, and Paraguay. Three main contributions stand out: first, opportunity incidence analysis complements traditional benefit incidence analysis by applying its mechanics to a more forward looking concept of equal opportunity. Second, opportunities can be used to target public spending with higher precision. Third, micro-simulations can be used to understand the cost-effectiveness of alternative spending interventions that seek to improve equality of opportunities. All of these results complement the diagnosis produced by traditional incidence analysis and provide useful information to guide specific policy decisions.Publication How Pro-poor and Progressive is Social Spending in Zambia?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-04)This paper analyzes the distributional effect of public spending in Zambia using the most recent data from the 2010 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey. The analysis focuses on both the "traditional" social sectors, such as education and public healthcare, as well as other spending areas less thoroughly studied, such as agricultural support programs. Ultimately, this benefit incidence analysis addresses the extent to which spending is pro-poor and progressive; that is, it primarily benefits the poor and does so at an increasing rate as welfare levels decrease. The results indicate that overall public education spending in Zambia is neither pro-poor nor progressive, but while this is true for the system as a whole it is not true for all of its parts. The net unitary benefits of primary and secondary education are clearly both pro-poor and progressive. However, their progressivity is ultimately outweighed by the extreme concentration of tertiary education benefits among the wealthiest members of Zambian society. Health spending is also regressive and not pro-poor. Although unitary net benefits are slightly progressive, unequal access remains the key constraint. In contrast, the benefits of agricultural-input subsidy programs follow a somewhat progressive pattern (for each beneficiary in the top quintile there are almost two beneficiaries in the poorest quintile) but clearly suffer from targeting problems. Consequently, without better-designed and more conscientiously implemented targeting mechanisms, public spending on health, education, and fertilizers will not be able to further the government's larger objectives for pro-poor and progressive development policy.Publication Social Spending, Taxes and Income Redistribution in Uruguay(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03)How much redistribution does Uruguay accomplish through social spending and taxes? How progressive are revenue collection and social spending? A standard fiscal incidence analysis shows that Uruguay achieves a nontrivial reduction in inequality and poverty when all taxes and transfers are combined. In comparison with five other countries in Latin America, it ranks first (poverty reduction) and second (inequality reduction), and first in terms of poverty reduction effectiveness and third in terms of overall (including transfers in-kind) inequality reduction effectiveness. Direct taxes are progressive and indirect taxes are regressive. Social spending on direct transfers, contributory pensions, education and health is quite progressive in absolute terms except for tertiary education, which is almost neutral in relative terms.Publication The Distributional Impact of Taxes and Social Spending in Romania(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)The combined effect of taxes and social spending in Romania helps to reduce inequality, although less so than in other European Union countries. However, the combination of direct and indirect taxes and transfers leads to an increase in poverty, as direct cash transfers to poor households are not large enough to compensate them for the burden of indirect taxes. This is especially important for rural households and families with children. Moreover, recent reductions in the rates for personal income and value-added taxes are expected to have led to an increase in inequality, as most of the tax relief accrued to the top of the income distribution. Although these changes likely helped to reduce poverty, they were an expensive way to achieve a small decline in the poverty rate. Higher and better targeted social assistance spending could have achieved better distributional results at a much lower fiscal cost. These results call for greater use of simulation tools that could inform policy makers and the public of the fiscal costs and redistributive impacts of proposed reforms.Publication The Impact of Macroeconomic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution : Macro-Micro Evaluation Techniques and Tools(Washington, DC : World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2008-01-19)This book assembles methodologies and techniques to evaluate the poverty impact of macroeconomic policies. It takes as a departure point a companion volume, the impact of economic policies on poverty and income distribution: evaluation techniques and tools. This volume was primarily a review of microeconomic techniques aimed at assessing policies that are directly concerned with the welfare of poor households or individuals such as changing the level of cash transfers to the poorest households, increasing price subsidies for basic consumer goods, and the like. In addition, the second part of that earlier publication introduced basic techniques to deal with the poverty impact of macroeconomic policies that by definition are not targeted and affect the whole population. This volume presents a comprehensive array of macro-micro modeling frameworks. It begins by highlighting the limitation of macroeconomic models that use representative household groups to link macroeconomic policies and microeconomic data. It then moves to more complexes, top-down modeling frameworks, which combine (top) macro models and (down) micro simulation models that, in turn, can be simple micro accounting models or behavioral micro models. The book also explores integrated models, in which the macro and micro parts are either linked by iterative feedback loops or solved simultaneously as a single model. By providing clear access to these techniques, by documenting their analytical underpinnings, their data requirements, and their range of applicability, and even by highlighting some of their limitations, this book provides a unique compendium for practitioners, policy makers, and anyone interested in economic development.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Morocco Economic Update, Winter 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)Despite the drought causing a modest deceleration of overall GDP growth to 3.2 percent, the Moroccan economy has exhibited some encouraging trends in 2024. Non-agricultural growth has accelerated to an estimated 3.8 percent, driven by a revitalized industrial sector and a rebound in gross capital formation. Inflation has dropped below 1 percent, allowing Bank al-Maghrib to begin easing its monetary policy. While rural labor markets remain depressed, the economy has added close to 162,000 jobs in urban areas. Morocco’s external position remains strong overall, with a moderate current account deficit largely financed by growing foreign direct investment inflows, underpinned by solid investor confidence indicators. Despite significant spending pressures, the debt-to-GDP ratio is slowly declining.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.