Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis

Middle-class welfare’ has been a catch-cry in Australian political debate in recent years, the suggestion being that redistributive programs have unduly benefited the ‘middle class’. However, the concept suffers from a lack of definition and the proposition from a shortage of empirical evidence and...

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Main Authors: Tapper, Alan, Fenna, Alan, Phillimore, John
Format: Journal Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/22575
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author Tapper, Alan
Fenna, Alan
Phillimore, John
author_facet Tapper, Alan
Fenna, Alan
Phillimore, John
author_sort Tapper, Alan
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Middle-class welfare’ has been a catch-cry in Australian political debate in recent years, the suggestion being that redistributive programs have unduly benefited the ‘middle class’. However, the concept suffers from a lack of definition and the proposition from a shortage of empirical evidence and a rather selective focus. This article uses Australian Bureau of Statistics’ fiscal incidence studies to track trends from 1984 to 2010. From this more comprehensive assessment of ‘who gets what’, we find that not only has there been no shift of net social support towards middle-income groups, but the opposite is true: vertical redistribution has been strengthened.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-225752020-07-22T04:56:48Z Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis Tapper, Alan Fenna, Alan Phillimore, John Middle-class welfare’ has been a catch-cry in Australian political debate in recent years, the suggestion being that redistributive programs have unduly benefited the ‘middle class’. However, the concept suffers from a lack of definition and the proposition from a shortage of empirical evidence and a rather selective focus. This article uses Australian Bureau of Statistics’ fiscal incidence studies to track trends from 1984 to 2010. From this more comprehensive assessment of ‘who gets what’, we find that not only has there been no shift of net social support towards middle-income groups, but the opposite is true: vertical redistribution has been strengthened. 2015 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/22575 10.1111/1467-8462.12118 Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia fulltext
spellingShingle Tapper, Alan
Fenna, Alan
Phillimore, John
Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title_full Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title_fullStr Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title_short Middle-Class Welfare and Vertical Redistribution in Australia: A Fiscal Incidence Analysis
title_sort middle-class welfare and vertical redistribution in australia: a fiscal incidence analysis
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/22575