Effects of taxes and other government policies on income distribution and welfare

Marginal tax rates have larger income redistribution and equilibrating welfare effects than do social insurance or direct transfer programs. The Earned Income Tax Credit has smaller but still statistically significant desirable effects. Social insurance programs have little effect except for Supplemental Security Income, which increases equality. The minimum wage and transfer programs (AFDC/TANF and food stamps) either have no statistically significant effect or negative distributional impacts. These effects are qualitatively the same regardless of the inequality measure used: Gini, standard deviation of logarithms, relative mean deviation, coefficient of variation, and various Atkinson indexes.