Income taxation and means-tested transfers have considerably changed in France over the past fifteen years, with potentially strong implications for work incentives and inequality. In the upper half of the distribution, the rise of the CSG – in absolute terms and relatively to the progressive income tax – is increasingly leading our system towards a flat tax profile. At the bottom, high effective marginal tax rates have shifted – their distribution has changed from a U-shape to a tilde-shape – due to the expansion of in-work transfers (PPE, RSA activité, then Prime d’Activité). The upcoming reform of unemployment benefits will also change the incentives to return to work. This introduction presents three original articles that characterize these changes and their implications, and attempts to assess their contributions in the light of current policy debates and the evolution of our empirical knowledge on the issue of work incentives.

To cite this article

Bargain, O. (2018). Introduction – Socio-Fiscal Incentives to Work: Taking Stock and New Research. Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 503-504, 5–12.
https://doi.org/10.24187/ecostat.2018.503d.1954