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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has opened $837.5 million in funding and up to $4 billion in loan authority through the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program (GRRP). Created under the Inflation Reduction Act, GRRP is a grant and loan program for HUD-assisted multifamily properties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy and water efficiency, and strengthen climate resilience. With the understanding that low-income households face a disproportionately high energy burden and are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, GRRP is designed to make HUD-assisted affordable housing properties more sustainable and resilient, helping residents save money on utility bills and enjoy healthier spaces with better air quality. Properties already receiving HUD multifamily assistance under Section 8 project-based rental assistance, Section 202, Section 811 or specified other small programs are eligible for GRRP funding through one of three cohorts, with options for grants or low-cost loans: Elements: Up to $750,000 per property or $40,000 per unit for specific resilience or efficiency strategies, such as installing heat pumps, with $140 million in total cohort funding. Leading Edge: Up to $10 million per property or $60,000 per unit for completing a multifaceted renovation that earns an ambitious green building certification such as LEED Zero, with $400 million in total cohort funding. Comprehensive: Up to $20 million per property or $80,000 per unit for deep utility retrofits and climate resilience upgrades, with $1.47 billion in total cohort funding. LEED has long been used as a tool to achieve green affordable housing (such as through Qualified Allocation Plans), and USGBC is pleased to see the rating system as an eligible certification under the Leading E dge cohort. To qualify for Leading Edge funding, projects can pursue certification under LEED v4 for the Gold level or higher (with LEED Zero Carbon or LEED Zero Energy), or LEED v4.1 for Multifamily or Multifamily Core and Shell at the Silver level or higher (with LEED Zero Energy or LEED Zero Carbon). LEED Zero verifies that a project has achieved net zero goals over a period of 12 months and is complementary to LEED certification. Each cohort accepts applications quarterly over the course of a year, beginning with Elements in June and continuing with Leading Edge in July and Comprehensive in August, ultimately closing applications in May 2024. In addition to performance criteria, these grants and loans have other requirements, including commitments to maintaining affordability for a period of years and, in some cases, wage and labor provisions. USGBC encourages any HUD-assisted multifamily property owners to apply for GRRP funding and help make affordable housing across the nation more sustainable, healthy and resilient.

Guthrie’s experience is all too common. Federally funded vouchers like hers (called housing choice vouchers) provided more than 2.2 million households and 5 million people with rental assistance in 2018. The vouchers help make housing affordable for low-income individuals: Voucher holders pay 30 percent of their income toward rent and utilities, while the government pays the remainder (up to the maximum allowable amount). Yet in major cities from Los Angeles to New York City to Philadelphia to Chicago — and in many smaller ones, too — voucher holders often encounter landlords who refuse to take them or find other ways to avoid renting to them, including falsely claiming that they have no available apartments. In response, states and cities have passed legislation known as “source-of-income laws,” which ban landlords from discriminating against people just because they’re using a voucher. Last year, Guthrie joined advocacy groups pushing for a source-of-income law in Baltimore, testifying about her experience and writing an op-ed. In 2019, the city passed such a law, albeit with a limitation that advocates opposed. At the same time, it’s become clear that these laws are not enough. In some places, discrimination against voucher holders remains common, even with source-of-income laws on the books. Advocates argue that greater enforcement is needed, along with further adjustments to put voucher amounts more in line with fair market rents. And in cities with tight rental markets, they are pushing for increased construction of affordable housing. A strong body of research shows that housing vouchers help prevent homelessness, as well as increase long-term health and economic outcomes of children in low-income families. Vouchers are of huge importance to millions of people, but discrimination against people who use them threatens to thwart the progress that’s been made in housing the most vulnerable among us. Federally supported vouchers were introduced with the Section 8 program in 1974. By the late ‘90s, housing vouchers comprised the largest low-income housing assistance program. In 2018, 1.2 million households used Section 8 project-based vouchers (used in specific housing developments), and 2.2 million households used housing choice vouchers (“portable” vouchers that can be used for renting apartments in the private market). Other types of rental assistance support specific demographic groups: For example, the HUD-VASH program was created in the early 1990s to subsidize housing for homeless veterans. Many cities and states also fund their own subsidized housing programs. To determine eligibility for federally funded vouchers, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sets income limits, which are based on estimates of median incomes and fair market rents in the area. For housing choice vouchers, 75 percent of recipients must be “extremely low-income,” which means their earnings do not exceed 30 percent of the area’s median income or the federal poverty line, whichever is higher. Unlike other federal poverty-alleviation efforts — like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, known informally as food stamps) — housing vouchers are not considered an entitlement, and only a quarter of eligible households end up receiving federal rental assistance. When someone receives a housing choice voucher, they have limited time (usually between 60 and 120 days, though extensions are sometimes possible) to find an apartment, after which they pay 30 percent of their income toward the rent (or a maximum amount of $50 per month, if they do not have any income). Local public-housing agencies administer the voucher programs, inspect apartments to make sure they meet minimum standards, and pay rent directly to landlords. Multiple randomized trials have shown that housing voucher programs really do benefit the people who use them. For example, a HUD-funded study dubbed “Family Options,” by researchers at Abt Associates in partnership with Vanderbilt University, found that vouchers reduced the rate of homelessness or “doubling up” with other households by 18 percent, compared with a rate of 35 percent for the control group. A separate HUD-funded study, called the “Moving to Opportunity” project, found significant benefits for families that relocated to lower-poverty neighborhoods with the help of vouchers, including better health, higher incomes, and increased rates of college attendance for children whose families moved before they were 13. Despite their effectiveness at preventing homelessness and increasing housing stability, voucher programs are falling short of their promise. Though originally conceived as a way to help low-income households (disproportionately comprised of people of color) access higher-opportunity neighborhoods, that has proven to be the exception rather than the rule. Families that use housing choice vouchers are often concentrated in poor neighborhoods. For example, a recent study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that just 14 percent of metro-area families with children living in low-poverty neighborhoods used housing choice vouchers. Another problem is that many voucher holders struggle to find a landlord willing to accept them. A HUD study published in 2001, for example, found that roughly 70 percent of voucher holders had succeeded in renting an apartment, though the average was closer to 50 percent in cities like New York and Los Angeles. More recent studies have found comparably low success rates of 50 to 60 percent. Though it’s likely not the sole cause, there’s strong evidence indicating that landlord discrimination contributes to both problems. Firsthand accounts from many voucher holders illustrate the hurdles they face when searching for an apartment. In New York City, I spoke with half a dozen voucher holders who have either been unable to find an apartment after an extensive search, or who did so only after many months (in some cases, years) of looking. Forty-five-year-old Sofia (who asked to be identified by her first name only) lives with two of her children in a shelter. Sofia, who is unable to work due to recent debilitating health problems and surgeries, received a city-funded voucher in early June. But after inquiring about dozens of apartments she found online, she said brokers and landlords repeatedly told her they didn’t have any apartments available, or that they’d get back to her later. Sofia never heard from them again. After five years of unstable housing, during which she and her children stayed with family or in shelters, Sofia said she was hopeful the voucher would help them move into their own place. But after months of searching, she told me, “It’s been really, really hard and so stressful, calling all these brokers and landlords, and it was a big load on me, on top of the load that I’m already dragging.” Hers isn’t the only such story I heard. Systematic research corroborates these firsthand accounts. In 2018, the Urban Institute conducted tests by calling thousands of landlords in five cities who were listing voucher-affordable apartments. In three of the cities — Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Fort Worth, Texas — over two-thirds of landlords said they would refuse to accept vouchers. (In New York City, though it’s clear discrimination is present, there’s little recent data available on the frequency of landlord refusal or the success rates of finding housing using vouchers.) In response to the problem, 13 states (plus Washington, DC) and more than 50 cities and counties throughout the US have passed source-of-income laws requiring landlords to treat voucher holders the same as they would other applicants. Landlords are also prohibited from turning down voucher holders based on their source of payment. However, there are still many areas that haven’t passed such laws. The Poverty and Race Research Action Council estimates that as of November 2019, only about half of voucher holders are covered by source-of-income laws. Meanwhile, both Texas and Indiana have passed legislation to prevent jurisdictions in their states from creating their own source-of-income laws. At the federal level, several bills banning voucher discrimination have been introduced, but none have passed. There is evidence that source-of-income laws help voucher holders find apartments: A study comparing rates before and after a source-of-income law went into effect found significant increases in voucher use, ranging between 4 and 11 percentage points. Yet advocates argue that more is needed. Research suggests source-of-income laws have only a modest impact on moving households to low-poverty areas. And in some areas, particularly low-poverty neighborhoods, landlords often continue to refuse vouchers despite the presence of such laws. For example, in Philadelphia, the Urban Institute’s study found that 67 percent of landlords with eligible apartments refused to rent to voucher holders, regardless of legal protections in place. The rate was even higher in low-poverty neighborhoods. There’s evidence that voucher discrimination is exacerbated by racial discrimination, too: In a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 80 percent of black voucher holders reported that landlords in low-poverty areas would not accept vouchers, compared with 57 percent of voucher holders from other racial groups.

When then-Portland Mayor Charlie Hales declared a housing state of emergency in 2015, many knew the housing crisis had been brewing for decades. The evidence was visible on our streets. Disinvestment in public housing and support services, a deficit of new construction, insufficient tenant protections and a shortage in rent assistance left thousands of Oregonians houseless or in precarious situations. Since then, matters have only gotten worse. The suffering of individuals and families struggling to pay the rent or find shelter increased. Beneath the housing crisis lays another disaster that’s been aggravating our housing woes. For decades, economic inequality has been rising as the rich have captured an ever-larger share of the fruits of the economy. It’s time for policymakers to recognize that confronting the housing crisis requires, in part, meeting economic inequality head-on. Recent analysis by the Oregon Center for Public Policy shows the stunning levels of economic inequality afflicting our state. In 2020, the average income of a member of the top 0.1% of Oregonians — the richest one in every thousand Oregonians — reached a new high: $5.6 million. That record-setting feat came in a year when COVID-19 shuttered large swaths of the economy, nearly quadrupling the state unemployment rate. That same year, tens of thousands of Oregonians across the state experienced houselessness at some point during the year. Many thousands more lived life on the brink, hoping for extensions of the state’s eviction moratorium, which often came at the last minute. As Oregon’s ultra-rich enjoyed record-setting highs in their bank accounts, things remained stagnant at best for the Oregonian in the middle. The median Oregonian took home about $39,000 in 2020, a mere 7.5% increase from what they earned in 1980 and less than they took home 20 years ago, after accounting for inflation. If we consider not just income but also wealth, the picture becomes even more extreme. Wealth refers to the sum of all the assets a person owns minus all of their debts. Assets can take many forms, including real estate, stocks and other financial instruments, and ownership of businesses. Just three individuals in Oregon – the state’s three billionaires – together have more than twice the wealth of the bottom 50% of Oregonians. Nike co-founder Phil Knight alone owns more than the bottom half of Oregonians combined. Like a house built atop a faulty foundation, a housing market operating in a society marked by extreme economic inequality seems bound to run into trouble. And indeed, research indicates that rising inequality is helping fuel the housing crisis. A 2017 study examined the link between inequality and the struggle facing renters in the country’s 100 largest metro areas. It determined that as inequality rises, so does the rent burden — the share of the family budget going to cover the rent. This was particularly so for low-income households. Another study found a link between income inequality and homelessness. As housing prices rise in areas where income gains are flowing mainly to the well-off, low- and middle-income residents see their housing costs rise. Some shoulder this burden by paying a greater share of their income toward housing. Others simply cannot keep up and are left homeless. During the depths of the pandemic, the state’s eviction moratorium kept people housed at a time when many had lost their incomes and could not afford rent. Hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal funds were rightfully deployed to help Oregonians pay their rent and stay in their homes. Today, those protections have expired, and emergency funding has dried up. Monthly eviction court cases exceed pre-pandemic levels in parts of the state. Of all eviction cases filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court in October 2022, 92% were for nonpayment of rent. In some cases, landlords have refused to accept state rent assistance altogether, opting to instead pursue eviction in order to rent a unit to a new tenant at a higher price. Perhaps they will find a new tenant willing to spend a greater share of their income in order to keep a roof over their heads. For the evicted tenant, they are left to compete for the dwindling list of homes they can afford. There is no quick fix for our state’s housing crisis. Additional housing construction, stronger investments in rent assistance, and more wraparound services are all crucial. But those investments must be paired with policies that rein in Oregon’s runaway inequality. Progressive tax policy is one of the most important tools in the toolkit for reducing economic inequality. Not only do we reduce inequality by raising taxes on the highest-earning Oregonians, eliminating tax breaks for the rich, and taxing wealth, but these policies also generate revenue that Oregon can use to address the housing crisis. At the top of the list of ways to use that revenue would be creating a guaranteed income program, providing Oregonians with little or no income a source of flexible cash resources to help them afford their basic needs.

Wells's interpretation of subsection 3(M) is not consistent with the plain language of the statute. See Kimball, 2000 ME 20, P18, 745 A.2d at 392 (explaining the rules of statutory construction). HN13 The plain meaning of the word "expand" [***14] means "to make or become greater in size." 9Link to the text of the note Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary 241 (1996). Further, the language of the statute requires that municipalities give reasonable consideration to the expansion of existing "mobile home parks" as opposed to allowing "mobile home park lots" or "mobile home park density" to expand. Therefore, a logical and consistent reading of the statute encompasses mobile home parks' growth in physical area rather than merely in density. See Town of Madison, Dep't of Elec. Works v. Pub. Utils. Comm'n, 682 A.2d 231, 234 (Me. 1996).

The purpose of the program is to provide grants for the creation or expansion of full-time or summer youth service or conservation corps programs. Funds may be used to expand an existing program, but cannot be used to supplant existing funds for any program. The Commission interprets the term "expand" broadly to mean the addition of new participants, an increase in the number of hours or weeks during which the program operates, the involvement of an existing program in new types of service, or the improvement of an existing program consistent with the purposes and requirements of the Act. The Commission interprets the term "full-time" to mean a corps operating 30 or more hours per week for more than six months of the year.

(7) EXPAND.—The term ‘‘expand’’, when used with respect to a high-quality charter school, means to significantly increase enrollment or add one or more grades to the high-quality charter school.

This report presents current data on ownership of U.S. Treasury securities and major holders of federal debt by country. Federal debt represents the accumulated balance of borrowing by the federal government. The gross debt is composed of debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt held by federal trust funds. To finance the publicly held debt, U.S. Treasury securities are sold to investors. Treasury securities may be purchased directly from the Treasury or on the secondary market by individual private investors; the Federal Reserve; financial institutions in the United States or overseas; and foreign, state, or local governments.

As of December 2022, there was $24.4 trillion of publicly held debt outstanding, up from $16.1 trillion in December 2018, an $8.4 trillion increase (figures are rounded). During the same period, foreign holdings of debt increased by $1.1 trillion to a total of approximately $7.4 trillion. After staying relatively flat in dollar terms for several years, overall foreign holdings increased in 2019, 2020, and 2021, then fell in 2022. Because the total debt has increased faster than the debt held by foreigners has, the share of federal debt held by foreigners has declined in recent years. In December 2022, foreigners held 30% of the publicly held debt. Interest on the debt paid to foreigners in 2022 was $184.4 billion.

While the conventional analysis of fiscal redistribution has important insights to offer, it has some conceptual shortcomings. One important concern is that a snapshot taken at a single point in time (usually for a given year) focuses only on inter-personal redistribution, ignoring life-cycle redistribution. For instance, old-age pensions appear as if they were a transfer from the young (who pay contributions and/or taxes to fund them) to the old (who receive pensions). In reality, the young and the old are not two distinct groups, but young workers will grow old over time so that today’s contributors are tomorrow’s beneficiaries. There is of course no guarantee that an individual’s benefits will be equal to her or his contributions (those who die young will not receive anything in return, and those who are blessed with longevity will generally gain more). Pension systems therefore remain redistributive – albeit to different degrees, depending on their design (see Chapter 9 by C. Behrendt and J. Woodall).

25. In practice, social protection systems in all OECD countries involve a mix of redistribution between rich and poor and risk insurance or lifecycle redistribution, but the balance between these various motives differs between countries. In turn, the extent to which social support accrues to low-income households depends primarily on the prevailing mix of insurance-type and assistance-type transfers. As a way to tentatively shed light on the balance between these two types of redistribution, Figure 6 presents the overall composition of cash transfers and that of income taxes relative to social security contributions across deciles of the household income distribution, while country-profiles are available in Annex A1 (Figure A1.2): 20

• Assistance transfers (i.e. social, unemployment, family and education assistance, often subject to income or assets tests), are most directly targeted to low-income households and are therefore major instruments of income redistribution to poorer households insofar as they secure minimum living standards.21 Indeed, on average across OECD countries, they represent around 24 per cent of disposable income at the bottom, being negligible in the upper-half and broadly absent at the top of the distribution.

Fiscal redistribution policies are aimed at reducing inequality of disposable income after taxes and transfers have been applied

Antoine Bozio 18, Director of the Institut des politiques publiques, Associate researcher at the Paris School of Economics, et al., 9/2018, “Inequality and Redistribution in France, 1990-2018: Evidence from Post-Tax Distributional National Accounts (DINA),” https://wid.world/document/inequality-and-redistribution-in-france-1990-2018-evidence-from-post-tax-distributional-national-accounts-dina-wid-world-working-paper-2018-10/

Our social machinery has become so large and complicated that its essential features may be obscured and ignored. The division already noted between commitments in the round amounts of $700 million under federal jurisdiction and $400 million under provincial and local jurisdiction coincides with inherent and profound differences between measures of fiscal redistribution and measures of welfare service. Fiscal redistribution is characterized by uniform benefits, indifference to individual circumstances, absence of means testing, low administrative cost per unit of expenditure, high budgetary cost, inflexibility, and simplicity. Welfare services generally have the opposite characteristics. It is not an unfair comparison to say that achievement in the former is typically reckoned in terms of payments distributed and in the latter in terms of personal situations relieved. The benefits of fiscal redistribution are therefore apt to be represented and understood in terms of simple and impressive magnitudes that command public enthusiasm, while the performance of a welfare service is known as a rule only to people who have a professional interest in it and to the beneficiaries themselves. Associated with these differences there is the possibility of different financing procedures. No government has any obligation in principle to administer social welfare in uniform financial doses alike to those who need them and those who don't; such arrangements are a matter of political choice and social convenience to which contributory conditions can therefore be attached. But necessary welfare services, according to standards of necessity that touch the public conscience, are an obligation of the community that is properly chargeable to general revenue as the responsibility of all taxpayers.

I think these distinctions are warranted and fairly stated. But if this suggested antithesis conveys an impression of bias I must acknowledge that I am concerned here to emphasize characteristic features as regards the alternative methods that profoundly affect the results obtainable and the costs incurred. In particular, I have reached the conviction that investigation procedures – “means testing" is the common and unpopular word – deserve more realistic and enterprising recognition in politics as a condition of adequate and re-sponsible treatment of human distress by public authorities, because they can be made to fit the personal terms of the problem and therefore serve to protect the beneficiaries as well as the revenue, whereas uniform cash allowances at any practicable level cannot by their very nature cover the needs of the most unfortunate.

AND. A conjunction connecting words or phrases expressing the idea that the latter is to be added to or taken along with the first. Grand Trunk Western Ry. Co. v. Thrift Co., 68 Ind.App. 198, 116 N.E. 756, 759. Added to, together with, joined with, Business Men's Building & Loan Ass'n v. Tumulty, 13 N.J.Misc. 638, 180 A. 772. As well as. Porter v. Moores, 4 Heisk., Tenn., 16. Including. Finch v. Hunter, 148 Ark. 482, 230 S. W. 553, 554. "And also," Carter v. Keesling, 130 Va. 655, 108 S.E. 708, 713. Sometimes construed as "or." Land & Lake Ass'n v. Conklin, 182 App. Div. 546, 170 N.Y.S. 427, 428.

We also conclude that the plain language of § 8 clearly indicates that the affirmative defense available under that section is intended to apply only to a prosecution arising out of activities directly related to a defendant's status as a patient or, if applicable, a defendant's status as a patient's primary caregiver. As earlier stated, § 8(a) provides that "a patient and a patient's primary caregiver, if any, may assert the medical purpose for using marihuana as a defense to any prosecution involving marihuana...." (Emphasis added.) We believe that the use of the word "and" in this context is conjunctive, joining "patient" and "a patient's primary caregiver" as two limited, and connected, *383 categories of individuals who may raise a § 8 defense. See Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed) (defining "conjunctive/disjunctive canon" as "[t]he doctrine that in a legal instrument, and joins a conjunctive list to combine items, while or joins a disjunctive list to create alternatives."). "The" is a definite article "with a specific or particularizing effect...." See Robinson v. City of Lansing, 486 Mich. 1, 14, 782 N.W.2d 171 (2010) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Therefore, from this language, it is clear that only a patient himself or herself and that patient's primary caregiver may assert as an affirmative defense a specific patient's "medical purpose for using marihuana." This understanding is confirmed by the fact that the subsequent elements of § 8(a) consistently refer to "the patient" and "the patient's primary caregiver." (Emphasis added.) Likewise, the Michigan Supreme Court implicitly recognized that a § 8 defense is available only for conduct occurring in the context of an established patient-caregiver relationship when it stated, "A primary caregiver has the burden of establishing the elements of § 8(a)(1) for each patient to whom the primary caregiver is alleged to have unlawfully provided marijuana." Hartwick, 498 Mich. at 232, 870 N.W.2d 37 ; see also § 8(a)(3) (" The patient and the patient's primary caregiver, if any, were engaged in the acquisition, possession, cultivation, manufacture, use, delivery, transfer, or transportation of marihuana or paraphernalia relating to the use of marihuana to treat or alleviate the patient's serious or debilitating medical condition or symptoms of the patient's serious or debilitating medical condition.") (italic and bold emphasis added). Therefore, we conclude that the language employed in § 8 presupposes a relationship between the primary caregiver and the patient, so that the marijuana in the primary caregiver's possession is cultivated or held by *384 that caregiver, or transferred by the caregiver to the patient, in furtherance of the medical use of the marijuana by that particular caregiver's patient.

The important question here is in what sense the statute uses the word "and" in the conjunctive. When used as a conjunctive, the word "and" has "a distributive (or several) sense as well as a joint sense." Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage 639 (3d ed. 2011). That is, the phrase "A and B" could mean "A and B, jointly or severally." Id.; see Scott J. Burnham, The Contract Drafting Guidebook 163 (1992). As applied to § 3553(f)(1), a "joint" sense of "and" would mean that a defendant is eligible for relief unless the court finds that he does not jointly have all three elements listed in (A), (B), and [**7] (C). The "distributive" sense of the word would mean that the requirement that a defendant "does not have" certain elements of criminal history is distributed across the three subsections, and a defendant is ineligible if he fails any one of the three conditions.

There is a strong textual basis to prefer a distributive reading of "and" in § 3553(f). If "and" is read jointly, then subsection (A) is rendered superfluous. A defendant who has a prior three-point offense under subsection (B) and a prior two-point violent offense under subsection (C) would always meet the criterion in subsection (A), because he would always have more than four criminal history points. Thus, reading "and" in its joint sense would leave subsection (A) without any independent operation.

"Authorities agree that when used as a conjunctive, the word "and" has "a distributive (or several) sense as well as a joint sense." Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage 639 (3d ed. 2011). That is, the phrase "A and B" could mean "A and B, jointly or severally." Id.

As applied to § 3553(f)(1), a "joint" sense of "and" would mean that a defendant is eligible for relief unless the court finds that he does not jointly have all three elements listed in (A), (B), and (C). The "distributive" sense of the word would mean that the requirement that a defendant [**6]  "does not have" certain elements of criminal history is distributed across the three subsections, and a defendant is ineligible if he fails any one of the three conditions.

adv. used before the first of two alternatives to emphasize that the statement being made applies to each (the other alternative being introduced by “and”): they all loved to play, both the boys and the girls.

Direct fiscal redistribution to poor households for 1961 (or DFRP61) is operationalized by means of modifications of the redistribution index used by Booms and Halldorson (1973). Direct fiscal redistribution is defined for operational purposes as the dollar value of net transfers per poor household. Yet more specifically and (inescapably) technically, direct fiscal redistribution equals (BN - BR)/h. Here as in previous studies by Booms and Halldorson (1973), Fry and Winters (1970) and others, BN is an estimate of net expenditure benefits from state government spending received by poor households in a state in 1961. BR is a measure of net revenue burdens from state government taxes borne by poor households in a state in 1961. Note that "net expenditure benefits" here are sums of expenditure benefits allocated to "poor households" from a mutually-inclusive and exhaustive set of state spending programs and that "net revenue burdens" are analogous sums from a corresponding set of state revenue types (Hicks, 1979). Finally, h is an estimate of the number of poor households in a state. In line with previous operationalizations of DFRP, poor households are defined as those with incomes of less than $4,000, an available threshold close to mid-1960s estimates of the 1961 "poverty line" (Hicks, 1979).2

Economists generally view held by the public (DHBP) is as the most meaningful measure of debt, because it reflects the amount that the Treasury has borrowed from outside lenders through financial markets to support government activities. At high levels, DHBP can crowd out private investments in the economy, make it more difficult to respond to economic crises, and increase volatility within the economy.

In advanced economies, direct taxes and transfers reduce income inequality, on average, by about one-third. In 2015, the average Gini coefficient for disposable income in these economies was 0.31 compared with 0.49 for market income. Approximately three-quarters of this fiscal redistribution was achieved on the transfer side of the budget (Figure 1.9), with public pension benefits accounting for about half of this (Wang and Caminada 2011).

Second, wherever there is significant fiscal redistribution, it is achieved through transfers—especially in-kind transfers—rather than taxes. This result is consistent with the conclusions of Harberger (2003) and, more recently, OECD (2008), and extends to other Latin American countries the earlier findings of Engel, Galetovic, and Raddatz (1999) for Chile. In addition, however, the paper’s quantitative results show that the redistributive impact of transfers can be quite considerable, in contrast with Harberger’s conclusion that they were at best moderately more potent than taxes in this regard. In effect, we find that transfers largely responsible for the wide disparity in income inequality between the European and Latin American countries were examined.