Acta Univ. Agric. Silvic. Mendelianae Brun. 2013, 61(7), 2213-2220 | DOI: 10.11118/actaun201361072213

Family policy in the Czech Republic: Redistribution of wealth through the child tax bonus

Robert Jahoda, Jana Godarová

Department of Public Economics, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Lipová 41a, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic

Families with children are traditionally the target group of the social system in developed countries. This paper deals with one component of family policy in the Czech Republic, which is household entitlement. The main focus is on the child tax bonus (hereafter CTB). The paper is divided into descriptive and methodological-analytical parts. The descriptive section provides basic information about the beneficiaries of CTB. In the latter section we formulate research questions about the impacts and effects of CTB. We discover that the influence of tax instruments has grown in recent years. The amount of the tax bonus for children exceeded CZK 3 billion in 2009, with almost 22% of all households with children eligible. Although CTB is income-tested, its redistributive impact is rather small - approximately 80% of recipients cannot be considered as poor. Outcomes from our microsimulation model reveal that 82 to 86% households with CTB were at the same time modelled as eligible and therefore we can use microsimulation techniques for future analyses of policy change.

Keywords: family policy, child allowance, tax credit, child tax bonus, incentives, redistribution, microsimulation

Grants and funding:

The authors are thankful to the Grant Agency of Masaryk University for the grant No. MUNI/A/0786/2012.

Received: September 27, 2013; Published: December 24, 2013  Show citation