One of the functions of government is to redistribute resources, especially to the most disadvantaged members of society. While there is considerable disagreement over both the extent and the means to effect such redistribution, most people agree that society is better off if inequality and poverty can be reduced, and all governments do, in fact, redistribute income with their tax and expenditure policies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the government of Armenia does so.
The paper is one of a set of parallel papers coordinated by the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Project and the World Bank. Each paper uses an incidence analysis that is standardized as much as possible across countries and time so as to make the results of all the analyses comparable. The analysis’ central questions are: