L’effet des prélèvements fiscaux et des transferts aux particuliers sur la pauvreté au Québec et au Canada

This paper estimates the contribution of the main sources of income as well as that of taxes and transfers on the level of poverty in Quebec and in Canada. This contribution is decomposed into a product of the effects of total size and performance per dollar of each of the income sources. An important problem in this type of exercise is that the order in which the components of income are ranked can influence considerably the share of total poverty alleviation allocated to each component. A sharing rule is thus used to allocate to each income component a part of total poverty alleviation that is independent of the ordering chosen. Sensitivity tests are also applied to assess the role of the choice of poverty lines and indices. The results indicate that the more generous social programs do not always reduce relative poverty the most, and that other aspects of the tax/benefit system that are less prominent are more effective in that regard. Relative to the rest of Canada, Quebec’s social programs are both more generous and more poverty-performant; however, this is associated with taxes in Quebec that are also heavier and more costly in terms of poverty impact.