The CEQ effectiveness measures provide a similar picture<sup>24</sup> . The highest effectiveness is assigned to pensions and direct benefits, while indirect subsidies are not effective.

# **4.4. Targeting and vulnerable groups**

To understand how the expenditures and taxes are focusing (or not) on vulnerable groups, we compare the size of the transfer/tax allocated to vulnerable groups to the average transfer/tax size for the rest of the population. The results are in Table 15. The first part (a) of the Table looks at vulnerable groups by type of individual, namely by age and employment status. HBS does not have the employment or socio-economic status variables. We assign the status of the employed to individuals who report some wage income and worked during more than 6 months over the year. Those who worked 6 months or less, and had wage or self-employment income, are marked as partially employed. The rest are classified as non-employed, which includes the traditional definition of unemployed, inactive (out of labor force), retired and those on childcare leave. Adults (18 and older) are divided in three age groups: youth (18-24), working age (25-55 for women and 25-60 for men) and elderly (above retirement age; over 60 for men and 55 for women).

**Table 15. Sizes of transfers/taxes by vulnerable groups, relative to the rest of the population**

**(a) By individual type (age/employment)**

||**Youth**<br>||**Working age**<br>|**Elderly**<br>|<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Employed**|**Partly em-**<br>**ployed**|**Non-em-**<br>**ployed**|**non-em-**<br>**ployed**|**Employed**<br>**Partly em-**<br>**ployed**|<br>**Non-em-**<br>**ployed**|
|Benefits (without pensions)<br>69|127|139|225|40<br>61|52|
|Pensions<br>31|36|36|90|253<br>261|488|
|Direct taxes<br>143|126|109|69|131<br>74|26|
|Indirect subsidies<br>114|116|108|91|158<br>133|105|
|Indirect taxes<br>108|107|96|90|131<br>115|89|
|Health<br>82|98|93|116|106<br>109|141|
|Education<br>93|139|213|81|23<br>29|20|
|**(b) By household type**||||||
|**Rural H**|**H**<br>**HH**|**of elderly**|**HH with child**|**ren**<br>**HH with**<br>**loneparent**|**Large HH**|
|Benefits (without pensions)<br>74||55|306|189|328|
|<br>Pensions<br>102||414|15|13|9|
|Direct taxes<br>63||34|99|78|47|
|Indirect subsidies<br>48||154|60|104|40|
|Indirect taxes<br>78||101|79|88|57|
|Health<br>104||150|74|91|77|
|Education<br>75||7|298|297|261|

_Note._ The number of 69% in panel a) line “Benefits”, column “Youth employed” means that the young employed receive on average only 69% of benefits the rest of the population (not young and employed) receive. Description of household types and socio-economic economic status see in Table 11, Figure 16.

_Source_ : own estimates.

Despite the modest size of unemployment benefits, working age non-employed enjoy higher support through benefits programs than the population on average. Childcare benefits, which normally go to households with nonemployed mothers can explain this trend. In turn, elderly people and employed youth do not enjoy benefit support. For the elderly, this lack of social support is compensated by pensions. Employed (and partially employed) carry most of the burden of direct and indirect taxes, but they also enjoy more indirect subsidies. Unsurprisingly, young people receive more in-kind transfers from education, while the elderly receive higher than average support from health care.

In the panel (b) of Table 15 vulnerable groups are classified by household type. The major vulnerable types are rural households, households of elderly people (were the only adults are above the retirement age), households with children, especially households with a lone parent (household with at least one child and only one adult) and multi-child households (with three or more children).

Households with children are the major target group of benefits, with the childcare benefits being the most substantial program. Pensions are naturally skewed towards the elderly households. Most of the vulnerable groups pay

> 24 However, the CEQ package function _ceqef_ is bugged and the CEQ effectiveness measures are hence incomplete and are not provided in this paper.

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