Virtually everything that a government does has some effect on the distribution of income or wealth at the various levels of society. Improvements in health care facilities benefit the sick, the old, and those about to have children. An increase in taxes on tobacco and beer affects the poor disproportionately, while an increase in capital taxes similarly affects the rich. Even regulatory and legislative activity benefits one group out of proportion to another. The redistributive consequences of the governmental budget can be reflected in a variety of ways; sometimes they are explicit and sometimes they are cited in the debate that follows the presentation of a budget. Usually, however, these consequences are hidden, unintended, and imperfectly understood.

The incidence of taxes is a subject that has generated much academic debate. It is usual to distinguish between the legal incidence of a tax and its effective, or final, incidence. The legal incidence is on the person or company who is legally obliged to pay the tax. Effective, or final, incidence refers to who actually ends up paying the tax; if, for example, the whole of a sales tax can be passed on in higher prices to the consumer, then consumers bear the final incidence of the tax.

Whether the final incidence of the tax is on those who actually pay it depends on their market power relative to the people with whom they trade. A payroll tax, for example, is likely to be reflected in lower wages if labour is mobile and in plentiful supply, but may be borne, at least in part, by the employer if there are labour shortages. Similarly, if a manufacturer is facing intense international competition, his ability to pass on any increase in a sales tax is limited; on the other hand, his ability to do so is much greater if he is the sole supplier of a good.

Although governments do affect the distribution of resources in numerous ways, this is often a by-product of the other things they are trying to do. It has been long debated whether or not governments should seek explicitly to redistribute income from the rich to the poor and, if so, to what extent. More generosity to the poor, whether through higher benefits or through a more progressive tax system, means a higher tax burden on richer people, with, it is argued, consequent effects on work effort and on other behaviour. The appropriate degree of redistribution has been the subject of an extensive literature on optimal taxes, but economists generally agree that the final determination must be through the political process.

Economists point to a number of arguments favouring explicit as opposed to indirect methods of redistribution. The primary argument is that these would provide a more efficient means of eradicating severe hardship, suffering, or starvation. Left to itself, the market economy creates casualties among those who lack the skills to participate fully or those who have failed to generate sufficient resources to tide them over into old age. Countries have evolved programs for the prevention of severe need, although the definition of an acceptable minimum standard of living is typically more generous in European countries than in, for example, the United States, and this is reflected in the higher share of public expenditure in those countries. In most countries the definition of poverty, as measured by the level to which the state benefit system brings everyone’s income, has moved from being “absolute” (determined by the minimum requirement of food, clothing, and shelter) to a more relative concept, which allows the poor to share in real rises in living standards.

The second argument for redistribution is that overall social welfare is thereby increased. An additional dollar makes more difference to the standard of living of someone earning $100 per week than to that of someone earning $1,000. Even if everyone has income above an agreed minimum level, there is a case for redistribution from the rich to the not-so-rich. The extent to which this should be pursued depends partly on the perceived distortions the redistribution would cause and partly on how much more value the far more numerous not-so-rich can squeeze out of each additional dollar.

Other arguments for redistribution occur where the market fails to allow individuals to redistribute between periods in their own lives. The classic example is that people tend to have their periods of highest expenditure (while bringing up children) at the points of minimum income (early in life). Those families with little or no access to credit markets can do very little about this, which has been used as one argument for redistribution toward those bringing up children. A second argument contends that children convey benefits to society as a whole, so that parents should be rewarded for creating a public good. This argument would, of course, have little strength in countries with serious problems of overpopulation.

A final group of arguments also concerns market failure. If particular areas or occupations have declined and the work force has not adjusted to this decline by moving to other areas or through retraining, then some subsidy to cushion the recessive effects might be considered appropriate. Most countries redistribute from better-off regions to those that have declined, or they allocate funds for specific programs designed to help particular groups.

The economic role of the government is analyzed in C.F. Bastable, Public Finance, 3rd rev. ed. (1903, reprinted 1917); James M. Buchanan and Marilyn R. Flowers, The Public Finances, 5th ed. (1980); Richard Stone and Giovanna Stone, National Income and Expenditure, 10th ed. (1977); Bent Hansen, Fiscal Policy in Seven Countries, 1955–1965: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States (1969); Charles J. Hitch and Roland N. McKean, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age (1960, reissued 1975); John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 4th ed. (1984); Francis M. Bator, The Question of Government Spending: Public Needs and Private Wants (1960); Leif Johansen, Public Economics (1965, reissued 1975; originally published in Norwegian, 1965); Erik Lundberg, Instability and Economic Growth (1968); Ronald L. Teigen (ed.), Readings in Money, National Income, and Stabilization Policy, 4th ed. (1978); C.A.E. Goodhart, Money, Information, and Uncertainty (1975); John G. Gurley and Edward S. Shaw, Money in a Theory of Finance (1960, reprinted 1971); Victoria Chick, The Theory of Monetary Policy, rev. ed. (1977); Joseph A. Pechman and Benjamin A. Okner, Who Bears the Tax Burden? (1974); and Robert H. Haveman and Julius Margolis (eds.), Public Expenditure and Policy Analysis, 3rd ed. (1983).