An Introduction to Microsimulation Tax-Benefit Models

You are the finance Secretary: Task III: A Budget for Women

Party policy is to produce the worlds first explicitly pro-woman budget. It is for you to interpret what this is to mean, and to construct a package of measures to deliver it.

Points to consider:

• is the pattern of male and female working different - part-time versus full time, for instance, or low versus high wages? How could the tax and benefit system better support the kinds of work women do?
• what about families? If women are more frequently the main carers, should the benefit system reflect that?

It may be that the important changes needed in this case are not things allowed from our simple user-interface. But you may have enough of a feel by now of how things operate to be able to speculate on the likely effects of the changes you’d ideally make.