This paper aims to understand whether a shift towards a more balanced cash transfer and service-based welfare system is valuable in terms of reducing income inequality and what factors mostly contribute to the income inequality evolution. To examine this, I first impute the monetary values of in-kind benefits and then reassess Gini coefficients across countries and welfare regimes. I also compare the role of cash transfers by functions and, more importantly, by how they are allocated. By means of factor source decomposition, the elasticities confirm wages as being the income source that creates most inequalities, while taxes play the most equalising role together with cash transfers. However, universal services such as healthcare and compulsory education outperform most of the cash transfers included in the analysis, with a stronger effect in the Mediterranean countries. Although in-kind services play a marginal role in explaining the changes in the Gini coefficient between 2008 and 2017, results suggest that a coordinated view of cash transfers and public services, as well as increasing the share of non-contributory means tested transfers, can reduce income inequality in all welfare regimes.

本文旨在了解向更平衡的现金转移支付和基于服务的福利体系的转变在减少收入不平等方面是否有价值，以及哪些因素主要导致收入不平等的演变。为了检验这一点，我首先估算实物福利的货币价值，然后重新评估各国和福利制度的基尼系数。我还按功能比较了现金转移的作用，更重要的是，按它们的分配方式进行了比较。通过要素来源分解，弹性确认工资是造成最大不平等的收入来源，而税收与现金转移一起发挥最大的均衡作用。然而，医疗保健和义务教育等普遍服务的表现优于分析中包含的大部分现金转移支付，在地中海国家影响更大。尽管实物服务在解释 2008 年至 2017 年基尼系数变化方面发挥的作用很小，但结果表明，协调现金转移和公共服务的观点，以及增加非缴费型经济状况调查转移的比例，可以减少所有福利制度中的收入不平等。