Within this broad scope, the aim is to measure how cash benefits and direct taxes alter current household incomes. Some taxes and transfers are excluded, most notably consumption taxes (also because they have no direct effect on incomes) and in-kind transfers (also because of the difficulties of accurately assigning values for these transfers to individual households). Since the focus is on working-age individuals and their families, old-age pensions are not a principal driver of the distributional outcomes of interest.