Payments by the state to bring people's incomes up to a socially acceptable level. Such payments are made to various groups, including the old, the disabled, the sick, and the unemployed. Making such payments is justified on equity grounds, and on the argument that allowing incomes to fall below some minimum level carries dangers to public health, and to public order if poverty encourages crime. The availability of income support gives rise to moral hazard: support for the sick or disabled could encourage malingering, support for the unemployed could impair the incentives to seek work, and state pensions undermine the incentives to private savings. Many modern economies find the cost of income support schemes a serious problem.

• impact effect
• impatience
• imperfect competition
• imperialism, economic
• implicit contract
• implicit function
• importables
• import control
• import deposit
• Import Duties Act, 1932
• import duty
• imported inflation
• import levy
• import licence
• import penetration
• import propensity
• import quota
• import restriction
• imports
• import substitution
• import surcharge
• import tariff
• imputation system
• imputed charge for consumption of non-trading capital
• imputed income