Subject to this caveat, Table 3 shows that, like social expenditures, total government revenues have also increased on average across OECD countries (from 33 percent in the mid 1980s, to 34.7 percent in 1995 and 35.8 percent in 2005). But, unlike in the case of social expenditures, the shares of the total that are typically accounted for in redistribution studies, have gone up as well (from just under 35 percent of total revenues in 1985 to just over 36 percent in 2005). Some of these direct taxes are much more progressive than others. Personal income taxes employ progressive tax schedules (even if they have become flatter, as shown in the next section), while social contributions can be regressive, consuming a bigger part of the incomes of low-to-middle income earners than of higher-income groups.