Abstract
There is an increasingly growth of China’s social security expenditure(SSE) during the past decade. Regarding to the great responsibility and impact on citizens’ welfare and economic development, the efficiency of social security expenditure has inevitably become the focus of growing attention. Based on Chinese provincial panel data over the period 2007–2016, a three-stage DEA model was conducted and found that the efficiency level of 29 provinces/municipalities did not reach the efficiency frontier. Environmental factors and statistical noises have a significant impact on the efficiency of SSE, if environmental factors and statistical noises are not considered, the efficiency of SSE in China is likely to be underestimated. The regional differences in the efficiency of SSE were significant and ranked by descending order as follows: central region, eastern region and western region.
Highlights
Introduction and literature reviewThere is an increasingly growth of China’s social security expenditure during the past decade
According to regional fiscal expenditure data published in the China Statistical Yearbook, items related to social security expenditure (SSE) include social security and employment expenditure and health expenditure
The efficiency of Tibet, Tianjin, Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, and Xinjiang significantly changed after the model adjustments, indicating that environmental factors have a considerable impact on these provinces/municipalities
Summary
There is an increasingly growth of China’s social security expenditure during the past decade. A number of Chinese scholars have adopted the traditional DEA and twostage DEA models to study the efficiency of SSE at both regional and national levels—from an input-output perspective [22,23,24,25,26,27]. Two-stage DEA model can analyze the factors affecting efficiency, but it cannot exclude the influence of environmental factors and statistical noises on the efficiency value. These limitations tend to lead to overestimation/underestimation of the actual efficiency, and both methods require further improvement. This study employed a three-stage DEA model, which was first proposed by Fried et al (2002)[29], to incorporate environmental effects and statistical noise into efficiency evaluation. A sampleset of 31 provinces and municipalities in China from 2007 to 2016 were analyzed to calculate the efficiency of SSE in China throughout the study period
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
