Public Social Expenditure Research Articles

중위투표자 관점에서의 공공사회복지 지출 분석

This paper analyzes the growth of public social expenditures in Korea from a public choice perspective. Specifically, based on the median voter theory, we conduct an empirical analysis of social insurance expenditures such as national pension, national health insurance, and public social expenditures using time series data from 1993 to 2022. The empirical results support that changes in the budget constraint for lifetime utility maximization of the median voter, including financial assets, remaining life expectancy, and remaining working year, are associated with an increase in public social expenditure. In addition, macroeconomic variables such as the real interest rate, real economic growth, and the tax base per recipient are also found to affect public social expenditure. This paper suggests that as the age of the median voter increases, public social expenditures, including national pensions and national health insurance, are bound to increase both naturally and politically.

Relationship between the Human Development Index and public social spending: European experience for Ukraine

This study focuses on the relationship between the Human Development Index (HDI) and public social expenditures, analyzing socio-economic models using the examples of selected European countries and Ukraine. The study used the values of the HDI, GDP, and indicators of public expenditures for social purposes, namely, healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection for the period from 2010 to 2021. The analysis targeted 13 European countries using data sets from Eurostat, the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. The input time series were checked for lagged values using the STATISTICA software.Empirical evidence suggests a relationship between HDI and public social spending. An increase in the share of public social expenditures in GDP leads to an increase in HDI and vice versa. European countries with a social-democratic model of development have the highest level of centralization of public expenditure in GDP (34.72%) and the highest HDI (0.930), while countries belonging to the Southern European model have the lowest share of socially oriented public expenditure (30.41%) and the lowest HDI (0.873). In addition, there is a time lag between the investment of public funds in healthcare, education, leisure, culture and religion, and social protection and their impact on HDI changes. Thus, ensuring a high level of HDI is achieved, among other things, through state financial support for the relevant components of the social sphere and social protection. AcknowledgmentThe study is funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under project No. 09I03-03-V01-00130.

The role of public social expenditure for mitigating local income inequality: An investigation across spatial scales in Austria

AbstractThis paper investigates the role of municipal and provincial public social spending for local income inequality after taxes and transfers in Austria. We utilize a spatial multi‐level model, which allows us to analyze the contribution of three spatial scales (municipal, district, and provincial level) to municipal income inequality. Our analysis shows that the effect of public social spending on local Gini indices does not only differ across provinces but also across municipalities which indicates that the potential cushioning effect of social expenditure is highly localized. Further splitting total public social expenditure into three distinct categories (education, health, social protection) reveals that spending on social protection has the highest effect on local inequality across all provinces, while health spending does not exert a discernible influence in any province. The method and results presented in this paper are of international interest for policymakers and researchers who aim to investigate whether the same patterns hold true in other countries.

Who gets the goods? Disentangling the effects of parliamentary representation and collective action on social spending

Abstract A century of activist and academic analysis of the welfare state can be sorted into insider and outsider theories of social change. One perspective argues that working-class and poor people can achieve income redistribution through insider strategies, primarily through the legislative efforts of left-wing political parties. A competing perspective argues that political parties themselves have no inner motor and merely channel the outside pressure from disruptive collective action. This article makes a substantive and methodological contribution to the debate over the generosity of the welfare state. We analyse the extent to which collective action confounds, moderates, or operates independently of left-wing parliamentary power to explain the history of social spending in 22 countries. Our results support a strong version of the insider intuition that the parliamentary road is crucial to winning gains for poor and working people. It does so without channelling the power of mass mobilization: accounting for various forms of collective action does not reduce the impact of left parliamentary representation on public social expenditures. Nonetheless, we do find that strikes, in particular, have independent effects on social spending. These results together provide some support for what can be called a Marxist–social democratic alliance. We also find evidence for the outsider view that protests and riots matter when combined; these mobilizations, like strikes, operate independently of the role of left-wing parliamentary power.

Public social spending, government effectiveness, and economic growth: an empirical investigation

ABSTRACT This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the relationships between public social spending, government effectiveness, and economic growth. Using panel data covering 132 developed and developing countries over the 2008 to 2019 period, we find significant and complementary relationships among the variables through fixed effects, system GMM, and instrumental variable estimation. All three components of public social spending, including social security benefits, education expenditure, and health expenditure, have a significant and positive impact on subsequent economic growth. Government effectiveness has a direct growth-enhancing effect as well as a mediating and positive effect on the association between public social expenditures and economic growth. Thus, governments accelerate the positive impact of public social spending on economic growth. These relationships hold for countries at all income levels, while the channels predicting a positive social spending – growth relationship are stronger in high-income countries than lower-income countries. To stimulate inclusive growth, governments must actively design and implement social spending policies. These, however, should be complemented by concomitant efforts to strengthen the quality of public institutions, which exerts a substantial impact on the social spending – growth relationship.

Social expenditure composition, inequality and growth in the OECD: Labour market policies are most effective

The literature on public social expenditure envisages a role for the composition of public social expenditure in the design of policies to reduce inequality and promote economic growth. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on which to ground social policy decisions. This study contributes to filling this gap by investigating the dynamic interdependencies between nine different categories of social spending, inequality and growth in 36 OECD countries over the period 1995–2017. According to the results of our work, based on a PVAR model, achieving a decrease in inequality without decreasing output growth is possible, requiring a change in the composition of social policy that gives more weight to spending on old age and survivors’ pensions, incapacity and family benefits, and active labour market policies, the latter having also a positive impact on growth. On the contrary, social expenditure on housing, as it has been conducted, appears to harm growth and enhance inequality.

Subjects of legal relations arising in the process of public social expenditures

This article is devoted to the study of the institutional subsystem of the mechanism for the implementation of public expenditures in the social sphere. In the framework of this study, the author analyzes the features of the legal status of public legal entities, collective and individual subjects of legal relations that develop in the process of implementing social spending.

Energy Subsidies and Social Public Expenditures in Emerging and Developing Countries

This article examines the effect of energy subsidies on social public expenditures for a sample of 57 emerging and developing countries over the period 2004-2019. The results of the system-based GMM approach reveal that energy subsidies negatively and significantly influence social public expenditures in the full panel, the poor, and resource-rich countries in our sample. These results confirm a political implication that consists in rationalizing energy subsidies in order to raise funds to support social public expenditures in emerging and developing countries.

The effect of public social expenditure on imports

This paper studies the effect of social expenditure on imports. In doing so, it uses cross-country panels of the world economy to estimate an augmented balance-of-payments-constrained growth model that takes into account social spending. The results show that social expenditure reduces imports and offsets the negative effect it could have on the balance of trade through its effect on exports. We also find that for OECD countries, education spending is relevant to imports but not to exports, for which the most relevant component is spending on social protection (old-age and unemployment benefits). This result is particularly relevant for development policy in countries with low social expenditure.

The State, Local Sociocultural Landscape, and Global Neoliberal Ideology in Vietnam

In the context of accelerating globalization as well as a shifting theoretical landscape in the social sciences and the humanities, this article examines the recent greater attention to the state and global forces, including the global neoliberal ideology, in Asian studies. Empirically, the article examines the resilient roles of family members and relatives in childcare and elderly care in Vietnam and many other parts of East and Southeast Asia, as well as the related trend of relatively low public social expenditures in most East and Southeast Asian societies. The long-standing ideology of familialism, which underlies the pattern of care for the young and elderly in Vietnam and many Asian societies, shapes state policies and exerts an impact on global capitalist operations in Vietnam, notwithstanding the acceleration of globalization, the global neoliberal ideology, and the strong power of the Vietnamese communist party-state. This article suggests that the relation between the local sociocultural landscape, state policies, and global forces involves a dialogic process.

Legal Regulation of the Mechanism of Implementation of Public Social Expenditures in the Russian Federation

The paper is devoted to examination of the legal regulation of the mechanism of implementation of public social expenditures in the Russian Federation. It is determined that the mechanism under consideration constitutes a system that includes a number of elements that are grouped into certain subsystems, including the regulatory subsystem, the principles of legal regulation of public relations that develop in the process of spending in the social sphere, the material basis of spending in the social sphere, the legal basis of social spending that include budget allocations, expenditure and budgetary obligations of public legal education, types of social expenditures, an institutional subsystem that includes subjects of legal relations arising in the process of implementing social expenditures. The paper draws special attention to the issues of codification of social legislation. As noted in the paper, this legislation is very mobile — new acts can be adopted to support certain segments of the population that were not previously covered by social protection measures; existing regulatory legal acts can be canceled when necessary, they may be amended due to the revision of criteria for the provision of social support measures, etc. In this regard, it is substantiated that, despite the fragmented nature, social welfare legislation, due to the peculiarities of regulated public relations, currently does not need codification at the federal level.

Chinese expert consensus on prevention and intervention for elderly with sarcopenia (2023).

Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and muscle strength or physical function. It is most common in elderly individuals. Due to its high incidence, insidious onset, and extensive impact on the body, it has a huge impact on the family medical burden and the social public health expenditure in China. The understanding of sarcopenia in China is still lacking, and the recommendations for prevention, control, and intervention are not clear and unified. The purpose of this consensus report is to standardize the prevention, control, and intervention methods for sarcopenia in elderly patients in China; improve the efficacy of intervention; reduce complications during the intervention process; and reduce the risk of falls, fractures, disability, hospitalization, and even death in elderly individuals.

YAŞLANAN NÜFUS MİLLİ GELİRİ NASIL ETKİLER? G-20 ÜLKELERİNDEN KANITLAR

Doğum oranlarındaki azalış, beklenen yaşam süresindeki artış küresel yaş yapısında önemli bir değişime neden olmaktadır. Toplam nüfus içerisinde yaş gruplarının oranının değişmesi, özellikle yaşlı nüfus oranının artması ile ekonomik hayatta bazı değişimler yaşanmıştır. Bu değişimler genç, çalışma çağı ve yaşlı nüfus grupları arasında işgücü arzı, tasarruf, tüketim, kamusal harcamalar ve beşerî sermaye gibi konuların farklılaşmasına yol açmıştır. Nüfustaki artışın ekonomik büyümeyi tüketim ve tasarruf modelleri, kamusal sosyal harcama ve insan sermayesi olarak üç mekanizma yoluyla etkileyeceği belirtilmektedir. Bu çalışma ile nüfus yaşlanmasının milli geliri nasıl etkileyeceği açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu bağlamda G20 ülkeleri verileri kullanılarak panel veri analizi yöntemi ile demografik değişkenler ve milli gelir arasındaki ilişki incelenmiştir. Analiz sonuçları, toplam nüfus içinde çalışma çağındaki nüfusun oranı arttıkça milli gelirin arttığı görülmektedir. Ayrıca toplam nüfus içinde yaşlı nüfusun artmasının da milli geliri arttırdığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Elde edilen bu sonuçlar istatistiksel olarak anlamlıdır.

Country-level determinants of gender differences in major depression and alcohol use disorder

Abstract Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are leading causes of disease burden in Europe, with MDD disproportionately affecting women and AUD being more prevalent among men. However, it is unclear how country-level political and socio-cultural characteristics contribute to gender differences in these conditions. Methods Data for 30,416 participants from 16 countries were obtained from the 2014 European Social Survey. Depressive symptoms were ascertained using the 8-item CES-D scale, and alcohol use was assessed with items on past-year alcohol use frequency and quantity, as well as frequency of heavy episodic drinking. Country-level data for attitudes to gender equality, needs-adjusted public social expenditure, and other covariates came from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme and the OECD. Modified Poisson and linear regression with log link examined additive and multiplicative interactions of country-level characteristics with gender for MDD, AUD, and their specific symptoms/dimensions. Results Public social expenditure was not associated with gender differences in MDD (CES-D>10), but with greater differences in the prevalence of the loneliness and sadness symptoms; support for gender equality was associated with smaller differences in loneliness (p < 0.05). For AUD, there was evidence of increased alcohol use frequency and quantity among women, and decreased frequency and quantity among men associated with support for gender equality, resulting in lower gender differences in predicted probabilities (from 23% to 5% across exposure levels; p < 0.001). Heavy episodic drinking was strongly positively associated with support for gender equality among women (p < 0.001), but not among men. Conclusions Country-level characteristics appear to exert differential impact on the prevalence of AUD and certain psychological symptoms of MDD among men and women in Europe. Pending replication, future research should examine underlying mechanisms. Key messages

Integrative Elderly Care Model as a Part of a Changing Long-Term Care and Welfare State in Slovakia

The aim of this article is to describe and discuss the key challenges of social and healthcare services in Slovakia, focusing on the Integrative Elderly Care Model as part of a changing welfare state. It also examines the opportunities and challenges related to the transformation of community-based social and healthcare services. The Slovak welfare state has undergone several revisions during the last decade; so too has the elderly care sector, which is a combination of public and non-government organisations. Elderly citizens, however, remain in a precarious situation. The trend toward marketisation and re-familiarisation of elderly care ‘go towards the EU average’, indicating an increase in public social expenditure directed towards aging.

Gendering Macroeconomic Analysis and Development Policy: A Theoretical Model

The aim of this study is to develop a feminist Post-Keynesian/Post-Kaleckian model to theoretically analyze the effects of labor market and fiscal policies on growth and employment. The study develops a three-sector gendered macroeconomic model with physical and social sectors (health, social care, education, childcare) in the public and private market economy, and an unpaid reproductive sector providing domestic care. It provides a theoretical analysis of the effects on GDP, productivity, and employment of men and women in both the short and long run, as a consequence of (1) fiscal policies, in particular public spending on social infrastructure, and (2) decreasing gender wage gaps, particularly within the social sector dominated by women. This theoretical analysis provides a basis to further analyze the impacts of an upward convergence in wages, other types of fiscal spending, and taxes. HIGHLIGHTS The study develops a feminist Post-Keynesian model to aid policy analysis and gender-responsive budgeting. Public social expenditure decreases gender inequality by reducing women’s unpaid work burden. Social spending creates more employment for women than physical infrastructure and closes gender gaps in employment. Social spending can increase productivity, partially moderating the employment impact of spending. If the economy is wage-led, more progressive taxes increase output.

Impacts of Economic Freedom, Health, and Social Expenditures on Well-Being Measured by the Better Life Index in OECD Countries

ABSTRACT The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has developed the Better Life Index (BLI), which is a multidimensional approach to well-being. This study aims to investigate the impact of health and social expenditures as well as the economic freedom index on well-being measured by BLI among 34 OECD countries for 2013–2017 period. We estimated panel models to observe the social and health expenditure effects according to their sources and the overall impact of economic changes among countries. We find that public and private social expenditures have a positive and statistically significant impact on BLI at 1% significance level. Additionally, whereas public health expenditure has a positive and statistically significant impact on BLI at 1% significance level, the effects of private health expenditure are statistically significant at 10% significance level. The economic freedom index has a positive and statistically significant impact on BLI in both models. Both social and health expenditures should take a prominent position in policy debates for a better life.

Current trends in social welfare policies toward the older people in the Baltic and Nordic countries: an explorative study

ABSTRACT This article reviews welfare policy arrangements developed in the Baltic and Nordic countries to address the problems of aging. The findings show that after almost thirty years of redesigning social policy and welfare systems in the Baltic countries, senior citizens remain in a precarious situation. As expected, the Nordic countries are yet superior in terms of benefits and services. The trend toward marketization and re-familialization of elderly care, and ‘go towards the EU average’ in public expenditures is, however, also identified in the Nordic countries. In the Baltic states, in contrast, the ‘go towards the EU average’ indicates an increase in public social expenditure directed toward aging.

What drives variations in public health and social services expenditures? the association between political fragmentation and local expenditure patterns.

The US spends two times more than the OECD average in health expenditure but has a much smaller portion of public health spending to total health expenditure than other OECD countries. While it has been suggested that public health and social services spending is crucial to promoting health outcomes, less is known about what drives variations in public health expenditure across regions. This study aims to examine whether political fragmentation inlocal governance is associated with variations in public health and social services expenditures. Using the US Census of Governments, we constructed a panel dataset of political fragmentation and local government spending patterns (1997-2012) for 792 US counties (population > 60,882, top 25%) and employed Least Squares Dummy Variable (LSDV) and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) models. We found that per capita public health spending tended to be smaller in areas where the degree of political fragmentation was higher (Coef: - 0.034; p < 0.01), particularly when general-purpose governments were more fragmented (Coef: - 0.087; p < 0.001). The proportion of public health spending alsodecreased when local governments were more fragmented (Coef: - 0.012; p < 0.001). Social services expenditures and their proportions to total government expenditure fell with an increase in the degree of political fragmentation. Our findings suggest that fragmented governance settings, in which localities are more likely to face competition with others, may lead to a reduction in public spending essential for population health and that political fragmentation can also have a deterrent effect on broader categories of health-related social services spending.

An emerging but vulnerable middle class: A description of trends in Asia and the Pacific

The objective of the present paper is to examine the extent to which economic growth and public social expenditure in Asia and the Pacific have translated into an increasing middle class. Using international poverty lines and an absolute definition of the middle class, it is estimated that between 1999 and 2015, 1.2 billion people moved into the Asia-Pacific middle class and that the share tripled, from 13 to 39 per cent of the total population. This expansion, however, did not translate into an income-secure middle class, as almost one billion people are vulnerable and at risk of falling back into poverty. Examination at the country-level reveals that large disparities persist in the region, as most countries need to sustain economic growth and at the same time guarantee that the gains are sufficiently distributed to increase the size of the middle class.