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Many countries are implementing carbon taxation to limit emissions, and this provides a new form of tax revenue. Studies have taken up the question of what forms of expenditure from carbon taxation receive public support and whether 'revenue recycling' can improve support for carbon taxation. However, public attitudes are ambiguous. We argue that some of the diverse findings partly reflect that previous studies have lacked the trade‐offs that come with expenditures and that we need to expand focus beyond what the average citizen wants. Therefore, we use an approach where members of the Danish public are asked how they would like to divide the total sum of carbon tax revenues between eight specific areas. We employ hierarchical cluster analysis, which shows a diverse field of groups. This reveals that, while generally popular, expenditures toward climate mitigation and adaptation need to be complemented by social spending to achieve broader support. Related Articles: Ike, Vivian. 2020. "The Impact of Veto Players on Incremental and Drastic Policy Making: Australia's Carbon Tax Policy and Its Repeal." Politics & Policy 48(2): 232–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12346. Lachapelle, Erick, Thomas Bergeron, Richard Nadeau, Jean‐François Daoust, Ruth Dassonneville, and Éric Bélanger. 2021. "Citizens' Willingness to Support New Taxes for COVID‐19 Measures and the Role of Trust." Politics & Policy 49(3): 534–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12404. Tuxhorn, Kim‐Lee, John D'Attoma, and Sven Steinmo. 2021. "Do Citizens Want Something for Nothing? Mass Attitudes and the Federal Budget." Politics & Policy 49(3): 566–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12406. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite expecting countries to rely on welfare measures in the aftermath of financial crises, one should not ignore the possibility of fiscal retrenchments due to the constraints that those crises may bring. This article analyses that issue by assessing the impact of financial crises on governmental social spending and its components (healthcare, education and social protection) using a panel of 108 countries from 1991 to 2019. An important contribution of this study is that it assesses the effects of different types of financial crises (banking, currency and debt) in addition to distinguishing between developed and developing countries. The findings indicate that while developed countries neutralise the adverse effects of crises by increasing social spending, developing countries tend to shrink outlays—in particular healthcare and social protection—when financial crises strike, despite the associated negative consequences on human and social well‐being. Moreover, debt crises proved to be more detrimental to social spending than banking and currency crises in developing countries. An important policy implication arising from our analysis is that governments should maintain a high level of fiscal balance in normal times to be able to finance welfare state expansion programmes during periods of financial crises, especially in emerging/developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the limitations of unidimensional analyses in the comparative welfare state literature and emphasises the need for a more holistic, multidimensional approach incorporating social spending, welfare state outputs and outcomes. To illustrate the utility of a multidimensional approach, we examine the long‐term welfare state trajectories of Sweden and Germany, prototypical social‐democratic and conservative welfare states, respectively, and compare them against the baseline of Europe's prototypical liberal welfare state, the United Kingdom. The social spending (expenditure) and output (generosity) allowed us to identify significant changes in the Swedish welfare state (i.e., retrenchment). The outcome dimension alerts us to a policy drift in the German Welfare State, as relatively stable public spending and welfare generosity until the first half of the 2000s were nonetheless associated with sharply increased inequality and poverty. Overall, our findings suggest that a holistic, multidimensional approach is necessary to fully understand the complexities of welfare state change and continuity, as focusing solely on one dimension can lead to analytical misjudgments. The sharp rise in inequality and poverty across countries raises doubts about whether policymakers and researchers rely too much on outdated assumptions of normality that fail to meet the welfare state realities of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents evidence on the effect of fiscal policies on poverty and inequality in Ghana for the 2017 fiscal year based on the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) assessment framework. Also, the CEQ framework was used to simulate the short-term distributional consequences (‘morning-after’ effects) of Ghana’s Free Senior High School (SHS) Policy and utility subsidies during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that government spending and taxation in Ghana lowered inequality (Gini coefficient) by 5.94 percentage points. We also find a reduction in poverty rates, but this was mainly driven by in-kind benefits associated with public spending on health and more so education, without which poverty rate would have been higher. In its blanket form, the ‘morning-after’ effects of the Free SHS Policy was a marginal reduction in both inequality and poverty. We find further that in contrast to the effect of the blanket subsidy on water, the subsidies on electricity which had some elements of targeting reduced both poverty and inequality, but marginally. The findings underscore the need for more targeted subsidy and spending programmes to enhance their short-term poverty reduction and redistributive impacts.

Society's progress is largely determined by the size of a country's social spending, as well as policies to reduce poverty. The research problem represents testing whether social spending allocations are appropriate to the needs of the governorates to reduce their poverty levels. Therefore, the objectives of research are estimate increasing social spending impact reducing the poverty rate. The most important results were the presence significant difference between poverty rates for desert and non-desert governorates. There’s negative significant relationship between various social spending items, and total investment on poverty rates difference between two study areas. Research recommends: increasing government spending as direct policies to reduce poverty rate between the two study areas, by providing immediately high level of education and health, in parallel total investments as indirect policies, therefore reducing variation in poverty rates between the two study areas. This is done by providing financial allocations for these policies in the following amount: First: Increase social spending allocations by 10% reduces the poverty rate by about 0.97% in the desert governorates, compared to raising it by 30%, which reduces the poverty rate by about 1.10%. Second: increase total investments by 10% reduce the poverty rate by 1.1% in desert governorates, while increasing it by 30% reduces the poverty rate by 1.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main policy instruments to fight poverty, especially in developing countries, is the public spending in sectors as education, health, and social welfare. In Ecuador, the amount of these three sectors has experienced a growing trend from 2008. Consequently, our objective is to identify the effect of public spending on multidimensional poverty in Ecuador, therefore, a multidimensional poverty index based in fuzzy sets theory is applied, analyzing it as a degree of deprivation rather than an attribute of presence or absence, we construct a poverty profile and estimate a multinomial probit model with a pool of provincial data for the period 2009-2017. Our main results show that poverty is reduced in the study period, but that not all population groups have benefited to the same extent, in addition that social welfare spending has significant effects on multidimensional poverty, but health and education spending are not significant. These results suggest that public policies should be applied in two ways, one to combat poverty and the other to close the gaps, which leads to the execution of more and better public spending on social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social protection has arisen with remarkable speed on the global agenda. As part of this development many international organisations have adopted social protection policies to guide their policy-making. One of the most recent organisation to do so is the IMF, which in 2019 adopted a Strategy for Social Spending. Reception has been mixed. Whereas for some this indicates a long overdue sign of taking social responsibility seriously, for others this constitutes merely another attempt at whitewashing its neoliberal economic agenda. This article seeks to identify the notion of social spending as invoked by the IMF, and to contextualise it with reference to the mandate of the Fund. The article claims that the increasing engagement with social protection inevitably brings the IMF into a discourse on the concept and form of that protection. As social protection is strongly embedded in a rights-based approach, the article therefore asks to what extent IMF social protection engagement can be thought of as promotion of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the degree to which the policy preferences of female legislators explain the widely observed negative association between women's political representation (known as "women in parliament," or WIP) and corruption. While a broad literature suggests that WIP reduces corruption, there is little consensus on how. Some suggest that the effect is driven by women's psychology—perhaps women are more prosocial or more risk-averse than men, and thus engage in less corruption. Others suggest that the effect is driven by policy preferences: because it serves the interest of their female constituents, women promote social spending, which in turn reduces corruption. We employ a mediation analysis that allows us to test the mediating effect of social spending, and to provide an upper bound for alternative explanations. Our results suggest that social spending explains as much as 69 percent of the effect of WIP on corruption, leaving as little as 31 percent for alternative explanations. These results are robust to concerns about spurious WIP effects, sample composition, and the potential for endogeneity in the link from either WIP or social spending to corruption. We conclude by implicating these findings in broader discussions about the beneficial effects of WIP for governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender gap in welfare state attitudes is the tendency of men to be less positive toward an encompassing welfare state than women. To study attitudinal gender differences at the individual level, this paper synthesizes prior explanations, focused on self-interest and norms, with a social identity perspective, centered on the process of social identification with a gender group. With representative survey data (n = 1515), covering social spending preferences in Sweden, this study uses a psychometric instrument to gauge the emotional and psychological centrality of gender to individuals' concept of self—thus distinguishing between men and women with different degrees of attachment to their gender group (strength of gender identification). The results show a strong gender identification is negatively related to social spending preferences for men, but not for women. The findings are discussed in the light the influence of gender norms and masculinity threat, highlighting the structuring and normative implications of social policy for gender differences in attitudes toward the Swedish welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the existence of social policy interdependence in 22 European countries. We find that the outcomes of social policies achieved in a country are influenced by the social outcomes obtained in other countries; more precisely, there is a positive correlation between the level of welfare services in a country and a weighted average of the welfare services level in other countries, with the weights capturing the different degrees of proximity between them. The other determinants of social outcomes include the efficiency of the expenditure process, the GDP level, and the redistributive preferences of the median voter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social policy research examining citizens' welfare knowledge, which offers a gateway to their understanding of the policy context, has remained limited. Adapting the opportunity–motivation–ability framework borrowed from the literature on political knowledge to welfare knowledge, this article offers an analysis of new data from a nationwide survey to explore Turkish society's knowledge of the composition of public social spending. Corroborating earlier findings in the literature, the article maintains that most people in Turkey overestimate the relative size of social assistance spending for the poor. However, different from previous findings, the majority and most pensioners are also ill-informed about the rank of public spending on old-age pensions, the most widely used social benefit absorbing the largest share of welfare spending. The article provides evidence of the social division of welfare knowledge in Turkish society based mostly on three opportunity-related variables: city of residence, gender and income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the twentieth century, Mexican federalism was characterized by a centralization of power in the hands of the federal government. Since the 1980s, different decentralization processes gradually increased the political influence and income of states, as well as their participation in social policymaking. However, the effects of decentralization on social spending at the state level has scarcely been analyzed in Mexico. The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolution and characteristics of social spending at the state level in Mexico from 2000 to 2018. This analysis uses data from state public accounts of the 31 states and Mexico City. On average, state social expenditure per capita increased in the last two decades, but at a slower rate than overall state expenditure. Furthermore, education, the biggest share of total social expenditure, and healthcare both grew steadily, while other forms of social spending grew in more varying rates over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study extends the debate on social spending in the developing world by taking the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries to examine the social policy reactions of democratic and non-democratic regimes to globalization which is one of the main social challenges of sustainable development. This article investigates the impact of globalization and democracy on the aggregate and disaggregates levels of social spending for the selected SAARC countries from the period 1996–2018. The investigation includes how governments react to the challenges of globalization with the welfare policy decisions that are located more toward reducing cost ("efficiency theory") otherwise ensuring individuals' government assistance ("compensation theory"). The results support both the efficiency and compensation thesis depending on which type of globalization indicator is taken under consideration, however, it would be misleading to assume that the efficiency thesis is valid for all developing countries. By using the TSCS data technique on SAARC countries we discovered the impact of globalization on social spending that was supposed to be conditional on regime type. However, the interactive variables reveal an important finding that trade openness tends to increase social spending (the coefficient indicates little systematic effect), and financial openness tends to cut social spending, while democracy of SAARC countries has no significant role or unrelated in counterbalancing these effects. Hence, social spending cannot automatically develop human capital through democratic regime, further SAARC governments are usually in fiscal insolvency that results in allocating most of the resources from budget on debt repayments, leaving a small portion for social-related expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to men, women tend to prioritize social services, which are usually the responsibility of local government. Female political representation often serves not only as an indicator for descriptive gender equality but also as a common policy instrument for substantive female representation. Yet, empirical evidence of female political representation’s influence on promoting female voters’ priorities is inconclusive. Examining the correlation between the percent of female politicians in Israeli local government and social spending from local government sources over nine budget years, this study shows that only education spending is influenced by female political representation and only when combined with a female mayor. Our main contribution is in showing that female representation in the local council on its own, without the representation of a female mayor, is insufficient for promoting female voters’ priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We simulate the short- and long-term distributional consequences of COVID-19 in the four largest Latin American economies: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. We show that the short-term impact on income inequality and poverty can be very significant, but that additional spending on social assistance more than offsets the effect in Brazil. The offsetting effect is significant in Argentina and Colombia and nil in Mexico, where there has been no such expansion. We find that a universal basic income that would have produced the same reduction in the poverty gap as actual policies would have cost slightly more but would have benefited the poor (the nonpoor) slightly less (more). To project the longterm consequences, we estimate the impact of the pandemic on school achievement and its intergenerational persistence. We use information on school closures, educational mitigation policies, and account for educational losses related to health shocks and parental job loss. Our findings show that in all four countries the impact is strongly asymmetric and affects particularly the high-school completion rates of children from disadvantaged families. Our simulations suggest that mitigation policies seem to have a minor impact on containing these negative effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This article aims to find country‐level factors that explain the rise of populist parties in European democracies. While populism is often connected to inequality, we not that right‐wing populist parties tend to thrive on fear, including fear of job loss. If flexible labor markets mean that unemployment is dedramatized because finding a new job is easier, labor market flexibility could dampen populism and inequality may be less important. Methods: We run country‐level fixed effects regressions on populist party vote shares in 26 European countries from 1980 to 2018. We use two different classifications of right‐wing and left‐wing populist parties and control for employment protection strictness as measured by OECD, Gini coefficients of disposable income, and a large set of control variables. Results: Unemployment is positively associated with left‐wing populism. Strict employment protection is positively associated with right‐wing populism. Gini inequality of income is unrelated to (both types of) populism. Conclusion: Strong employment protection and low‐income inequality may not be the most efficient way to combat right‐wing populism. A strategy that promotes flexible labor markets, and job upgrading may be an alternative. More research on the link between labor market institutions and (in particular, right‐wing) populism is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the economic consequences of migration for the Swedish welfare system. The question of whether the high costs of receiving refugees undermine the sustainability of the universal welfare state has received considerable attention in the political debate. While most studies focus on the fiscal burden of refugee reception and the short-term impacts of migration on welfare arrangements, this article advocates a comprehensive, long-term assessment of the effects of migration flows on public finances. Starting from the priorities of the architects of the welfare system, who designed and expanded social policy, indicators are derived to assess strategic goals and considerations. Reproduction of the workforce by managing its age profile, increasing employment levels and the employability of the surplus workforce, and creating conditions that increase long-term growth in the economy are considered crucial for the sustainability of the system. From a purely utilitarian perspective, migration is considered beneficial to the economy, provided that migrants gain quick entry to, and a high employment rate in, the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Políticas Públicas is the property of Revista Brasileira de Politicas Publicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We study the potential impact of the commodity price boom of 2003 to 2013 on public social spending in Latin America. We estimate structural vector autoregressions and local projections for 16 Latin American countries over the period from 1990 to 2019 and investigate if we can attribute increases in public spending on health, education, and social protection to increases in a country's net commodity terms-of-trade. By focusing on the impulse responses derived from country-specific estimations, we find a huge variety in response patterns. Our study finds that two countries experienced lasting increases in public social spending due to the commodity boom (Argentina, Ecuador). Some others observed at least temporary increases of few years (Brazil, Mexico), reacted first with declines and then rises (Chile), and yet others did not respond at all (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru). As expected, we cannot relate public social spending with commodity prices in countries without commodity price boom. Among countries with positive responses, there is no clear tendency concerning the function of spending that benefits most. We discuss potential explanations behind the heterogeneity of our country-wise results and conclude that the presence of left-wing governments, fiscal rules, natural resource funds and economic diversification provide plausible explanations for single country cases, but no general patterns emerge. We conclude that the commodity price boom was neither necessary nor sufficient for social policy expansion in Latin America, and factors explaining its effects differ from country to country. Our study highlights the importance of in-depth examinations of country-specific factors and the need of (currently lacking) high-quality time series data in development research. • Analysis of the effect of commodity price changes on different types of public social spending in commodity-dependent Latin American countries. • Social spending shows heterogeneous responses across countries, ranging from long-lasting positive effects to no reactions. • There is no clear tendency which of the main functions of public social spending benefits most from an increase in commodity prices. • General determinants of public social spending cannot explain the heterogeneity of the results. • The commodity price boom 2003–2013 was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for increasing public social spending in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between age and subjective wellbeing has been examined across different samples and obser­vational time frames, most often indicating a decline in subjective wellbeing with age or a U-shaped relation. Although various contextual variables have been examined as moderators of this relation, the moderating effect of social spending has not been investigated so far. Given that social spending is potentially beneficial for wellbeing and that social spending in Europe is primarily elderly-oriented, we assumed that in countries with higher social spending expenditures, there is a more positive effect of age on subjective wellbeing. We used cross-sectional hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) analysis and the data from the ninth round of the European Social Survey, including 29 countries. Our results show that age is generally negatively related, while age squared is positively related to subjec­tive wellbeing, indicating a U-shaped relation between age and wellbeing. Additionally, social spending at the aggregate level is a significant determinant of wellbeing at the individual level. Most importantly, social spending is a significant positive moderator of this association: with increasing social spending levels, aging is more positively related to wellbeing.

I use household survey data to microsimulate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on income distribution in Spain. I estimate the cost of potential lockdowns under three different low-income public protection schemes. Results show that although the COVID-19 shock has reduced income for all deciles of the income distribu¬tion, the losses are not uniformly distributed. The worst economic effects of the pandemic are not on the poorest, but on individuals in the middle and wealthy groups of the ex-ante income distribution. Low-income benefits help to moderate income losses and to curb poverty and inequality at various levels. It might be necessary to raise taxes and to resort to expenditure reducing policies to maintain protection in the context of contraction and lower government revenues.

Recent studies find that fiscal concerns strongly condition public attitudes toward immigration. To what extent do expert cues affect these worries? Original survey experiments in Japan reveal that citizens are more easily swayed by experts warning against negative fiscal effects of immigration than they are by suggestions of possible positive economic or cultural impacts. This strong responsiveness to negative information is shared across the population, including the more educated who may be pro-immigrant, richer respondents who are less likely to depend on the government for their livelihoods, and younger respondents who may worry less about possible cuts in benefits. A follow-up survey four years after the initial survey confirms the reliability of our findings and also suggests some macro-level variables that condition how expert cues work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands the analysis of the cyclical characteristics of social spending by providing information on its joint behaviour across OECD countries. With this aim we propose the use of dynamic factor analysis and recursive models to estimate synchronization and cyclicality of social policies within a broad perspective. By considering the synchronization of social spending it is possible to assess the short-run characteristics of the joint response to changes in the economic cycle. We find that synchronization of social spending was only possible for advanced economies, achieving the highest countercyclical stabilization effect during the Global Financial Crisis. Emerging market economies are not able to join the synchronized response, maintaining independent and, in most cases, procyclical stances in the behaviour of their social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 has gone beyond a public health crisis and poses a serious threat to people's livelihoods. In response to the growing employment and income crisis, most OECD countries have introduced various policies and programs to alleviate rapidly rising social risks and stabilise people's livelihoods. However, these measures vary, with some governments spending only 1% of GDP in 2020, while others spent more than 10%. We conducted a multiple regression analysis to examine factors associated with the level of additional social spending in 31 OECD countries. The results indicate that lower generosity of unemployment benefits was associated with additional social policy spending. However, contrary to the hypothesis, higher additional spending was found among countries with higher levels of government debt. We ended with policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worries about polarization are on the rise. In today's Europe, one of the most manifest gaps is the education divide over immigration. Where lower educated citizens tend to be negative about immigration, higher educated individuals are generally positive. Yet the magnitude of this education divide strongly differs between countries. What explains these differences? I theorize that when the levels of socioeconomic security are high, in particular less well educated citizens will be more likely to focus on issues with a strong cultural component, like immigration, and therefore hold more radical opinions. As a result, existing divides will be more pronounced. Analyzing 23 countries between 2002 and 2018, I show that social welfare spending fuels the education divide over immigration. I demonstrate that, indeed, it does so by affecting the immigration attitudes of the less well educated—not those of the better educated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Views of the poor are based on data from western countries not developing nations. How are the poor viewed in Africa? We focus on how identities shape views of the poor in Africa, and conduct a series of field experiments in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal randomly selecting respondents using a multi-stage cluster sampling strategy. Our total sample includes 851 respondents that evaluated randomized profiles of a single-vignette of a person living in poverty. Results indicate that the poor are more likely to be seen as unlucky, and in some cases deserving of government assistance, if they were born into poverty, have limited education, and are female. Shared identities associated with class and ethnicity increase the chances of being viewed as unlucky and deserving of assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of "partial fiscal decentralization," in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Foro Internacional is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper analyses selected determinants of social spending in the eurozone countries. The sample includes 17 eurozone countries (euro area countries except for Malta and Slovenia) analysed over the time sample, which covers annual data between 1996 and 2017. The paper takes into account three categories of social spending: aggregated welfare spending, aggregated social protection spending, and spending on social protection benefits, and evaluates the statistical and quantitative effects of their selected determinants. The set of determinants includes general macroeconomic variables related to the condition of the economy and selected demographic factors. The analysis is based on panel data. The obtained results point out the effects of macroeconomic factors on social-type spending and the effects of old-age dependency ratio on spending, whereas the significance of the rest of the analysed demographic factors is generally ambiguous and depends on the type of spending under consideration, applied approach, specification, as well as the control variables used in the analysis.

In this paper, we aim to study the interrelationship between social spending, economic growth, and income inequality in developing countries from the year 1990 to 2013. We observed that all the categories of social spending produced a significant reduction in income inequality. Further, the impact of health and education spending on economic growth is significant, and that of social protection is insignificant. This indicates that both health and education spending can break the trade-off between equity and efficiency, that is, it can lead to both growth and progressive distributional change. However, given the importance of social welfare measures in reducing income inequality, developing countries need to focus on active social spending like labor market reforms that can increase gross domestic product growth rate and simultaneously reduce income inequality.

Social protection has long been a relevant subject of scientific debate. Its development is interrelated with the study of fiscal factors (collection of social contributions), establishment of major social protection vectors, and confirmation of hypotheses about the link between social protection policy and the resulting socio-economic indicators.The purpose of the paper is to study the impact of public funding of social protectionon social indicatorsusing the example of Eurozone countries. To this end, a number of economic and mathematical methods of analysis were applied to process panel data of seventeen countries for the last fifteen years, including the calculation of the relative rate of variation, regression dependence statistics, and cluster analysis.The study established the irrelevance between the scope of the fundingof spending on social protection and social contributions (coefficient of determination R2=0.255). As illustrated, social indicators are determined not only by the amount of funding of social spending, but also by the structure of the social protection system, in particular, the focus on assistance to families with children and disability compensation (coefficient of determination R2>0.3). The general level of public funding for social spending items results in the 69% income inequality index andis behind 58% of non-economic parameters affecting life quality. The information outlined in the papercan serve as a basis for the formation of social and budgetary policy, as well as the revision of the structure and scope of social protection funding toensure an efficient impact on the quality of life of the population.

ABSTRACT This article compares parliamentary preferences on welfare expenditure in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom between 1996 and 2013. The analysis is focused on the relationship between the type of welfare regime and the programmatic offer on the volume of social spending. Two indexes were calculated: social spending and social retrenchment. Upon emergence from the recession, an increasingly homogeneous conception is detected of social policies as being subordinated to economic policies; convergence has occurred within each of the worlds of welfare, maintaining the variation among them found prior to the Crisis.

Whereas most theories of why the masses protest in democratic and authoritarian regimes involve some psychological or 'cognitive' element, major theories that include them (a) de-emphasize the structural conditions and (b) posit an explicit structure and cognition model but lack data to test its propositions across nations and time. This article synthesizes cognition-themed theories of democratic culture, political process theory's cognitive liberation, and the structural cognitive model's incentives. I test this synthetic theory in a specific way: that democratization and social spending interact with cognition in terms of external political efficacy and support for equitable economic redistribution to increase protest potential. I employ a three-level cross-national time-series model on the World Values Survey/European Values Study integrated dataset (1981–2020), consisting of democratic and authoritarian-leaning countries. I find that the three cognitive theories are complementary and that the interaction of structural changes with micro-level cognition has nuanced associations with protest potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Abant Social Sciences / Abant Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Journal of Abant Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How does European integration affect the welfare state? This paper argues that European integration has non-complementary consequences for the political economy of welfare spending: European economic integration increases popular demand for social spending, whereas European political integration decreases the supply of social spending. Thus, the conflicting implications of European integration essentially break the link between social policy preferences and social policy. Using statistical models that deal with the multilevel structure of the theoretical argument, we find a positive relationship between economic integration and support for social policy. In the second part of the empirical analysis, dynamic model specifications at the country level show that higher levels of political integration are associated with lower levels of social spending. Furthermore, we provide evidence that social policy responsiveness declines as political integration increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the annual data of Pakistan's economy from 1975 to 2018, this paper explores the channels linking social spending and economic growth. With separate modeling for education and health capital, the paper finds that health spending has a statistically significant and negative impact on the mortality rate which infers that health improvement in Pakistan is dependent on the volume of health expenditures. Also, educational spending has a statistically significant and positive impact on the educational level. Last model report that health and education capitals have a positive association with the economic growth of the country. Overall findings have made a great advance in the existing literature on how health and education capitals [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use household survey data to microsimulate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on income distribution in Spain. I estimate the cost of potential lockdowns under three different low-income public protection schemes. Results show that although the COVID-19 shock has reduced income for all deciles of the income distribution, the losses are not uniformly distributed. The worst economic effects of the pandemic are not on the poorest, but on individuals in the middle and wealthy groups of the ex-ante income distribution. Low-income benefits help to moderate income losses and to curb poverty and inequality at various levels. It might be necessary to raise taxes and to resort to expenditure reducing policies to maintain protection in the context of contraction and lower government revenues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this era of austerity, while there are significant fiscal pressures on social protection programs particularly on cash benefits, there is increasing rhetoric concerning the ‘social investment turn.’ Yet, some scholars question whether social investment policies are actually expanding. The evidence is not sufficiently apparent, and others question whether social protection policies have actually crowded out social investment policies. So far, few systematic studies have examined this issue. This research aims to explore the effect of traditional social protection on social investment policies in 18 OECD countries from 1980 to 2010. To investigate the predictive and causal relationships between the two types of policies, we will use the Granger panel analysis. Then, we will adopt the Beck & Katz panel model to analyze the crowding-out effect that social protection policies have on social investment. We argue that social protection has not crowded out social investment policies in general but, rather, that the positive link between them is increasingly weaker in recent years. In the end, we discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our findings.

Abstract Background Mental health outcomes vary widely among high-income countries, although mental health problems represent an increasing proportion of the burden of disease for all countries. This has led to increased demand for healthcare services, but mental health outcomes may also be particularly sensitive to the availability of social services. This paper examines the variation in the absolute and relative amounts that high-income countries spend on healthcare and social services to determine whether increased expenditure on social services relative to healthcare expenditure might be associated with better mental health outcomes. Methods This paper estimates the association between patterns of government spending and population mental health, as measured by the death rate resulting from mental and behavioural disorders, across member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We use country-level repeated measures multivariable modelling for the period from 1995 to 2016 with region and time effects, adjusted for total spending and demographic and economic characteristics. Healthcare spending includes all curative services, long-term care, ancillary services, medical goods, preventative care and administration whilst social spending consists of all transfer payments made to individuals and families as part of the welfare state. Results We find that a higher ratio of social to healthcare expenditure is associated with significantly better mental health outcomes for OECD populations, as measured by the death rate resulting from mental and behavioural disorders. We also find that there is no statistically significant association between healthcare spending and population mental health when we do not control for social spending. Conclusion This study suggests that OECD countries can have a significant impact on population mental health by investing a greater proportion of total expenditure in social services.

This article compares cross‐national aging populations in Latin America to study the relationship between this population, regime type, and types of social expenditure. Much of the previous research addressed this relationship in industrialized countries, but those countries are predominantly democratic and have less variation in age demographics. I demonstrate that the effect of the aged population varies by regime type and type of expenditure. In general, democratic regimes with larger elderly populations spend more on social security and welfare. By and large, education policy is unaffected by the size of the elderly population regardless of regime type. These results suggest that the elderly population is most concerned with social security, which makes sense because these government expenditures directly affect them. Related Articles: Cho, Sungik, and Yool Choi. 2017. "Convergent or Divergent? The Hidden Dynamics of Institutional Changes in the Labor Markets and Social Welfare Systems in South Korea and Japan." Politics & Policy 45 (4): 594‐625. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12208 Maags, Christina. 2020. "Long‐Term Care Insurance Adoption in East Asia: Politics, Ideas, and Institutions." Politics & Policy 48 (1): 69‐106. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12339 Scarlato, Margherita, and Giorgio d'Agostino. 2019. "The Political Dimension of Cash Transfers in Latin America and Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Comparative Perspective." Politics & Policy 47 (6): 1125‐1155. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12332 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries, saddled with debts, often prefer investors absorb losses through debt restructurings. By not making full repayments, debtor governments could increase social spending, serving poorer constituents, and, in turn, lowering income inequality. Alternatively, debtor governments could reduce taxes and cut government spending, bolstering the assets of the rich at the expense of the poor. Using panel data for 71 developing countries from 1986 to 2016, we assess the effects of debt restructurings on societal income distribution. Specifically, we study the impact of debt restructurings on social spending, tax reform, and income inequality. We find that countries receiving debt restructurings tend to use their newly acquired economic flexibility to reduce taxes and lower social spending, worsening income inequality. The results are also robust to different model specifications. Our study contributes to the globalization and the poor debate, suggesting the economic harm caused to the less well-off following debt restructurings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean developed more comprehensive welfare systems than others? Do political and economic factors help us signal the (un) favourable paths taken by countries with different degrees of welfare state development in the XXI century? This paper addresses limitations of previous comparative research to continue (re) searching the conditions of welfare state development. A composite multidimensional welfare state development index (WeSDI) is constructed for 18 countries between 2000–2015. The four dimensions are the magnitude of social expenditure, the scope of coverage of welfare programmes, quality of the coverage of welfare programmes and outcomes of welfare institutions. The WeSDI uses goalposts (i.e. natural zeros and aspirational targets) to normalise individual indices and avoid the "relativity problems" of results. We use crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to test how necessary and/or sufficient eight political and economic conditions are (alone or in combination) to foster multidimensional welfare state development in the region. The causal conditions are openness to external shocks, debt obligations, revenue-collection capabilities, labour movement strength, strength of the left, policy legacies of welfare institutions, size of the outsider population and quality of democracy. The paper confirms the relevance of democratic strength, and revenue-collection capabilities as sufficient conditions of the highest levels of welfare state development in the (post) neoliberal era. In addition to labour movement strength, these same economic and political factors are relevant to understand the conditions behind very low levels of welfare state development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A close connection between public opinion and policy is considered a vital element of democracy. In representative systems, elections are assumed to play a role in realising such congruence. If those who participate in elections are not representative of the public at large, it follows that the reliance on elections as a mechanism of representation entails a risk of unequal representation. In this paper, we evaluate whether voters are better represented by means of an analysis of policy responsiveness to voters and citizens in democracies worldwide. We construct a uniquely comprehensive dataset that includes measures of citizens' and voters' ideological (left–right) positions, and data on welfare spending in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries since 1980. We find evidence of policy responsiveness to voters, but not to the public at large. Since additional tests suggest that the mechanism of electoral turnout does not cause this voter‐policy responsiveness, we outline alternate mechanisms to test in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research provides insight into South Africa's prospects should the country reach the proverbial fiscal cliff. The definition of the fiscal cliff used in this article refers to the point where social grants, interest on government debt and public service salaries exceed the total income of the South African government. This point has already been reached in the 2020/21 fiscal year, but is expected to be of a temporary nature. There is, therefore, still room to fend off a permanent fiscal crisis, provided that the public service salary bill be contained. At the same time, the government will have to budget more realistically for lower economic growth and therefore lower growth in tax revenue. Academic literature on South Africa's fiscal cliff is limited, but the mainstream media (print and electronic) focuses on this issue frequently and extensively. The term "fiscal cliff" has, therefore, become part of the South African economic lexicon. The point where the fiscal cliff is reached is calculated by using the fiscal cliff barometer. The barometer shows that South Africa's fiscal position has weakened significantly over the past decade, partly because public service salaries and interest payments on government debt have grown too fast in relation to South Africa's potential and actual economic growth rates. The barometer readings are calculated as a ratio using variables for the estimated years to the cliff as well as the total years within the forecast period. The formula is calculated mathematically as: [1-(years to cliff/total years forecasted) (equation 1) In theory, values can range from one (1) to minus infinity (-∞). However, in practice, only values between one and zero are considered. A high value (e.g. 0,9) indicates a high probability that the fiscal cliff will be reached in the near future, while a 0 (zero) value indicates that the fiscal cliff will not be reached at all. The analysis of South Africa's fiscal sustainability, based on the barometer readings, commences with 2007 data. The results show a significant spike in the barometer reading (closer to 1) from 0 (zero) in 2007 to 0,717 in 2014. Hereafter, the barometer reading stabilises, and even shows a slight improvement to 0,119, based on the 2018 Budget data. By 2018, therefore, the impression was that the government had taken sufficient cognisance of the warnings with regards to the fiscal cliff to start implementing steps to avoid it. This all changed in 2020, however, when the Supplementary Budget presented by the Minister of Finance (Mboweni 2020b) showed that the fiscal cliff had indeed been reached. Stated differently, for the 2020-fiscal year, civil service remuneration expenditure, interest on government debt and social grant payments will exceed total government revenue. All other expenditure will now have to be funded from further borrowing by the South African government. While it appears that research on the fiscal cliff has had an impact on government policy, it is probably a case of "too little, too late". The most important contributions to the research to date may be summarised as (i) the creation of an awareness of the danger of economic disaster, as expressed in the phrase "fiscal cliff" in South Africa's economic lexicon, (ii) a clear focus on the problem in civil society and the media, and (iii) transparent reporting on the public service salary bill by the government. Should a more permanent fiscal cliff materialise, South Africa's future could include elements of a failed state, the result of which will be serious financial hardship for all South Africans. The government will find it increasingly more difficult and expensive to borrow from the money and capital markets, and there will be minimal funds available for service delivery. Interest payments on government debt will also be suspended or severely curtailed, thus contributing to liquidity problems for pension funds and the banking and insurance industries. The only option is avoidance of the fiscal cliff. This challenge awaits the South African government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]