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Government expenditure is an essential instrument for achieving full employment, price stability, improved standard of living, economic growth and other macroeconomic objectives. However, questions regarding the efficacy of government expenditures to attain these objectives have continued to rise due to the alarming rate of unemployment, inflation, poverty and other socio-economic problems in Nigeria. This has called for the need to investigate the allocation of resources to some selected sectors and their resultant impact on the Nigerian economy. This study examined the effect of various components of Government Expenditures on Economic Growth in Nigeria for periods between 1981 and 2020. The analysis was based on Secondary data. The study adopted the Error Correction model and Granger Causality Test. The short-run model revealed that the components of government expenditures like recurrent expenditures on agriculture, health and education have an insignificant negative impact on economic growth. Recurrent expenditure on debt servicing and road and construction indicated a positive and negligible impact on economic growth. Concerning capital expenditures, government capital expenditures on social services were shown to have a negative and significant impact on economic growth. In contrast, government capital expenditures on economic services indicated a positive and insignificant impact on economic growth in Nigeria. In the long run, all the components of government expenditures employed showed a significant effect on economic growth. The research finding establishes no clear conclusion about whether Keynesian or Adolf Wagner's law is operational in Nigeria. The study concludes that the Nigerian economy is on the wrong path to sustainable growth and development. The study recommends that the government should increase its allocations to priority sectors like health, education, agriculture and infrastructures. Furthermore, the government should stimulate investment and output using monetary and fiscal policies to increase internally generated revenue and reduce government borrowing. Lastly, the study emphasises the need to improve government spending efficiencies, transparency in budgetary processes, and strict monitoring of government projects.

Although Canada is known as a liberal welfare regime, universality is a key issue in that country, as several major social programs are universal in both their core principles and coverage rules. The objective of this article is to discuss the meaning of universality and related concepts before exploring the development of individual universal social programs in Canada, with a particular focus on health care and old-age pensions. More generally, the article shows how universality can exist and become resilient within a predominantly liberal welfare regime due to the complex and fragmented nature of modern social policy systems, in which policy types vary from policy area to policy area, and even from program to program within the same policy area. The broader analysis of health care and old-age pensions as policy areas illustrates this general claim. This analysis looks at the historical development and the politics of provincial universal health coverage since the late 1950s and at the evolution of the federal Old Age Security program since its creation in the early 1950s. The main argument of this article is that universality as a set of principles remains stronger in health care than in pensions yet key challenges remain in each of these policy areas. Another contention is that there are multiple and contested universalisms in social policy.

This study investigates whether generous family policies at the transition to parenthood reduce single and partnered mothers’ economic disadvantages later in the life course. Previous research usually focused on the immediate effects of family policies and disregards potential longer-term effects. In this study, we suggest taking a life-course perspective to study the relationships between family policy and mothers’ poverty risks. We empirically investigate how investment in child benefits, childcare services and parental leave measures at the transition to parenthood are associated with poverty outcomes at later life stages and whether these associations hold over time. We draw on pooled EU-SILC data, and an original policy dataset based on OECD expenditure data for child benefits, childcare and parental leave from 1994 to 2015. We find that mothers’ observed increase in poverty over time is slower in countries with high levels of spending for childcare at the transition to parenthood than in lower spending countries. The gap between partnered and single mothers was also diminishing in contexts of high childcare expenditure. For the other two policies, we did not find these links. These results do lend support to the claim that childcare is a prime example of a social investment policy with returns later in the life course and represents a life-course policy that seems to be able to disrupt economic path dependencies. The results for the other two policies suggest, however, a limited potential of family policy spending at transition to parenthood to reduce the poverty gap between partnered and single mothers over the course of life.

There has been a long-lasting debate over whether increasing ethnic diversity undermines support for social welfare, and whether this conflict thesis applies not only to the United States, but also to European welfare states. In their 2016 ASR article, Schmidt-Catran and Spies analyzed a panel (1994 to 2010) of regional units in Germany and concluded that this thesis also holds for Germany. We argue that their analysis suffers from misspecification: their model specification assumes parallel time trends in welfare support in all German regions. However, time trends strongly differed between Western and Eastern Germany after reunification. In the 1990s, Eastern Germans’ attitudes adapted to a less interventionist Western welfare system (“Goodbye Lenin effect”). When allowing for heterogeneous time trends, we find no evidence that increasing proportions of foreigners undermine welfare support, or that this association is moderated by economic hardship (high unemployment rates). We conclude with some general suggestions regarding the conceptualization of context effects in spatial analyses.

In this article, we study how social expenditure is related to poverty, income inequality and GDP growth. Our main contribution is to disentangle these relationships by the following social expenditure schemes: 1) “old age and survivors”, 2) “incapacity”, 3) “health”, 4) “family”, 5) “unemployment and active labour market policies” and 6) “housing and others”. For this purpose, we employ OLS and 2SLS regression models using a panel data set for 22 Member States of the European Union from 1990 until 2015. We find total public social expenditure to be negatively related to poverty and inequality, but not related to GDP growth. The results vary substantially between the different social expenditure schemes, which makes more accurate targeting possible. Dans cet article, nous etudions le lien entre, d'une part, les depenses sociales, et d’autre part, la pauvrete, les inegalites de revenus et la croissance du PIB. Notre principale contribution consiste a dissocier ces relations en distinguant les regimes de depenses sociales suivants : 1) personnes âgees et survivants, 2) incapacite, 3) sante, 4) famille, 5) politiques du marche du travail en faveur de l’emploi et de lutte contre le chomage, et 6) logements et autres. A cet effet, nous utilisons les modeles de regression OLS et 2SLS en nous basant sur un ensemble de donnees de panel pour les 22 Etats membres de l’Union europeenne de 1990 a 2015. Nous constatons que les depenses sociales publiques totales sont en correlation negative avec la pauvrete et les inegalites, mais ne sont pas correlees a la croissance du PIB. Les resultats varient considerablement entre les differents regimes de depenses sociales, ce qui permet un ciblage plus precis. En este articulo estudiamos la relacion entre el gasto social y la pobreza, la desigualdad de ingresos y el crecimiento del PIB. Nuestro principal objetivo es desentranar estas relaciones en los siguientes regimenes sociales: 1) vejez y sobrevivientes; 2) discapacidad; 3) salud; 4) familia; 5) desempleo y politicas activas del mercado de trabajo; 6)vivienda y otros. A tal efecto, aplicamos modelos de regresion OLS y 2SLS utilizando una serie de datos de panel de 22 Estados miembros de la Union Europea desde 1990 hasta 2015. Concluimos que el gasto social publico total es inversamente proporcional a la pobreza y la desigualdad, pero no al crecimiento del PIB. Los resultados varian sustancialmente entre los diferentes regimenes sociales, lo que permite establecer objetivos de modo mas preciso. In diesem Artikel untersuchen wir, in welchem Zusammenhang Sozialausgaben mit Armut, Einkommensungleichheit und BIP‐Wachstum stehen. Unser Beitrag besteht vor allem darin, dass wir diesen Beziehungen in folgenden Sozialausgabensystemen auf den Grund gehen: 1) Alters‐ und Hinterbliebenenrenten, 2) Invaliditat, 3) Gesundheitsversorgung, 4) Familienleistungen, 5) Arbeitslosigkeit und aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik und 6) Wohnraum und andere. Zu diesem Zweck setzen wir OLS‐ und 2SLS‐Regressionsmodelle ein, die Umfragedaten von 22 Mitgliedstaaten der Europaischen Union fur die Jahre 1990 bis 2015 verwenden. Wir stellen fest, dass die staatlichen Gesamtsozialausgaben negativ mit Armut und Ungleichheit korrelieren, jedoch in keinem Zusammenhang mit dem BIP‐Wachstum stehen. Die Ergebnisse variieren erheblich zwischen den verschiedenen Sozialausgabensystemen, was eine genauere Zielgruppenausrichtung ermoglicht. В этой статье рассматривается связь между социальными расходами и уровнем бедности, неравенством доходов, а также ростом ВВП. Нашим главным вкладом является анализ этой взаимосвязи исходя из следующих характеристик, связанных с расходами по социальным программам: 1) люди старшего возраста и пострадавшие, 2) недееспособное население, 3) состояние здоровья, 4) семьи, 5) безработица и политика активного рынка труда, 6) обеспечение жильем и другое. В целях анализа использовано регрессионные модели МНК и ДМНК, а также панельные данные 22 стран Европейского Союза за 1990‐2015гг. Мы выяснили, что общие государственные социальные расходы находятся в отрицательной связи с бедностью и неравенством, однако не имеют связи с ростом ВВП. Результаты значительно разнятся для разных программ социальных расходов, что наводит на мысль о необходимости более целенаправленного анализа. 在本文中, 我们研究了社会支出与贫穷、收入不平等以及国内生产总值增长有何关系。我们主要的贡献是根据以下社会支出计划解开这些关系:1)老年与遗嘱、2)残疾、3)健康、4)家庭、5)失业与积极劳动市场政策以及6)住屋与其他。为此目的, 我们采用了普通最小二乘法与两阶段最小二乘法回归模型, 分析了22个欧洲联盟成员国1990至2015年的面板数据。我们发现公共社会支出与贫穷和不平等之间为负相关, 与国内生产总值增长则不相关。各个社会支出计划的结果差异极大, 使我们得以进行更精确的定位。 درسنا في هذا المقال كيف أن النفقات الاجتماعية مرتبطة بالفقر وتفاوت الأجور ونمو الناتج الإجمالي المحلي. وتتمثل مساهمتنا الأساسية في تحليل مفصل طريقه لهذه العلاقات من خلال خطط الانفاق الاجتماعية التالية: 1) المسنون والباقون على قيد الحياة، 2) العجز، 3) الصحة، 4) الأسرة، 5) البطالة وسياسات سوق العمل النشطة، 6) الإسكان وغيرها من المسائل. ولهذا الغرض، استخدمنا تحليل انحدار القيمة الدنيا لمجموع المربعات OLSلمجموع المربعات وانحدار القيمة الدنيا المزدوج 2SLS ولوحة البيانات المجمعة من 22 دولة عضو في الاتحاد الأوروبي من 1990 وحتى 2015. واكتشفنا أن إجمالي النفقات الاجتماعية العامة يرتبط سلبا بالفقر وانعدام المساواة، ولكن لا يرتبط بنمو الناتج الإجمالي المحلي. وتتباين النتائج بشكل كبير بين مختلف خطط النفقات الاجتماعية، مما يجعل من الاستهداف الدقيق أمرا ممكنا. Neste artigo, estudamos como os gastos sociais estao relacionados com a pobreza, a desigualdade de renda e o crescimento do PIB. Nossa principal contribuicao e destrinchar essas relacoes a partir dos seguintes regimes de gastos sociais: 1) velhice e sobrevivencia, 2) invalidez, 3) saude, 4) familia, 5) desemprego e politicas ativas do mercado de trabalho e 6) habitacao e outros. Para esse fim, usamos os modelos de regressao MQO (em ingles, OLS) e de minimos quadrados em dois estagios (em ingles, 2SLS) com uma serie de dados em painel de 22 Estados‐membros da Uniao Europeia de 1990 a 2015. Constatamos que o gasto social publico esta negativamente correlacionado com a pobreza e a desigualdade, mas nao relacionado ao crescimento do PIB. Os resultados variam substancialmente entre os diversos regimes de gasto social, o que torna possivel uma segmentacao mais precisa.

The growing literature on individual determinants of subjective well-being has given little attention to political factors. This paper considers the welfare state, and how social expenditure affects individuals’ self-reported life satisfaction. The statistical analysis uses indicators of subjective well-being, reflecting individuals from OECD-countries between 1980 and 2012, with data gathered from the Eurobarometer and the World Values Survey - which are analysed in comparison. The results suggest that social spending should be studied in terms of underlying branches when addressing its implications. The results find social spending to be uncorrelated with levels of subjective well-being when considered in terms of total levels. When considered as types of spending however, a majority of the elements are found to have significant impacts. The findings show mixed results among the two data sets; however, important similarities are found in the way social spending related to health care and poverty are having positive impacts, and spending associated with unemployment and labour market programmes have negative impacts. As the correlations of the underlying elements affect life satisfaction in different directions, total social spending appears to be uncorrelated with subjective well-being, although the true impact depends on which socialpolicies are being promoted through such spending.

This study examines whether Canadian governments have adapted budgets for the ageing population in accordance with norms of intergenerational justice. Public finance data in 2016 are analysed compared to 1976 in light of three constructs: the elderly/non-elderly ratio of social spending change, intergenerational reciprocity, and ability to pay. Findings include that (i) governments increased per capita spending for seniors 4.2 times faster than for those under the age of 45; (ii) public finance requires younger Canadians to contribute 22%-62% more in income taxes for the elderly now by comparison with 1976; and (iii) the contemporary ageing population has a greater ability to pay than cohorts immediately before and after them., Intergenerational Justice Review, Vol 4, No 1 (2018): Measuring Intergenerational Justice for Public Policy (II)

What is the effect of political competition on subnational social spending? Using descriptive statistics and regression models for original budget panel data for the 24 Argentine provinces between 1993 and 2009, the study finds that social spending increases the more secure governors are electorally and the longer they have been in office. It also finds that other arguments in the literature are relevant in explaining variations on types of spending, such as partisan fragmentation in the districts. The article discusses these findings for the Argentine provinces and explores their implications with regard to the debates on the effects of electoral competition and the design of social policies, especially in developing countries and federal democracies., ¿Cuál es el efecto de la competencia política en el gasto social subnacional? Usando estadísticas descriptivas y modelos de regresión para datos presupuestarios de panel para las 24 provincias argentinas entre 1993 y 2009, el estudio encuentra que el gasto social aumenta cuando la seguridad electoral de los gobernadores crece y cuando tienen más años en el cargo. También se observa que otros argumentos en la literatura son relevantes para explicar las variaciones en los tipos de gasto, como la fragmentación partidaria en los distritos. El artículo discute estos hallazgos para las provincias argentinas y explora sus implicancias en relación a los debates sobre los efectos de la competencia electoral y el diseño de políticas sociales, especialmente en los países en desarrollo y las democracias federales.

Populist radical right-wing parties across Europe garner support for welfare chauvinistic promises to limit government spending on immigrants and focus on natives' welfare instead. However, most research on the so-called immigration-welfare nexus does not study welfare chauvinism but instead focuses on generalized support for the welfare state. Using Swedish register-linked survey data from 2013, we study three hypothetical pathways into welfare chauvinism: via ethnic prejudice, operationalized as a desire for social distance; via the direct experience of immigrant unemployment and putative welfare receipt in the neighborhood context; and via immigrant competition at the workplace. Based on our sample of native-born Swedes, we find that both negative prejudice and the share of unemployed immigrants among the neighborhood population provide two distinct and independent routes into chauvinism, while workplace competition does not.

Die wirtschaftliche Stagnation und der demografische Wandel in Russland setzen den Staatshaushalt des Landes unter Druck. Seit Ende der 2000er Jahre befinden sich die Steuereinnahmen in einem Abwärtstrend. Die Ölabhängigkeit der Haushalte hat zugenommen und ist mit dem Fall der Ölpreise ab 2014 deutlich sichtbar geworden. Zuletzt stiegen die Energieeinnahmen zwar wieder. Die Reserven des Finanzministeriums sind aber deutlich geschrumpft. Der russische Staat muss seinen Bürgerinnen und Bürgern in Zukunft höhere Steuern und längere Lebensarbeitszeiten abverlangen, um die Stabilität der öffentlichen Kassen zu wahren. Für die paternalistische Sozialpolitik der vergangenen Jahre stehen weniger Mittel zur Verfügung, was dem russischen Regime die Legitimierung erschwert. Auch die künftige Finanzierung von Militär und Rüstungsgütern ist ungewiss. Gleichzeitig wirkt der Wettkampf um die Kontrolle der öffentlichen Ressourcen destabilisierend – gerade vor dem Hintergrund des drängender werdenden Problems der Nachfolge im Kreml. Bis zur Präsidentschaftswahl 2018 hat die russische Führung auf harte Einschnitte bei wichtigen Klientelgruppen wie Rentnerinnen und Rentnern sowie dem Militär verzichtet. Stattdessen wurden über viele kleinere Stellschrauben zusätzliche Einkünfte generiert. Größtenteils gingen diese Maßnahmen allerdings auf Kosten zukünftiger Einnahmen. Die Haushaltsmittel wurden stärker in Moskau zentralisiert, während die öffentliche Kontrolle über das Budget schwächer geworden ist. Deutlich wird dies an der zunehmenden Intransparenz und Geheimhaltung in der Haushaltsplanung. Auch Schattenhaushalte außerhalb der Reichweite der Finanzverwaltung sind angewachsen. In diesem Spannungsfeld entzünden sich zunehmend Elitenkonflikte, die Risiken für Putins vierte Amtszeit mit sich bringen. (Autorenreferat)

In January 2015 the radical left SYRIZA has won the Greek national elections and formed a coalition government with Independent Greeks (ANEL), a right-wing populist party. After a seven-month negotiation with Greece’s creditors and the agreement for the implementation of a third memorandum of fiscal adjustment, SYRIZA announced the conduction of a second round of national elections in September 2015. After a second electoral victory, SYRIZA formed again a coalition government with ANEL. The main characteristic of SYRIZA’s pre-electoral campaign was that it has primarily focused on the commitment for austerity measures termination and on the implementation of tax alleviation. Even during the second electoral campaign in September 2015, after the agreement for the implementation of the third memorandum of fiscal adjustment, SYRIZA was promising that its implementation will be socially endued in order to reduce negative social consequences, such as those created by the previous memoranda. Practically though, after the first months of the new memorandum implementation, it is obvious that the government has introduced an unprecedented tax policy. Interestingly, this policy is not different from a traditional left logic of tax enforcement but actually leads to the implementation of horizontal austerity policies which firstly affect the socially vulnerable groups. From this point of view, while SYRIZA emphatically declare that it aims at resolving the crisis, its policies seem to deepen the depression. For instance, its inability to find alternative options to finance the social security system, leads to the implementation of restrictive policies which dismantle the welfare state. This paper aims at analyzing the policies of the first left government in Greece by focusing on the tentative social consequences of the third memorandum and at the same time, studying some of the basic factors for its electoral victory, such as populism.

Gesellschaftlich gegebene Teilhabebedingungen werden auf verschiedene Weise in individuelle Teilhabe umgewandelt. Erwerbsbeteiligung nimmt bei dieser Umwandlung insbesondere für Frauen einen immer wichtigeren Platz ein, während Haushalte und soziale Sicherungssysteme zusehends weniger Teilhabe vermitteln. Diese (relative) Aufwertung der Erwerbsarbeit steht in einem Spannungsverhältnis zur nachlassenden integrativen Kraft des Erwerbssystems für Teile der Erwerbsbevölkerung. Die Zunahme der Erwerbsbeteiligung erfolgt in verschiedensten Formen der Beschäftigung; dies führt zur Auffächerung der letztendlich von Personen erreichten Teilhabepositionen, eben weil Haushalt und soziale Sicherungssysteme die aus dem Beschäftigungssystem resultierende Ungleichheit nicht mehr wirksam begrenzen.

The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory analysis of factors that might explain the cross-national variations in the level tax morality across the European Union. In order to do this, three competing explanations for the cross-national variations in tax morality will be evaluated which variously view lower levels of tax morality to be a result of either: under-development (a modernisation explanation); high taxes, state corruption and too much state interference (a neo-liberal explanation), or too little state redistribution and intervention to protect citizens (a structuralist explanation). Evaluating the cross-national variations in tax morality reported in a 2007 Eurobarometer survey using multilevel econometric techniques, the finding is that the tax morality of a baseline European citizen is higher in more developed and less corrupt nations and in countries with higher levels of taxation, social protection and redistribution. The outcome is a call for a synthesis of the three explanations in the form of a new neo-modernisation explanation which, contrary to neo-liberal discourse, argues that developed nations with higher levels of taxation, greater levels of social protection and higher levels of redistribution have higher levels of tax morality. The tentative policy implications are then discussed., Studies of Transition States and Societies, Vol 6, No 1 (2014)

"Disability insurance - the insurance against the loss of the ability to work - is a substantial part of social security expenditures in many countries. The benefit recipiency rates in disability insurance vary strikingly across European countries and the US. This paper investigates the extent of, and the causes for, this variation, using econometric analyses based on new data from SHARE, ELSA and HRS. We show that even after controlling for differences in the demographic structure and health status these differences remain. This holds for a broad set of objective and subjective physical and mental health measures as well as for contemporal, intertemporal and life-course specifications of health, including measures of childhood health. In turn, indicators of disability insurance generosity explain 75% of the cross-national variation. We conclude that it is not health but the country-specific design of early retirement and labor market institutions, and especially disability insurance rules, which explain the observed cross-country variation in the receipt of disability benefits." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

This article assesses the association between national welfare state regimes and public insecurities about crime across Europe. A multilevel analysis of respondents in 23 countries sampled in the 2004/05 European Social Survey finds a strong relationship between insecurities about crime and national levels of social expenditure and decommodification of social welfare policy. Some social protection measures are more strongly associated with national levels of fear of crime than others, especially public non-monetary support for children and families that strengthens the individual's capacity to cope with problems on their own. We conclude with the idea that state-level social protections may buffer the development of widespread fear of crime by increasing self-efficacy and thereby mitigating various social and economic fears. (author's abstract)

This paper studies the effect of organized labor on social policy commitment in Latin America. Contrary to the idea that unions are not expected to be major promoters of social state development due to being weakened by dictatorship and structural adjustment, I argue for the incorporation of this variable in statistical analysis of social spending. Through pooled time-series regressions of 10 South American countries from 1980 to 2010, this paper finds that union strength has a statistically significant and positive effect on social spending. This analysis also confirms that democracy and the concentration of power in the executive all have a significant effect with regard to predicting changes in the levels of social spending. (author's abstract)

This study investigates the extent to which labor market dualization polarizes preferences on redistribution between formal and informal sector workers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Differences in welfare state costs and benefits for these labor market groups are likely to fuel diverging incentives regarding welfare consumption. The article tests whether or not informal workers are driven mainly by economic self-interest to increase gains from public welfare goods. The study employed a hierarchical model on pooled survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) 2008 and 2010 to analyze the risk exposure of formal and informal workers and, subsequently, their preferences on redistribution. The analysis reveals that while economic self-interest is an influential factor for formal workers, it is (unexpectedly) much less so for informal workers. Also, an increased economically insecure environment, reflected by high unemployment rates, does not motivate informal workers to an exceptional degree to turn towards the state for redistribution, despite greater exposure to economic risk. Labor market dualization does not translate into polarization at the individual level regarding redistributive preferences in Latin America and the Caribbean. Este estudio investiga el grado de polarización que la dualización de mercados laborales puede crear sobre las preferencias redistributivas entre trabajadores de los sectores formales e informales en América Latina y el Caribe. Los diferentes gastos y beneficios que produce el estado de bienestar en estos grupos del mercado laboral tienden a estimular una divergencia en los incentivos para consumir bienestar. Este articulo analiza si los trabajadores informales son motivados principalmente por intereses económicos propios para incrementar sus ganancias a través del sistema de bienestar público. El estudio aplicó un modelo jerárquico en base a datos de encuestas agrupadas del Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) de los años 2008 y 2010 para analizar el riesgo de exposición de trabajadores formales e informales y, subsecuentemente, sus preferencias acerca de la redistribución. El análisis demuestra que mientras los intereses económicos propios son un factor influyente para los trabajadores formales, el efecto es (inesperadamente) mucho menor para trabajadores informales. Adicionalmente, un ambiente económicamente inseguro, reflejado en altas tasas de desempleo, no motiva a trabajadores informales a un grado excepcional de aprovechamiento de la distribución estatal, a pesar de su mayor vulnerabilidad a riesgos económicos. La dualización del mercado laboral no se puede entender directamente como polarización a nivel individual respecto a las preferencias redistributivas observadas en América Latina y el Caribe. 1 Introduction 2 Institutional Setup: The Labor Market in Latin America and the Caribbean 3 Theoretical Considerations 4 Empirical Setup 5 Descriptive Statistics: Socioeconomic Differences and the Preference Differential 6 Results 7 Conclusion References