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To aid, insure, transfer, or control : what drives the welfare state?

The paper uses panel data on OECD countries to assess four theories about the forces that generate social spending. The four theories are: Aid: the Welfare State is about helping the poor. Insure: the Welfare State insures the consumption of middle-class voters. Transfer: the Welfare State transfers money to politically-powerful entitled groups. Control: the Welfare State is about controlling the behavior of the underclass. The data give the following grades: Aid D-, Insure C+, Transfer A-, Control D. This assessment is made by regressing the share of social spending in GDP on a vector of country characteristics. The methods involve simultaneous equation fixed-effects models, and they take advantage of some recent innovations in the growth literature involving the treatment of country-level panel data
Year of publication:
2002
Authors: Castronova, Edward
Publisher: Berlin : Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW)
Subject: Sozialstaat | Öffentliche Sozialausgaben | Public Choice | Schätzung | Industriestaaten
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Series:
Type of publication: Book / Working Paper
Type of publication (narrower categories): Working Paper
Language: English
Other identifiers:
848958993 [GVK]
hdl:10419/18265 [Handle]
RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp281 [RePEc]
Classification: H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies ; I3 - Welfare and Poverty
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