Making Social Spending Work

Reveals the relationship between social spending and economic growth and which countries have got it right and wrong.

Peter H. Lindert (Author)

9781108478168, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 April 2021

434 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.9 cm, 0.76 kg

'A magisterial examination of the historical, economic and political forces shaping the Welfare State, from its incipient beginnings in Fifteenth Century Europe to the rise of conditional cash transfers in Latin America in the 1990s. A must-read for anyone interested in rethinking the role of the State after the pandemic.' Francisco H. G. Ferreira, co-author of Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class

How does social spending relate to economic growth and which countries have got this right and wrong? Peter Lindert examines the experience of countries across the globe to reveal what has worked, what needs changing, and who the winners and losers are under different systems. He traces the development of public education, health care, pensions, and welfare provision, and addresses key questions around intergenerational inequality and fiscal redistribution, the returns to investment in human capital, how to deal with an aging population, whether migration is a cost or a benefit, and how social spending differs in autocracies and democracies. The book shows that what we need to do above all is to invest more in the young from cradle to career, and shift the burden of paying for social insurance away from the workplace and to society as a whole.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Part I. Overview: 1. Enduring Issues
2. Findings and Lessons
Part II. The Long Rise, and its Causes: 3. Why Poor Relief Arrived So Late
4. The Dawn of Mass Schooling before 1914
5. Public Education since 1914
6. More, but Different, Social Spending in Rich Countries since 1914
7. Is the Rest of the World Following a Different Path?
Part III. What Effects?: 8. Effects on Growth, Jobs, and Life
9. Why No Net Loss of GDP or Work?
10. Do the Rich Pay the Poor for All This?
Part IV. Confronting Threats: 11. Do Immigration Tensions Fray the Safety Nets?
12. Pensions and the Curse of Long Life
13. Approaches to Public Pension Reform
14. Borrowing Social-Spending Lessons
Appendix A. Sources and Notes for Chapters 3 and 4
Appendix B. Sources and Notes for Chapter 10
Appendix C. Chapter 12's Pension Accounting – Equations and Forecasts
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Personal & public health [MBNH], Civil service & public sector [KNV], Public finance [KFFD], Economic history [KCZ], Welfare economics [KCR], Political economy [KCP], Economics [KC], Welfare & benefit systems [JKSB], Social welfare & social services [JKS], Sociology: work & labour [JHBL]