The relationship between different social expenditure schemes and poverty, inequality and economic growth
International Social Security Review
2020
73
2
April - June
101-123
social expenditure ; poverty ; income redistribution ; economic growth ; universal benefit scheme ; social inequality
Social policy
https://doi.org/10.1111/issr.12236
English
Bibliogr.;Statistics
"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."
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