Social spending and the economic cycle: The importance of maintaining funding for social policy

2017 ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Economic Cycle

Welfare Efforts in Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-89
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Eibl
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Regime Formation ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Expenditures ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

This chapter provides an analytical overview of welfare provision in labour· abundant MENA regimes. Organized in sections by country and covering the period from regime formation until the late 2000s, the chapter pays particular attention to spending levels and the accessibility of social policies, and maps the eigbt regimes onto the three different pathways of welfare provision outlined in Chapter I. It draws on a combination of historical reports and statistics, available secondary accounts, and a novel dataset on social expenditures developed from archival material of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It also diversifies the picture by examining policies of education, health, and social protection separately. The chapter lays important groundwork for further analyses and gives a more complete sense of social policy regimes beyond the social spending figures presented in Chapter I.

scholarly journals Distribution of Local Social Services and Territorial Justice: the Case of Estonia

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-350
Author(s):  
KERSTI KRIISK
Keyword(s):  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Policy Fields

AbstractDistribution of public resources has always been a central issue in public policy. The question of spatial variation in resource allocation as a reflection of differing local conditions is particularly important in decentralised countries with a large number of subunits. On the local level, studies have shown variations in distribution of local welfare but have usually focused on single social policy fields and/or target groups, and often ignored territorial structures. By taking Estonia as a case, this study investigates whether and how the distribution of a range of social services and the structure of disaggregated local social spending corresponds to local socio-demographic conditions. We identify municipal clusters and analyse service provision and social spending on vulnerable groups within them. We use a spatial perspective by taking into consideration the distinction of rural-urban and core-peripheral settings. We show that resource allocation in Estonian municipalities mirrors quite well local socio-demographic structures but the division of municipalities between towns and rural municipalities used in the common discourse of local social policy is too simplified.

scholarly journals Government Social Spending and GDP: has there been a change in social policy?

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (22) ◽  
pp. 2895-2905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesus Clemente ◽  
Carmen Marcuello ◽  
Antonio Montañes
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Spending

scholarly journals Francisco Franco and Social Policy in Spain in the 1960-1970s

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Filatov Geogriy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S

Social policy has been an important part of Francoist ideology since the early years of the regime. However, it was only in the 1960s, when the social security system in Spain appeared. During this time, the country experienced high economic growth, which allowed the Franco regime to increase social spending. For Francisco Franco himself, social policy in the 1960s became an important source of legitimacy of his rule. At the legislative level, the term "social services" appeared, and the state rather than private enterprises was made responsible for their provision. As a result, over the last 15 years of the Franco regime in Spain, a number of laws sought to unify the system of social services and gave more people access to them. Despite the progress, Franco's social policy preserved some previous shortcomings, i.e. a number of special social programs for certain categories of the population, as well as the fact that a significant part of social security was funded by the employees themselves.

scholarly journals Austerity Beyond Crisis: Economists and the Institution of Austere Social Spending for At-Risk Children in Israel

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
ASA MARON
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Popular Resistance ◽  
Child Welfare Policy ◽  
At Risk Children ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Spending Cuts

AbstractAusterity is frequently associated with crisis-enabled spending cuts. What happens when the crisis is over? This article’s original contribution lies in its in-depth exploration of one mechanism that help explain austerity’s endurance post-crisis, when state elites face increased popular resistance and pressure to reinstate social spending. This mechanism calls attention to the role of economists in Central Budgeting Offices as agents of technocratization and de-politicization within social policy domains. These economists may institute an austere spending mode by changing social spending’s norms and instruments. To demonstrate economists’ role in mediating macroeconomic fiscal goals and social policy design over time, the article examines the development of child welfare policy in Israel before, during and in the aftermath of economic crisis. In this case, austerity attained hegemony when economists were able to delegitimize and shelve an ‘irresponsible’ social spending proposal – and in response to post-crisis demands for compensation – introduce an austere policy instrument to cap social spending during a period of social policy expansion. This analysis suggests that scholars regard relations between austerity and social spending as dialectical.

The Transition from Welfare to Workfare in Times of Crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
József Hajdú
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
State Obligations ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual

Many of the serious deficiencies in the Hungarian welfare state pre-date the 2010 political changes and a pronounced anti-poverty policy turn was evidently already on its way in 2008, especially concerning income protection for the long-term unemployed. As if this were not enough, according to the OECD, among the thirty-two OECD member states, Hungary and Greece were the only states where real public social spending had decreased since the onset of the economic crisis. More precisely, Hungary’s social policy answer to the crisis included the introduction of workfare, the diminishment of the second pillar pension, the abolishment of early pensions, the activation of family policy, and the encouragement of citizens’ self-support attitude. Moreover, in 2010 a two-thirds majority in parliament gave the government the possibility to enact fundamental changes to Hungary’s Constitution and legislation as a whole. Confronted with the experience of non-democratic regimes and the individual vision of fundamental rights, after the transition, the Fundamental Law indicates a shift of emphasis from state obligations towards individual citizens to citizens’ obligations towards the community.

Social cyclicality in Asian countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (9) ◽  
pp. 1154-1165
Author(s):  
Deepti Ahuja ◽  
Venkatesh Murthy
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cyclical Pattern ◽  
The Social

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the cyclical pattern of social expenditure during 1980-2012 for a set of Asian countries. The extant literature available so far has captured the cyclicality of fiscal policy only for member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and for Latin American countries. Moreover, previous studies have largely ignored Asian countries. Design/methodology/approach The analysis used panel data from global macro-databases of the International Monetary Fund, Statistics of public expenditure for economic development and Asian Development Bank. The cyclical components of social spending (health, education, and social protection) and GDP were determined by using the Hodrick-Prescott Filter. A positive (negative) correlation indicates procyclical (countercyclical) fiscal policy. In line with the existing literature on fiscal cyclicality (Gavin and Perotti, 1997; Lane, 2003; Frankel et al., 2013) that has examined the behavior of fiscal policy over the business cycle, regression analysis is used to examine the impact of political and institutional factors on the behavior of social spending. Findings It was found that government social expenditure is procyclical across Asian countries during 1980-2012. However, during the past decade, emerging Asian countries have been able to shift from procyclical to countercyclical social spending. This shows that they had taken several initiatives to boost expenditure in the social sector – be it in social protection, health, or education services. The significant determinant of social cyclicality is the quality of institutions, which could help the government to increase fiscal deficit during recessions and repay the debt during economic booms. However, to some extent, their countercyclical action is restrained by the high accumulated level of public debt. Originality/value In the context of the Asian region, it is important to understand the cyclical pattern of social policy for several reasons. It has been said that crises offer an opportunity for countries to rethink their social policy to achieve more sustained and equitable development. By studying the social spending behavior, the authors can see whether Asian countries were able to grab the opportunity for reshaping their social and economic agenda after the Asian financial crisis.

The Puzzle of Egalitarianism. The Relationship between Employment, Wage Inequality, Social Expenditure and Poverty

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bea Cantillon ◽  
Ive Marx ◽  
Karel Van Den Bosch
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Positive Outcome ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Low Pay

In social policy debates, there are fundamentally different views of links between such key variables as employment, low pay, social transfers and poverty. This paper reviews basic empirical evidence on the validity of these views and the policy prescriptions that follow from them, drawing mainly on cross-country comparative studies. These reveal that clear and striking cross-country correlations prevail, but not, as is often so readily suggested, between low pay (wage compression) and employment performance, or between employment performance and poverty. Instead, results indicate a strong but negative cross-country correlation between the level of social spending and the incidence of poverty, as well as a strong and positive cross-country correlation between the incidence of low pay and the incidence of relative poverty. While the former correlation has become part of the received wisdom in social policy research, the latter is more surprising, as the correlation is not due to a strong link between low pay and poverty at the individual level. In addition, the incidence of low wage employment and social expenditure are also strongly and (negatively) related. We examine these correlations in more depth, particularly the link between the level of social spending and poverty. Since there is such a clear and strong negative link between the level of social expenditure and the level of poverty, it is tempting to think that more social spending offers an easy means of reducing poverty. However, a simple simulation exercise using Luxemburg Income Study data from the mid 90's suggests that putting more money into social transfer systems as they currently exist in the EU would not have a positive outcome on poverty rates in all countries. In the final section of the paper, we briefly summarise the results, and put forward a recommendation for further research.

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