What Welfare States Do: A Disaggregated Expenditure Approach

Abstract

This article suggests that an alternative to a social rights of citizenship approach to comparing welfare states is to use disaggregated programme expenditure data to identify the diverse spending priorities of different types of welfare state. An initial descriptive analysis shows that four major categories of social spending (cash spending on older people and those of working age; service spending on health and for other purposes) are almost entirely unrelated to one another and that different welfare state regimes or families of nations exhibit quite different patterns of spending. The article proceeds to demonstrate that both the determinants and the outcomes of these different categories of spending also differ quite radically. In policy terms, most importantly, the article shows that cross-national differences in poverty and inequality among advanced nations are to a very large degree a function of the extent of cash spending on programmes catering to the welfare needs of those of working age.

More than just money: Patterns of disaggregated welfare expenditure in the enlarged Europe

“…3 The following four categories, which are based on the present classification system of the OECD SOCX data, build the basis for Castles' analysis (Castles, 2008: Together with the descriptive analysis of the spending figures, this underlines the argument that not only do some countries spend more than others, but also that countries differ considerably in their spending priorities and that these priorities seem independent from levels of social spending. Therefore, the disaggregated social expenditure approach 'has the potential to provide us with new information about the nature, the causes and the consequences of welfare state variation' (Castles, 2008: 51-2).…”

“…Despite the strikingly lucid argumentation about the grouping of countries, the analysis performed by Castles (2008) is less substantiated in methodological terms since it leans purely on a description of the spending patterns. This study ties in with the disaggregated expenditure approach proposed by Castles but employs a more sophisticated statistical method based on factor and cluster analysis.…”

“…This article seeks to extend the disaggregated expenditure approach for comparative analysis of welfare policy patterns by addressing the following question: Do disaggregated welfare spending patterns reveal significant cross-country variation among European welfare states in line with a theoretically meaningful distinction between welfare regimes? In order to test this empirically, I take on Castles' (2008) framework of four distinct spending categories. While Castles' approach was primarily descriptive, derived from observing the distinct spending patterns among Western OECD countries, I apply a more robust method by utilizing factor and cluster analysis for 28 European countries and use the ESSPROS data.…”

Den norske velferdsstaten: En sosial investeringsstat?

“…Til tross for at ALMP-kategorien, som nevnt, omfatter tiltak med ulik grad av sosial investerings-profil, velger vi å inkludere alle aktive arbeidsmarkedsprogrammer inkludert i OECDs database over offentlige sosiale utgifter (kjent som OECD Social Expenditure Database, SOCX) når vi måler sosial investerings-innsats. Å angi utgifter som andel BNP er en svaert vanlig måte å måle innsats rettet mot ulike «velferdsstatlige» formål (Castles, 2009). …”

Welfare States’ Policy Response to New Social Risk: Sequence Analysis for Welfare Policy

“…This also makes it possible to combine many variables into a simple indicator, which contains a substantial amount of information (Bonoli 2007, p. 507). Practically, many empirical studies have made use of welfare expenditures as an indicator of welfare institution or strategy (e.g., Bonoli 2007;Castles 2009). …”