Making social spending work

Summary: 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 inter-generational 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 onto society as a whole. --

Record details

ISBN: 1108478166
ISBN: 9781108478168
ISBN: 9781108806268
ISBN: 9781108784467
Physical Description: print
xiv, 422 pages : illustrations, charts ; 24 cm
Publisher: Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Copyright: ©2021

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 390-418) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Part I: Overview. Enduring issues ; Findings and lessons -- Part II. The long rise, and its causes. Why poor relief arrived so late ; The dawn of mass schooling before 1914 ; Public education since 1914 ; More, but different, social spending in rich countries since 1914 ; Is the rest of the world following a different path? -- Part III. What effects?. Effects on growth, jobs, and life ; Why no net loss of GDP or work? ; Do the rich pay the poor for all this? -- Part IV. Confronting threats. Do immigration tensions fray the safety nets? ; Pensions and the curse of long life ; Approaches to public pension reform ; Borrowing social-spending lessons.