Welfare State

There are three main interpretations of the idea of a welfare state:

The welfare state and social expenditure

Welfare provision in the contemporary world tends to be more advanced in the countries with stronger and more developed nations; poorer countries generally have more limited welfare services. Within developed economies, however, there is no association between economic performance and welfare expenditure (see A. B. Atkinson, Incomes and the Welfare State, Cambridge University Press 1995). There are individual exceptions on both sides, but as the table below suggests, the higher levels of social expenditure in the European Union are not associated with lower growth, lower productivity or higher unemployment, while the pursuit of liberal free-market policies leads neither to guaranteed prosperity nor to social collapse. The table shows that countries with more limited expenditure, like Australia, Canada and Japan, do no better or worse economically than countries with high social expenditure, like Belgium, Germany and Denmark. (For more in-depth comparison, see R Goodin, B Headey, R Muffels, H Dirven, The real worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

Related Topics:
Developed nations - Welfare service

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The figures below show, first, welfare expenditure as a percentage of GDP for OECD member states, and second, GDP per capita (PPP US$)in 2001:

Related Topics:
GDP - OECD

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Figures from the OECD for 2001 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/56/37/31613113.xls and UNDP Human Development Report 2003 http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/pdf/hdr03_HDI.pdf

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