The 'moribund' welfare state in the 1990s

• Authors: Szamuely L.
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

The paper examines in the light of international statistics the degree of validity in the assertion of today's neo-liberal mainstream that the welfare state is dying and its redistributive role retreating and regressing. It looks into the percentage shares of GDP taken by welfare spending in 29 countries in the period 1980-98 and the tendency in social spending in the 15 EU member-countries in 1991-2000. It examines the increase in the health-spending component of welfare spending in 1991-2001 in the OECD countries, distinguishing within them between publicly and privately financed expenditures. Based on the OECD statistics, the author shows also the trend, in the second half of the 1990s, in the development of publicly and privately financed education spending. The most important conclusion is that there has been no dismantling of the welfare state in the last twenty or the last ten years. The last third of the paper is devoted to examining the likely reasons for this.

Keywords

EN

EDUCATION; HEALTH; SOCIAL PROTECTION; WELFARE STATE

Discipline

• ECONOMICS: ECONOMICS

• Publisher: Committee for Economic Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Kozgazdasagi Szemle (Economic Review)
• Year: 2004
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 10
• Pages: 948-969
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Szamuely L.

• L. Szamuely, no address given, contact the journal editor

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06HUAAAA00661668