Peter H. Lindert - Making Social Spending Work

Making Social Spending Work

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.

Peter H. Lindert is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis. His previous publications include the prize-winning book Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (2004) and Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700 (2016, with Jeffrey G. Williamson).

Making Social Spending Work

Peter H. Lindert

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108478168

DOI: 10.1017/9781108784467

Peter H. Lindert 2021

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2021

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall

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ISBN 978-1-108-47816-8 Hardback

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To Natasha, Sophie, Izzy, Nadia, Carson, Alex, Kailani, and Kiara

Contents

Appendices

Available online at www.cambridge.org/Lindert

Appendix A. Sources and Notes for Chapters 3 and 4

Appendix B. Fiscal Redistribution in the Longer Run

Appendix C. Sources and Notes for Chapter 10

Appendix D. Chapter 12 s Pension Accounting Equations and Forecasts

Figures

Tables

Appendices

Available online at www.cambridge.org/Lindert

A.1. Government expenditures of Japan s Tokugawa shogunate in 1730

A.2. Estimated government expenditures for the Mughal Empire, 1595 1596

C.1. Budgetary leeway for raising pensions in fifty-eight countries, 1980 2050

Part I Overview