Social Sector Spending in a Panel of Countries
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Summary:
This paper presents evidence on the political and economic determinants of social sector spending from a panel dataset. The principal finding is that democratization in countries, as measured by within-country variation in subjective indices of democracy, is a significant predictor of government spending on education and health. The relationship is robust to controlling for a variety of factors and the estimated magnitudes suggest that an increase from the lowest to the highest rating for democracy for a country is associated with approximately 1 percent more central government spending and 3 percent more general government spending in social sectors, as a percent of GDP.
Series:
Working Paper No. 2002/035
Subject:
Education Education spending Expenditure Health care spending Total expenditures
English
Publication Date:
February 1, 2002
ISBN/ISSN:
9781451845365/1018-5941
Stock No:
WPIEA0352002
Pages:
53
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