Social welfare expenditures, fiscal year 1976.

In 1976, for the second fiscal year in a row, public expenditures for social welfare purposes expanded at an abnormally high rate. Even after adjusting the 16-percent increase in aggregate expenditures for price and population changes, the 8-percent real growth rate proves to be the highest since 1971. The $45 billion rise in social welfare expenditures to a total of $331 billion reflects the effects of both recession and inflation. Benefits for the needy and the unemployed continued to expand at the same time that higher prices triggered cost-of-living adjustments in cash benefit programs and helped swell the cost of furnishing other social welfare services. A further reflection of this growth is the rise in the proportion of the Nation's gross national product devoted to social welfare expenditures from 19.7 percent in 1975 to 20.6 percent in 1976. The latter proportion becomes 27.5 percent when private social welfare spending is included.