This article analyses the relationship between government spending and the distribution of private income between capital and labour. While most previous research assumes that government spending redistributes in favour of the less wealthy, I distinguish between types of expenditures that enhance the bargaining position of labour - that is, unemployment benefits, public sector employment and in...

This article takes both a short-term and a long-term look at trends in social welfare expenditures under public programs. For fiscal year 1975, inflation and the recession were the key to developments. Inflation ate up more than half the 20 percent ($47 billion increase--the largest in the history of the series--partly as the result of antirecession measures. After adjustment for population and...

This study examines the effect of government health care and education programs on the poor in Chile from 2000 to 2006. Results are obtained from a country-wide provincial level panel data-set with information on poverty and indigence head-count ratios, measures on the severity of poverty as captured by the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke P2 statistic, per capita public expenditures on health and educat...

Background: A dramatic increase in healthcare expenditures is a major health policy concern worldwide. Understanding factors that underlie the growth in healthcare expenditures is essential to assist decision-makers in finding best policies to manage healthcare costs. We aimed to examine the determinants of healthcare spending in Iran over the periods of 1978-2011. Methods: A time series ana...

In fiscal year 1978, social welfare expenditures under public laws reached $394.5 billion, a 9.1-percent increase over the previous year. When adjusted for price and population changes, the total was only 2.5 percent higher in "real" terms. Per capita real expenditures rose by 1 percent in 1978, compared with an increase of 2 percent in 1977. For the second successive year, social welfare expen...

Japan is currently experiencing the most rapid population aging among all OECD countries. Increasing expenditures on medical care in Japan have been attributed to the aging of the population. Authors in the recent debate on end-of-life care and long-term care (LTC) cost in the United States and Europe have attributed time to death and non-medical care cost for the aged as a source of rising exp...