Fact or fiction? Welfare cuts and fiscal adjustments
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6297007 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Georg Wenzelburger (0000-0001-6195-7664, University of Freiburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 63-92 |
| Publication date | 2014-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Public Policy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-814X • E-ISSN: 1469-7815 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0143814x13000251 |
| OpenAlex | W2322144299 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 30 |
Governments in the industrialised western democracies have repeatedly been advised to curb the welfare state when adjusting public finances in order to stabilise public debt in the long run and to create economic growth. This recommendation has been founded on a vast body of research on fiscal adjustments, which has come to the conclusion that cutting social expenditures leads to expansionary and more sustainable budget consolidations. This paper adds to the existing literature suggesting a more nuanced view, which challenges the simplicity of the “cutting-welfare” advice: first, we find that whereas less social spending is indeed associated with expansionary and successful adjustments, this is not the case for overall welfare state generosity. Second, disaggregating the welfare state in its components reveals that a reduction of pension generosity is indeed related to successful adjustments whereas reducing unemployment generosity does not seem to play a major role
Debt · Economic policy · Economics · Generosity · Labour economics · Macroeconomics · Market economy · Order (exchange · Pension · Political science · Public economics · State (computer science · Unemployment · Welfare · Welfare reform · Welfare state · Finance · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Applied Logistic Regression
Large Changes in Fiscal Policy
The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments
Fiscal Expansions and Adjustments in OECD Countries
Political Parties and Pension Generosity in Times of Permanent Austerity
The New Politics of the Welfare State
Investigating Welfare State Change
The Dependent Variable Problem within the Study of Welfare State Retrenchment
Less Bad than its Reputation
Fiscal Consolidations
Success and Failure of Fiscal Consolidation in the OECD
Globalization and the Reform of European Social Models
Conditional Punishment
Political Strategies and Fiscal Retrenchment
Social policy and distributional conflict in the capitalist democracies. A preliminary comparative framework
Roads to Success
Labour market- versus life course-related social policies
Voting against Spending Cuts
The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment
Governments and unpopular social policy reform
What Welfare States Do
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2021 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |