Government, social spending and debt


A simple cross sectional plot of recent data on debt and social expenditures as a % of GDP for OECD countries suggests some positive correlation. Two caveats are in order. First, if you look at total government expenditures what you find is in fact a negative correlation. Second, the optimal size of a welfare state or government is not determined by whether it has a large deficit.

Comments

Vaughn Payne MD said…
Where is this data from?
Anonymous said…
This data is taken from the OECD statistic website, which can be accessed at: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx

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