Here comes the pain... or not?

This figure displays Public Spending Trends in selected Advanced Economies 2008-15 IMF (per cent GDP). I've taken it from an interesting new publication by the Social Policy Association called "In defence of welfare: the Impacts of the spending review". The graph is computed by Taylor Gooby (page 13 of the report) on the basis of data extracted from the IMF (2010) World Economic outlook database.

The UK will be experiencing significant cuts, though everyone will not be affected similarly. Single women will take the most significant cut in their standard of living, the breakdown of how changes in different policies affect different groups is shown below (Figure reproduced by Annesley and Himmelweit, p 20).