Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/63207 
Year of Publication: 
2003
Series/Report no.: 
Memorandum No. 2003,18
Publisher: 
University of Oslo, Department of Economics, Oslo
Abstract: 
The welfare state is generally viewed as either providing redistribution from rich to poor or as providing publicly-financed insurance. Both views are incomplete. Welfare policies provide both insurance and redistribution in varying amounts, depending on the design of the policy. We explore the political consequences of the mix of redistribution and insurance in the context of studying the impact of income inequality on expenditures in different categories of welfare spending in advanced industrial socieities from 1980-1995. We find that spending on pensions, health care, family benefits, poverty alleviation and housing subsidies is largely uncorrelated with income inequality, but that spending on income replacement programs such as unemployment insurance, sickness pay, occupational illness and disability are signinficantly higher in countries with more egalitarian income distributions. We show that this pattern is exactly what a theory of political support for redistributive social insurance programs would predict.
Subjects: 
Welfare state
insurance
redistribution
income inequality
JEL: 
D62
H23
H53
J65
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.