Controlling Public Spending and Striving for Efficiency

2021 ◽  
pp. 34-54
Author(s):  
Mårten Blix ◽  
Henrik Jordahl
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Hours Worked ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Delicate Balance ◽  
Changing Trends ◽  
Public Sector Efficiency ◽  
The Welfare State

Extensive welfare services require corresponding revenue. Large spending commitments imply that Sweden’s public sector finances are particularly sensitive to changing trends in demography and hours worked. A particular concern is that productivity growth in labour-intensive services is relatively difficult to uphold, the so-called Baumol effect. Increasing costs and spending pose a severe risk to the welfare state, but a risk that should be possible to handle. Though Sweden’s public finances remain among the strongest in the OECD, it will be a delicate balance to increase spending on welfare services at the desired rate. A continued focus on improving public sector efficiency will need to be coupled by a suitable balance between tax-funded services and parts that people will have to pay for privately.

scholarly journals Mauno Koivisto Lecture: 2014 The Nordic welfare model and welfare services – Can we maintain acceptable standards?

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Torben M. Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Income Elasticity ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
The Public ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Lower Productivity ◽  
Welfare Model ◽  
The Welfare State

A key feature of the Nordic welfare model is provision of welfare services like care, education and health. They are individual entitlements, and collectively financed. It is a prerequisite that contemporary standards of services are provided; thus the public solution is not a second rate solution used only by those who cannot afford better solutions. Can the Nordic welfare model meet this objective in the future? Increasing productivity and wealth challenge this. Services tend to have lower productivity growth and thus to become more expensive (Baumol’s cost disease), but also to have a high income elasticity, and thus demands rise alongside improved material living standards (Wagner effects). The same implies to leisure, implying that tax bases may be eroded. In short, expenditures are on an upward drift and revenues on a downward trend, challenging the financial viability of the welfare model. This seems to leave a conundrum for the welfare state in the sense that the success of the model in improving living standards tends to undermine the possibility of attaining key objectives of the welfare state. It is argued that although the welfare state will be financially strained, these challenges can be met without jeopardizing its fundamental objectives.

Public and Private Social Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Incorrect Measurement ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Distributional Impact ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.

scholarly journals The politics of accountability

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Ozga
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Data Use ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Networked Governance ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
Measures Of Performance ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis paper draws on recent research in Europe and England to discuss the politics of accountability. It is suggested that, as policies in education are increasingly focused on delivering technical-managerial accountability, that is accountability understood as evidenced in international, national, institutional and individual comparative measures of performance, so the shifting power relations of system redesign supported by data use are concealed and suppressed. System redesign is promoted by ‘networked’ governance and the de-centred state, in institutional ‘freedom’ from bureaucracy, in the de-professionalisation of public sector workers, in the proliferation of managers, in the redefinition of citizens as consumers. The implications of such reforms for politics are profound, as political legitimacy is a fundamental precondition for the sustainability of the welfare state and welfare state organizations are dependent on active political processes of producing legitimacy and political accountability.

scholarly journals Welfare-State Retrenchment Revisited: Entitlement Cuts, Public Sector Restructuring, and Inegalitarian Trends in Advanced Capitalist Societies

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Clayton ◽  
Jonas Pontusson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Welfare State ◽  
Advanced Capitalist

In recent years it has become commonplace for comparativists to emphasize the resilience of welfare states in advanced capitalist societies and the failure of neoliberal efforts to dismantle the welfare state. Challenging some tenets of the resilience thesis, this article seeks to broaden the discussion of welfare-state retrenchment. The authors argue that a sharp deceleration of social spending has occurred in most OECD countries since 1980, that welfare states have failed to offset the rise of market-generated inequality and insecurity, and that welfare programs have become less universalistic. They stress the distributive and political consequences of market-oriented reforms of the public sector.

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