Economist writes: "Another misunderstanding is about how welfare spending relates to economic growth. As countries become wealthier, public spending increases as a share of GDP (see chart 2). Spending on “social protection” (pensions, benefits and the like) in the OECD club of countries has increased from 5% in the 1960s to 15% in 1980 to 21% in 2016. In a paper published in 2011, two economists, Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson, estimated that a ten-percentage-point increase in the size of the state in rich countries is associated with a fall in the annual rate of GDP growth of 0.5 to one percentage point."
Research quoted in the Economist
14 July 2018
Economist writes about the welfare state of tomorrow, today and int he future and finds that the criticisms are growing, both right and left: "On the right, critics accuse it of sucking the dynamism from capitalism and individuals alike." The left, as seen in the grainy nostalgia [...] lays claim to the welfare state as a left-wing creation, and thinks it is under unceasing threat." Economist states that "It is not so much a left-wing creation as a product of an intellectual coalition, in which the critical strand was liberalism". And, the article refers to research by Andreas Bergh and Magnus Henrekson, IFN.
