Abstract

As a share of GDP, government social spending has a hockey stick shape, remaining flat and near zero until the 20th century, when it rose sharply. Northwest Europe has always led the way. Over time, support has become more generous for the average elderly person relative to the young

Author(s)

Peter Lindert

Production date

6 June 2021

Variable(s)

Government social expenditures as a percentage of GDP; the same, broken down by function

Keywords

Social spending, welfare state

Time period

1820-2010

Geographical coverage

Global

Methodologies used for data collection and processing

Annual estimates from official sources

Period of collection

2017-2020

Data collectors

Peter Lindert


See table 4.1 and the section on data quality of the paper for the details on data quality

General references

See the paper for details at https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3d96efc5-en/1/2/1/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3d96efc5-en&_csp_=2c2e680562193998e9d20ed6a45a9242&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book

Caribbean

Anguilla[No Data]

Antigua and Barbuda1500 (5)-2013 (21)

Aruba[No Data]

Bahamas1500 (5)-2013 (23)

Barbados1500 (5)-2016 (28)

Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba[No Data]

British Virgin Islands[No Data]

Cayman Islands[No Data]

Cuba1500 (8)-2016 (35)

Curaçao[No Data]

Dominica1500 (5)-2016 (21)

Dominican Republic1500 (6)-2018 (38)

Grenada1500 (5)-2013 (21)

Guadeloupe[No Data]

Haiti1500 (6)-2018 (36)

Jamaica1500 (6)-2018 (35)

Martinique[No Data]

Montserrat[No Data]

In 2010, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded a subsidy to the Clio Infra project, of which Jan Luiten van Zanden was the main applicant and which is hosted by the International Institute of Social History (IISH). Clio Infra has set up a number of interconnected databases containing worldwide data on social, economic, and institutional indicators for the past five centuries, with special attention to the past 200 years. These indicators allow research into long-term development of worldwide economic growth and inequality.

Global inequality is one of the key problems of the contemporary world. Some countries have (recently) become wealthy, other countries have remained poor. New theoretical developments in economics - such as new institutional economics, new economic geography, and new growth theory - and the rise of global economic and social history require such processes to be studied on a worldwide scale. Clio Infra provides datasets for the most important indicators. Economic and social historians from around the world have been working together in thematic collaboratories, in order to collect and share their knowledge concerning the relevant indicators of economic performance and its causes. The collected data have been standardized, harmonized, and stored for future use. New indicators to study inequality have been developed. The datasets are accessible through the Clio Infra portal which also offers possibilities for visualization of the data. Clio Infra offers the opportunity to greatly enhance our understanding of the origins, causes and character of the process of global inequality.