The determinants of social spending in Spain, 1950-1980, Are dictatorships less redistributive?
Author InfoSergio Espuelas-Barroso (Universitat de Barcelona) Abstract Most of the studies about the welfare state have focused so far on the affluent democracies. However, poorer and non-democratic countries have deserved less attention. This paper provides new evidence on the evolution of social spending in both Spain and Portugal between 1950 and 1980. Since both of them were dictatorships throughout almost the whole period, that new evidence allows us to study the relationship between dictatorships and redistribution. In addition to the level of social spending and its distribution among different items, the way in which social spending is financed is also analyzed in this paper. More exactly, the ratio of social security contributions to social spending is used as an indicator of redistribution. The main findings of this paper show that besides economic and demographic factors (as the level of GDP and the ageing of population) political factors are key determinants of social spend
