J. Carritte et Jb. Williamson, AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC PENSION SPENDING ON ECONOMIC-GROWTH IN THE AFFLUENT DEMOCRACIES 1960-1988, International journal of comparative sociology, 36(1-2), 1995, pp. 82-95
This paper addresses the debate as to the impact of public pension spe
nding (the single largest component of welfare state spending) on econ
omic growth rates. We examine the effect of pension spending on econom
ic growth from two perspectives, aggregate pension expenditure and pen
sion expenditure per recipient, in a study based on pooled time-series
cross-section social indicator models for 18 affluent industrial demo
cracies for the period between 1960 and 1988. We find that for the per
iod between 1960 and 1973 the level of pension spending does not have
a substantial impact on economic growth. For the period between 1974 a
nd 1988 we find some evidence of a negative impact; an impact that is
statistically significant, but modest in magnitude. Two control variab
les (percent of the labor force working in the agricultural sector and
years of democracy) generally worked as predicted.