The effect of social spending on reducing poverty

Ferdi Celikay and Erdal Gümüş

International Journal of Social Economics, 2017, vol. 44, issue 5, 620-632

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the relationship between social expenditure and poverty in Turkey. Design/methodology/approach - There are voluminous studies in the literature and many of which contain condradictory results. The authors use panel error correction models and employ Turkish statistical territorial units data (26 regions) covering the period 2004-2011 in the analysis. Findings - The authors have found that in the short run, there is a negative relationship between social expenditure and poverty, as expected. In the long run, however, there exists a positive relation between them. The authors utilize expenditure on education as one component of social expenditure, and the authors obtain a negative relationship between education expenditure and poverty, both in the short run and in the long run. Social implications - Poverty is an important social problem that more studies on this subject should examine various aspects and find policies to alleviate it. Originality/value - Literature on poverty and social spending are growing and their results are contradictory. However, this paper clearly and significantly provides new empirical evidence on the effect of social spending on reducing poverty using Turkish data. This kind of study is hardly found for developing countries like Turkey. It contributes to the literature.

Keywords: Turkey; Poverty; Income inequality; Cointegration test; Educational spending; Social spending; D63; D78; H52; H53; H55; I18; I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijsepp:ijse-10-2015-0274

DOI: 10.1108/IJSE-10-2015-0274

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().