Social Sector Spending in a Panel of Countries

Reza Baqir

No 2002/035, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper presents evidence on the political and economic determinants of social sector spending from a panel dataset. The principal finding is that democratization in countries, as measured by within-country variation in subjective indices of democracy, is a significant predictor of government spending on education and health. The relationship is robust to controlling for a variety of factors and the estimated magnitudes suggest that an increase from the lowest to the highest rating for democracy for a country is associated with approximately 1 percent more central government spending and 3 percent more general government spending in social sectors, as a percent of GDP.

Keywords: WP; central government; country democracy rating; total spending; government spending; social sectors; democracy; sector spending; democracy index; IMF country document; country effect; spending data; per capita income; time series; province government; standard deviation; Total expenditures; Education spending; Health care spending; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53
Date: 2002-02-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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