Why Doesn't the US Have a European-Style Welfare System?

Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote ()

No 8524, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: European countries are much more generous to the poor relative to the US level of generosity. Economic models suggest that redistribution is a function of the variance and skewness of the pre-tax income distribution, the volatility of income (perhaps because of trade shocks), the social costs of taxation and the expected income mobility of the median voter. None of these factors appear to explain the differences between the US and Europe. Instead, the differences appear to be the result of racial heterogeneity in the US and American political institutions. Racial animosity in the US makes redistribution to the poor, who are disproportionately black, unappealing to many voters. American political institutions limited the growth of a socialist party, and more generally limited the political power of the poor.

Date: 2001-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-pke and nep-pub
Note: PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (131)

Published as Alesina, Alberto, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote. “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?” Brookings Paper on Economics Activity (Fall 2001): 187-278.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8524.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:8524

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8524

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().