The European Social Model: Lessons for Developing Countries

Assar Lindbeck

No 11, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: Developing countries, in particular the least developed ones, probably have more to learn from social policies in Europe during the early 20th century than from the elaborate welfare-state arrangements after World War II. In addition to macroeconomic growth and stability, the main ambitions must be to fight human deprivation, including illiteracy, malnutrition, and poor access to water and sanitation; in some cases, also weak, incompetent, and/or corrupt governments. It is also important that informal systems in the fields of transfers and social services are not destroyed when developing countries embark on more formal systems in these fields in the future. The European experience also warns against the creation of social systems that are so generous that disincentives, moral hazard, and receding social norms seriously distort the national economy, including the labor market.

Keywords: developing countries; human deprivation; informal systems; social policies; welfare-state arrangements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 O10 O20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2002-05-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.adb.org/publications/european-social-m ... developing-countries Full text (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: The European Social Model: Lessons for Developing Countries (2002)
Working Paper: The European Social Model: Lessons for Developing Countries (2002)
Working Paper: The European Social Model: Lessons for Developing Countries (2002)
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:ris:adbewp:0011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank 6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City, 1550 Metro Manila, Philippines. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Orlee Velarde ().