The Pros And Cons Of Social Welfare Spending

During the last decades, social welfare spending, which is the spending by government on social welfare benefits, has risen in wealthy democracies (Samuels 2013, 361). However, there is still some variation in welfare state spending between different wealthy democracies. The welfare spending is proportionately high in particular in certain European countries, and therefore, “Welfare statism” has been argued to be a distinct feature of Europe (Leibfried 1993, 120). A well justified example of this is Sweden, which has relatively high welfare spending (OECD) and has managed to create a somewhat working welfare system, which includes developed public education and healthcare (Eger 2010, 204) Another wealthy democracy, the United States, has a

In 2003, the public social spending in the US was only 15,9% of the GDP, while in Sweden it covered 28,6% of the state’s GDP. By 2016, the respective figure were 27, 1% in Sweden and 19, 3% in the United States. (OECD). Hence the public welfare system in the US relies on market mechanisms supplemented by government investments and non-profit organizations and the government does not participate in the welfare system in as large a scale than it does in Sweden. Moreover, there are alternatives provided to the public welfare programs in the US, which are usually expensive and hence exclusive (Ahl and Nelson 2015,

The concept of Social Capital refers to a “structure of relations between actors, connections and networks among individuals and organizations which comprise reciprocal trust, norms, values” (Kapucu 211, 25) while the concept of trust, According to Richard Griffiths, means that “in a certain relationship you can rely on the fact that what you are told is the truth, that you will not be cheated and that the other person has your interests at heart” (Griffiths 2016, 241). According to Putnam, low social capital in a society has a negative impact on civic engagement, including the citizens’ willingness to vote, and accordingly, high social capital and trust has a positive impact on the citizens’ willingness to participate (Putnam 1995, 67). Accordingly, in 2009, Sweden had relatively high voting percentage of 80% (Eger 2010, 204). Moreover, high interpersonal trust in a society arguably encourages people to support high welfare spending since when the trust is high, people trust that the welfare assistance recipients will not use the financial assistance they receive inappropriately (Daniele and Geys 2015,