Centaur, The

The American Welfare State in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on Alberto Alesina and Edward L. Glaeser, Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe

“…In other words, their objective is to explain why the U.S. government redistributes less than European governments do. The second point is potentially more significant: though Alesina and Glaeser present evidence on the redistributive effects of taxes and income transfers in a handful of countries (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38), their efforts to test different causal arguments on a cross-national basis rely on government spending on social transfers, expressed in percent of gross domestic product (GDP), as a proxy for redistribution. Thus their empirical analysis actually addresses the question of why the U.S. government spends less on social transfers than European governments do.…”

“…27 Most recently, several important studies suggest that employers have often welcomed social legislation and played a facilitating role in its implementation. 28 Simply put, the comparative literature teaches us that cross-class alliances played a crucial role in the postwar development of European welfare states. Where labor unions and socialist parties were strong, welfare states assumed more redistributive forms, but European countries developed extensive systems of social welfare provision even in the absence of strong unions and socialist government.…”