The impact of the Second World War on postwar social spending

Abstract

The huge quantitative literature on post-war social spending almost entirely neglected war as a possible explanatory factor of social spending dynamics. Given the mass carnage and the enormous social needs caused by World War II this is quite astonishing. This paper examines for the first time, whether and in what ways World War II affected cross-national differences in public social spending of 18 Western welfare states over the course of the Golden Age. Using panel regressions, we find that World War II strongly affected social spending until the late 1960s. Our evidence demonstrates that the Second World War is not simply a temporal watershed structuring different phases of welfare state development but rather a crucial factor for understanding cross-national differences in welfare efforts and social expenditure dynamics in the post-war period.