The paper “Human development and inequalities: The importance of social public spending” which was presented and discussed at the EMANES Conference 2023 has been published by the Structural Change and Economic Dynamics Journal. The paper has been co-authored by Ronald Miranda-Lescano – Instituto de Economía of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay and EMANES Fellow, Leonel Muinelo-Gallo – Instituto de Economía of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay and Oriol Roca-Sagales – Department of Applied Economics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
The authors empirically analyse the impact of social public spending on human development distribution in a sample of 82 developed and developing countries over the period 2010–2021. Specifically, they focus on the impact of the three components of social spending (health, education and social protection) on the distribution of human development as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI) and its dimensions (health, education, and income). Applying data panel analysis, their empirical evidence shows that the three components of social expenditure reduce the loss of HDI caused by inequality. Hence, public resources allocated towards social spending have an important redistributive impact with regards to human development outcomes related to life expectancy, years of schooling and income per capita.
Structural Change and Economic Dynamics publishes articles about theoretical and applied, historical and methodological aspects of structural change in economic systems. The journal publishes work analyzing dynamics and structural change in economic, technological, institutional and behavioral patterns.
Link to paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X23001820
