The impact of the Second World War on postwar social spending

The huge quantitative literature on postwar 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 the Second World War, this is quite astonishing. This article examines for the first time, whether, and in what ways, the Second World War affected cross‐national differences in public social spending of 18 Western welfare states over the course of the Golden Age. Using panel regressions, it is found that the war strongly affected social spending until the late 1960s. The 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 postwar period.