The Distribution of Public Social Expenditure in Spain: A General Analysis with Special Reference to Age and Social Class

This paper attempts, first, a general analysis of the distributive incidence of social expenditure (both in cash and in kind) in Spain, within a framework of partial equilibrium. Second, the analysis isolates the redistributive effects caused by age differences from those caused by differences between social groups. Within the area of the latter, the type of redistribution that occurs is examined as well as the point to which the middle classes are privileged recipients of public social spending. In these analyses decomposable indices of generalized entropy are used. The data used for verifying the hypotheses are taken from the European Community Household Panel microdata (1995 wave).