Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
We use a panel of developed and emerging countries for the period 1970 to 2008 to assess the cyclicality of education, health and social security government spending. We mostly find acyclical behaviour, but evidence also points to counter-cyclicality for social security spending, particularly in OECD countries, consistent with the operation of automatic stabilizers.
Afonso et al. (Fri,) studied this question.