Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
尽管困难重重：评估非洲新的社会福利格局
Despite the odds: assessing Africa’s new social welfare landscape
摘要
Over the past decades more attention has been given to the growth of social welfare related programs in sub-Saharan Africa. However, to date there are still insufficient empirical observations, which makes it difficult to assess these changes or the factors behind them. This article introduces the Structure of Social Welfare (SSWA) dataset. Rather than rely on spending data, which is sporadically reported, the SSWA gathers data on the design elements of diverse social welfare programs for 44 African countries between 1960 and 2022. These data are used to create indexes of social welfare that take into consideration intended coverage as well as institutional and fiscal sustainability. The SSWA data demonstrates that despite difficult material conditions there is considerably more social welfare in Africa today, but that there is also important variation across countries in terms of the level of commitment. The utility of the SSWA data is then demonstrated by reevaluating the contested impact of democratization on welfare expansion in Africa. The results indicate a positive yet underexplored relationship.
中文摘要
过去几十年来，撒哈拉以南非洲社会福利相关项目的增长受到更多关注。然而，迄今为止仍缺乏足够的实证观察，这使得难以评估这些变化或其背后的因素。本文介绍社会福利结构（SSWA）数据集。SSWA并未依赖零星报告支出数据，而是收集了1960年至2022年间44个非洲国家多样化社会福利项目设计要素的数据。这些数据被用于构建社会福利指数，该指数考虑了预期覆盖范围以及制度和财政可持续性。SSWA数据表明，尽管物质条件艰难，当今非洲的社会福利显著增多，但各国在承诺水平上存在重要差异。随后，通过重新评估民主化对非洲福利扩张的有争议影响，展示了SSWA数据的效用。结果表明存在一种积极但尚未充分探讨的关系。