Domestic Government Spending on Human Capital : A Cross-Country Analysis of Recent Trends
Using a new data set comprised of publicly available information, this paper provides cross-country evidence on domestic government spending for human capital in recent years. Creating a measure of social spending that covers the three sectors of h...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/712531569957422450/Domestic-Government-Spending-on-Human-Capital-A-Cross-Country-Analysis-of-Recent-Trends http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32493 |
| Summary: | Using a new data set comprised of
publicly available information, this paper provides
cross-country evidence on domestic government spending for
human capital in recent years. Creating a measure of social
spending that covers the three sectors of health, education,
and social protection has proven to be a challenging task.
Only for health spending is there high data coverage over
time and across countries. Education and, especially, social
protection display large gaps. Increases in social sector
spending have generally been slow and unsteady. Although
education spending in low-income countries has seen a stable
and steady increase, spending on health has been remarkably
flat. Human capital outcomes are only weakly correlated with
spending in the three sectors. Finally, this paper discusses
future research required to provide guidance on how much and
what type of investment is needed to achieve high levels of
human capital. |
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