Regardless of the overall level of taxation and public spending, public social expenditures constitute over half of all public spending in most OECD countries. But while media reports often suggest great gaps between one country’s public social expenditure relative to its GDP and another’s, a closer look at how tax and benefit systems interact reveals that the differences between countries are narrower than they seem. Broadly speaking, public social spending covers four main areas: support to those in retirement; income support to the working-age population; healthcare; and other social services, like childcare. The relative importance of each of these items varies from country to country.
