Age Structure, Politics, and Cross-National Patterns of Public Pension Expenditures

Abstract

This study examines the determinants of spending on public pensions. Unlike other programs, pensions benefit an easily identifiable, high voting group-the aged-and may be especially amenable to their political influence. With that in mind, we draw out predictions of industrialism and class theories for the explanation of public pension expenditures. The explanations are tested with data on 48 nations, at all levels of political and economic development, for four time points (1960, 1965, 1970, 1975). Pooling the data allows multivariate analysis of appropriate determinants both within and across different groups of nations, and detailed analysis of advanced industrial democracies. Industrialism variables such as percent aged, social insurance program experience, andfamily size have dominant effects. However, the effects of percent aged increase with political democracy, suggesting that the aged wield political power in increasing pension expenditures. Class variables, in contrast, have little or no effect on pensions, suggesting the importance of age politics over class politics in the spending for this program.