In:
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Cambridge University Press (CUP), Vol. 62, No. 6 ( 2007-12), p. 1405-1416
Abstract:
Peter Lindert’s recent book – Growing Public – draws together large amounts of data on a number of countries and analyzes them in a sophisticated and careful way to yield theoretically informed and empirically grounded conclusions about the relationships between democracy, social spending and economic growth since the eighteenth century. By documenting strong relationships among political and economic activities, the book shed new light on tax-based social spending in general. But as the core of the argument relies on the historical experience of Western Europe and North America since the 18th century, one way to check the robustness of Lindert’s conclusions is be to examine either how different societies dealt with poverty and inequality during the same period or how the same societies did so in a longer period. This is the line followed by R. Bin Wong’s and Gilles Postel-Vinay’s papers: the former analyses China’s commitment to social spending between the mid-Qing and the middle of the twentieth century while the latter focuses on the same counries as Lindert but takes into account both a longer time period and different levels of decision. Peter Lindert offers a rejoinder to their comments.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0395-2649
,
1953-8146
DOI:
10.1017/S0395264900036258
Language:
English
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Publication Date:
2007
detail.hit.zdb_id:
298-7
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2209294-8
SSG:
8,2
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