Title:	Debt, Democracy and the Welfare State: Are Modern Democracies Living on Borrowed Time and Money?
Authors:	Rögnvaldur Hannesson
Keywords:	Debt, Democracy
Issue Date:	2015
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	In this chapter, the development of government debt in the traditional OECD member states since the Second World War is traced. Some countries were saddled with a large debt as a legacy of the war, but their debt as percent of GDP gradually fell until the mid-1970s. After the energy crisis of 1973 the debt began to rise in most countries. In many countries the debt has continued to rise ever since, almost without interruption, and in some countries it has reached world war proportions. Some countries have managed to reverse the debt accumulation, all of them relatively small. Government debt rises because expenditures exceed revenues. Expenditures are the result of government consumption and transfers. In this chapter the development of public expenditure and consumption in the traditional OECD countries in the postwar period is traced. Also shown is the annual growth rate of GDP. In most countries the growth rate was higher before the mid-1970s than later, which facilitated growth in public expenditures. In most countries public consumption has grown more slowly since the mid-1970s. Countries with the highest government debt are typically not those with the highest GDP per capita, nor the ones with the largest government expenditures or consumption.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/53305
ISBN:	978-1-349-50688-0
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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