Social Spending Vs Poverty Levels in Capitalist and Non-Capitalist Countries
I researched social spending vs poverty levels in Sweden (a social democratic country) and in The United States (a capitalist country), and Canada. While America and Canada are both democracies, Canada has significantly more welfare systems set up. I picked these three countries because they are on a spectrum with America being more capitalist, Canada being more to the middle, and Sweden being more socialist. I wanted to determine if higher social spending lessened poverty levels and improved citizen’s overall life satisfaction.
I started looking at poverty levels within those three countries. As you can tell, The U.S. has a much higher percentage than the others, of people in extreme poverty.
Both Sweden have a .5% of people in extreme poverty, while The United States has a 1.2%. This is around (exact number of people) more than Canada and Sweden.
Then, I looked at each country’s social spending. The data in these charts are what % of each country’s GDP is spent on social spending. The place where I got this data, Our World in Data says that social spending refers to money spent on health, old age, unemployment, housing, family, incapacity-related benefits and active labor market programs.
Sweden, the socialist country, has a much higher amount of money spent on social issues.
Then, I looked at health expenditure vs life expectancy in all three countries. The U.S has the highest amount spent on health, but the lowest life expectancy. This data is as of 2015.
The main reason there is this discrepancy is because majority of money on health goes to the 1% of the population, rather than being evenly distributed. Unlike Sweden and Canada, insurance has not expanded over time to cover more people and cover more health issues. Essentially, the money is given to a smaller part of the population which leaves the majority with little money on health. Without public insurance, this money does not go to the entirety of the population.
This data is as of 2015.
As shown in this chart, in Canada and Sweden the majority of health expenditure is public, while less than half of health expenditure in The U.S is public. Only 48% of health expenditure in The U.S. is public. 71% of Canada and 84% of Sweden’s health expenditure is public.
This chart shows what the overall score for life satisfaction is in each country. Citizens rated on a score of 1–10 on how satisfied they are with their current life, with 10 being the most satisfied. The U.S is lower than both Sweden and Canada, with Sweden being the highest number. Sweden’s number is around 7.4, while The U.S’s is at 6.8 and Canada’s is around 7.2. Overall, Sweden citizens are more satisfied with their life.
From this data, we can determine that more money spent on social issues, like wealth care, housing, and food leads to more satisfied people.
We can also determine that public health insurance improves the state of living of people. Without public health insurance in The U.S., life expectancy will not rise, even if more money is added to health expenditure.
All data came from Our World in Data:
Happiness Data: https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
Poverty Data: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Social Spending: https://ourworldindata.org/government-spending
Health Expenditure: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-public-expenditure-on-healthcare-by-country?time=earliest..latest&country=CAN~SWE~USA
https://ourworldindata.org/the-link-between-life-expectancy-and-health-spending-us-focus
