Dimensions of globalisation and social welfare policies in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries

Abstract Which dimensions of globalisation have an impact on social expenditure? How do different social welfare policies react to globalisation? This paper addresses these questions focusing on 36 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 1990–2015 and applying system Generalised Method of Moments to deal with endogeneity. We consider different dimensions of globalisation, economic, social and political, and their potential differentiated impacts on variegated social welfare policies. According to our findings, all the dimensions of globalisation have a positive effect on total social expenditure and on most of its components, although the influence is not statistically significant for social globalisation. The social welfare policies affected by globalisation are old age pensions, incapacity related, family and unemployment benefits and active labour market policies. These results can shed additional light on social and economic outcomes of globalisation such as poverty, inequality, long run growth and economic recovery.