With social transfers as with public schooling, the half century from 1880 to 1930 provides the earliest consistent numbers for over twenty countries and our first chance to quantify the main influences on those transfers to the poor, the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly. This chapter conducts tests that are as close as possible to the tests that Chapter 17 will perform on post-1960 data, so that the two chapters together can illuminate how the larger patterns of policy behavior have evolved over more than a century.

SOME FORCES THAT LED THE WAY

Several forces determine a country's commitment to tax-based social transfers. Some of these forces are unique to their historical settings. Others are more systematic, and we pursue both here.

Some things not pursued here should be noted at the outset. The reasons vary. For simplification, this chapter pays no attention to such political mechanisms as the conflicts and bargaining among political parties, and the specifics of legislative caucuses, budgetary appropriations rules, and legal precedents. That is, as warned in Chapter 13, I do not open the black box of political machinery, but take a reduced-form approach featuring prior forces that are inputs into that black box and the economic outcomes it produces. Some other forces are set aside here because I lacked the data series to chart them. So it is with income distribution, unionization, and military spending.