Identifying the skeleton of the social investment state: defining and measuring patterns of social policy change on the basis of expenditure data

In this chapter the possibilities and limitations of using expenditure data to measure ‘social investment’ are discussed. The analysis of expenditure data is an obvious choice for attempts to identify to what extent governments have adopted the agenda of an ‘activating ‘ and ‘enabling’ welfare state as well as to operationalize policies that can potentially account for cross-national differences in poverty trends. The chapter explores the possibilities and limits of operationalizing social investment policies on the basis of social expenditure data. It is shown that the use of expenditure data to map the skeleton of the social investment state is fraught with conceptual and methodological problems. The chapter comments on the spending data related to old and new social risks that are reported in the Appendix to the book.