The Generosity of Social Insurance, 1971-2002

International comparisons of national social policy rely overwhelminglyon programme spending ratios. However, there are widespreadproblems with this type of data as an indicator of trends insocieties' commitments to social protection. This paper suggestsan alternative approach to understanding social commitmentsand introduces a new international data set of social insuranceprogrammes that is comprised of important characteristics ofthree types of public insurance: unemployment, sick pay, andpublic pensions. The data are available annually from the 1970sfor 18 OECD countries. Looking more closely at trends in twoprogramme characteristics, income replacement rates and programmecoverage, we develop an indicator of expected benefits. Accordingto this indicator, there is considerably more evidence of welfarestate retrenchment in recent years than most analyses of publicspending have suggested. Footnotes ¹ E-mail address: lyle.scruggs{at}uconn.edu