Political Structure, Economic Development, and National Social Security Programs

Abstract

A scale of national social security programs is developed and related to economic development, literacy, urbanization, and a political-representativeness index. The degree of social security coverage of a nation's population is most powerfully correlated with its level of economic development, but when economic development is controlled for, the more representative governments introduce programs earlier than the less representative governments. A separate analysis of the relationship between changes in political representativeness and changes in social security legislation found that new social security programs were more likely to follow positive than negative political changes.