List of countries by social welfare spending

This page lists countries by spending on social welfare. Countries with the highest levels of spending are more likely to be considered welfare states.

As a percentage of GDP

This table is a list of social welfare spending compiled by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ("OECD") into the OECD Social Expenditure Database which "includes reliable and internationally comparable statistics on public and mandatory and voluntary private social expenditure at programme level."

	Country	2016	2010	2005	2000
1	France	31.5	30.7	28.7	27.5
2	Finland	30.8	27.4	23.9	22.6
3	Belgium	29.0	28.3	25.3	23.5
4	Italy	28.9	27.6	24.1	22.6
5	Denmark	28.7	28.9	25.2	23.8
6	Austria	27.8	27.6	25.9	25.5
7	Sweden	27.1	26.3	27.4	26.8
8	Greece	27.0	23.8	20.4	18.4
9	Germany	25.3	25.9	26.3	25.4
10	Norway	25.1	21.9	20.7	20.4
11	Spain	24.6	25.8	20.4	19.5
12	Portugal	24.1	24.5	22.3	18.5
13	Slovenia	22.8	23.4	21.4	22.4
14	Netherlands	22.0	22.1	20.5	18.4
15	Luxembourg	21.8	22.9	22.4	18.6
16	United Kingdom	21.5	22.8	19.4	17.7
17	Hungary	20.6	23.0	21.9	20.1
18	Poland	20.2	20.6	20.9	20.2
19	Switzerland	19.7	18.4	18.4	16.3
20	Czech Republic	19.4	19.8	18.1	18.0
21	United States	19.3	19.3	15.6	14.3
22	Australia	19.1	16.7	16.7	18.2
23	Slovak Republic	18.6	18.1	15.8	17.6
24	Estonia	17.4	18.3	13.0	13.8
25	Ireland	16.1	22.4	14.9	12.6
26	Israel	16.1	16.0	16.3	17.0
27	Iceland	15.2	17.0	15.9	14.6
28	Latvia	14.5	18.7	12.2	14.8
29	South Korea	10.4	8.3	6.1	4.5

Per capita

This table lists social spending per head 2013, 2010, and 2005, in 2017 prices and purchasing power parity ("PPP"), in US dollars.

	Country	2013	2010	2005
1	Luxembourg	22,207.8	19,358.6	15,003.01
2	Norway	14,541.4	12,889.9	10,034.3
3	Denmark	13,259.8	12,109.2	8,584.1
4	Austria	13,070.7	11,555.9	9,000.1
5	Belgium	12,715.5	11,123.6	8,353.7
6	France	12,356.2	11,014.9	8,722.2
7	Sweden	12,342.2	10,968.3	9,390.2
8	Finland	12,073.2	10,507.0	7,672.3
9	Switzerland	11,392.5	9,428.5	7,170.7
10	Germany	11,140.9	10,466.5	8,575.3
11	Netherlands	10,974.6	9,891.0	7,645.1
12	Italy	10,149.9	9,502.7	7,117.5
13	United States	9,838.4	9,278.7	6,830.3
14	Ireland	9,621.6	9,683.8	6,018.2
15	Spain	8,635.9	8,367.4	5,686.0
16	United Kingdom	8,619.4	8,216.5	6,828.2
17	Australia	8,479.8	7,053.1	5,889.0
18	Japan	8,442.2	7,484.4	5,586.0
19	Canada	7,506.1	7,098.1	5,914.4
20	New Zealand	7,121.6	6,314.7	4,557.3
21	Portugal	7,121.2	6,596.2	4,928.6
22	Iceland	7,092.1	6,563.6	5,719.4
23	Slovenia	6,978.3	6,458.7	5,120.9
24	Czech Republic	6,089.2	5,328.9	4,027.6
25	Israel	5,382.2	4,636.0	4,038.1
26	Hungary	5,314.1	4,970.8	3,784.5
27	Slovak Republic	4,963.3	4,393.9	2,609.6
28	Estonia	4,304.9	3,862.9	2,141.4
29	Latvia	3,243.0	3,258.0	1,723.3
30	South Korea	3,048.1	2,523.3	1,481.1
31	Turkey	2,559.1	2,055.7	1,170.0
32	Chile	2,137.0	1,901.2	1,101.9

See also

• Welfare state
• List of countries by tax rates
• List of countries by tax revenue to GDP ratio

References

• OECD "Social Expenditure - Aggregated data"