America’s major entitlement programs are often significantly more expensive than those in other nations, but much less effective in reducing poverty.
For instance, in 2017, the United States spent twice as much on Social Security than Australia or Canada did on their public pension programs. Yet, those nations’ poorest senior citizens enjoy substantially higher incomes than their American counterparts. America’s national government in 2019 gave states 64% more per capita for Medicaid alone than Canada provided to its provinces. Yet 11% of Americans remained uninsured.
The high cost and poor results of these aspects of the American welfare state are in large part due to the preoccupations and priorities of the New Deal coalition that built it, which political scientist Ira Katznelson has called “a strange marriage of Sweden and South Africa.”
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