The objective of the present study is which determinants under what conditions have important impacts on pension growth, modeling the social, economic, and political forces that explain variations in nations' development of public pension growth. / This study attempts to answer two central research questions. The first research question is why previous studies produce inconsistent results on welfare policy determinants concerning impacts of political actors. Reviewing literature on welfare policies, American state public policy, and comparative political economy, the present study shows that the inconsistent findings are due to the use of mis-specified models. The present study investigates the research question with interactive models. The second research question is whether or not industrial democracies keep a similar pattern of pension growth, regardless of different pension schemes and indexing mechanisms. / The analytic tool for the first research question is conducted within the framework of pooled cross-sectional and time series data analysis design. The pooled data set includes 24 annual time periods, 1961 to 1984, with 16 advanced industrial democracies. The sample size is 384. To examine hypotheses, multiplicative and static models are used in both nominal and real terms. The second research question is examined by crosstabulation, categorizing each nation's trend of pension growth by various pension schemes and indexing mechanisms. / The present study finds that a dominant leftist government is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for pension growth. Leftist dominant governments with medium or weak labor unions and weak oppositional parties lead to greater pension growth than do other types of governments. In addition, in contrast to previous studies on welfare policies, this study finds that the strength of labor unions and the degree of state centralization are negatively associated with pension growth. Except for the relative size of the aged population and real economic growth, results of socio-economic perspectives are not always consistent in all models. Furthermore, the present study finds that different pension schemes and indexing mechanisms result in various patterns of pension growth. / The present study shows that results of previous studies are incorrect due to the problem of model mis-specification. Although both multiplicative nominal and red growth models in this study are applied to only one specific welfare program, pension policy, these models are worthy of being applied to a wide variety of welfare policies. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-11, Section: A, page: 4551. / Major Professor: Charles J. Barrilleaux. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77587 |
| Contributors | Shin, Hyeon-Joong., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 245 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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