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Table 3 presents some descriptive statistics on government consumption in the world sample,
and social expenditures for OECD countries, including its single components. The variance in
social expenditures is slightly higher than that for government consumption, both overall and
within countries. The within country variation, for which we identify the effects on student
achievement, constitutes 7-8 percent of the overall variance. Pension spending is the largest
component of social expenditures, followed by public health spending.

Table 3. Descriptive statistics of government consumption and social expenditures

	Obser- vations	Mean	Standard deviation overall	Standard deviation within countries	Minimum value	Maximum value
General government consumption spending, percent of GDP	232 (OECD)	17.65	5.39	1.46	5.69	41.47
General government consumption spending, percent of GDP	124 (OECD)	18.90	4.22	1.05	10.08	29.62
Public sector social expenditures, percent of GDP	124 (OECD)	19.62	5.61	1.62	2.8	32.5
Active labor market policy spending, share of GDP	120 (OECD)	0.61	0.44	0.20	0	2.2
Public health spending, share of GDP	124 (OECD)	5.56	1.28	0.55	1.4	8.3
Family allowance spending, share of GDP	124 (OECD)	1.90	1.08	0.31	0	4.1
Unemployment benefit spending, share of GDP	120 (OECD)	1.17	0.90	0.44	0	4.4
Pension spending, share of GDP	124 (OECD)	6.38	2.76	0.76	0.6	12.8
Housing spending, share of GDP	102 (OECD)	0.42	0.39	0.17	0	1.8
Other social spending, share of GDP	99 (OECD)	4.00	1.38	0.64	1.50	8.90

The third measure of the generosity of the welfare state we employ is an index of income tax
rate progressivity developed by the Fraser Institute (Gwartney and Lawson, 2002). The index
constitutes an income-bracket adjusted marginal tax rate levied in the highest income bracket
in one country, adjusted for the lowest income threshold for this income bracket. The
redistributive impact of a given tax rate depends on the financial threshold from which on the
rate applies. The top tax rate index of the Fraser Institute is therefore adjusted for threshold
effects to facilitate comparability of the marginal top income tax rate across countries and

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