[Impact of the Dependency Act on regional spending on social services]

In this paper we address whether the System for Personal Autonomy and Care of Dependent Persons contributes to increasing the volume of resources of the public social services system (displacement effect) or, on the contrary, whether this development has taken place at the expense of other social services (substitution effect).

Panel data analysis is used to explain how per capita expenditure on social services evolves in the Spanish Regions under the common regime in the period 2002-2016.

The implementation of the Dependency Act is associated with a 14% increase in the level of per capita expenditure on social services. This effect raises 25% when the variable explained is expenditure on current transfers of a social nature. On the other hand, law changes introduced in 2012 and 2013 were associated with a reduction in per capita expenditure on current transfers of around 10%.

This evidence would refute the hypothesis that the System for Personal Autonomy and Care of Dependent Persons had merely a "substitution" effect on autonomous spending on social services.