Social welfare expenditures, 1950-75

This article takes both a short-term and a long-term look at trends in social welfare expenditures under public programs. For fiscal year 1975, inflation and the recession were the key to developments. Inflation ate up more than half the 20 percent ($47 billion increase--the largest in the history of the series--partly as the result of antirecession measures. After adjustment for population and price changes, the real increase in per capita constant dollars was 7.1 percent--not large by recent measures but still significant when compared with the average annual increaseof 5.9 percent recorded since 1950. Public social welfare expenditures capped a decade of unusual growth in 1975 to absorb one-fith of the Nation's output of goods and services, after consuming only 9-12 percent between 1950 and 1965. Private social welfare expenditures of $108 billion accounted for less than 8 percent of the 1975 gross national product.