Growing Public is an ambitious attempt to disentangle the complex interaction between social spending and economic growth in the developed countries since the 18th century. There is no doubt that Peter Lindert's book will have a long-lasting impact in the social sciences, both for its substantive conclusions and for its methodological contributions. Over the past 30 years, Lindert (an econ-omist and economic historian at the University of California, Davis) has published articles and reference books on long-running trends in income and wealth distribution in the United States and the United Kingdom and on the quantitative history of social spending. Drawing on his past work as well as an impressive array of archival material and new research, the author offers a fresh look at two old questions: Why did the uses of taxes for social programs evolve the way they did in Western Europe and North America over the past three centuries? And what was the impact of such social spending on economic growth and development?
展开▼
