Welfare State Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (1970s–2000s): Multidimensional Welfare Index, Its Methodology and Results

There is an ongoing debate between focalization and universalization on welfare policies as the best way to develop the welfare state in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, there is a need to develop a measure that exhibits the multidimensional nature of the welfare state, instead of focusing on the social spending dimension. Segura-Ubiergo (The political economy of the welfare state in Latin America: globalization, democracy and development. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007) constructed a welfare effort index (WEI) to facilitate understand the relative degrees of welfare state development among Latin American countries. The WEI focuses mainly on social spending and ignores the other dimensions of welfare. Based on a comparative analysis of 17 Latin American countries and following the methodology of Segura-Ubiergo, a new index that aims at enriching the WEI was constructed. The new index is multidimensional in that it has eight indicators relating to three dimensions of welfare: social spending, coverage of welfare programs and outcome of welfare institutions. Principal component analysis was used for reducing the indicators into three indexes that represent three proposed dimensions of welfare. The combination of these three indexes gives the multidimensional welfare index. The results of the index account for more than 75 % of the data variance.