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Defense Expenditures and National Well-being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1982

Bruce Russett
Bruce Russett*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Abstract

The existence of a trade-off between military expenditures and social spending is widely hypothesized but often difficult to establish empirically. This article constructs a model to test the effects of changes in military spending on federal expenditures for health and education from 1941 through 1979. Important economic, demographic, and political changes are controlled. No systematic tradeoff between military spending and federal health and education expenditures is found, nor in this period was there any significant depressing effect on health and education expenditures by Republican presidential administrations. Thus, the current administration, under which there are major increases in military spending and major cuts in health and education spending, emerges as exceptional.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 76 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 767 - 777
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1982

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