DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-4835-1
title: OECD Social and Welfare Statistics, 1980-2016
title: OECD Social Expenditure Database

description: The &lt;i&gt;Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Social and Welfare Statistics&lt;/i&gt; (previously Social Expenditure Database) available via the UK Data Service includes the following databases:&lt;br&gt;
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The &lt;b&gt;OECD Social Expenditure Database&lt;/b&gt; (SOCX) has been developed in order to serve a growing need for indicators of social policy. It includes reliable and internationally comparable statistics on public and mandatory and voluntary private social expenditure at programme level. SOCX provides a unique tool for monitoring trends in aggregate social expenditure and analysing changes in its composition. The main social policy areas are as follows: old age, survivors, incapacity-related benefits, health, family, active labour market programmes, unemployment, housing, and other social policy areas.&lt;br&gt;
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The &lt;b&gt;Income Distribution&lt;/b&gt; database contains comparable data on the distribution of household income,  providing both a point of reference for judging the performance of any country and an opportunity to assess the role of common drivers as well as drivers that are country-specific. They also allow governments to draw on the experience of different countries in order to learn "what works best" in narrowing income disparities and poverty. But achieving comparability in this field is also difficult, as national practices differ widely in terms of concepts, measures, and statistical sources.&lt;br&gt;
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The &lt;b&gt;Child Wellbeing dataset&lt;/b&gt; compare 21 policy-focussed measures of child well-being in six areas, chosen to cover the major aspects of children’s lives: material well being; housing and environment; education; health and safety; risk behaviours; and quality of school life.&lt;br&gt;
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The &lt;b&gt;Better Life Index&lt;/b&gt;: There is more to life than the cold numbers of GDP and economic statistics. This Index allows you to compare well-being across countries, based on 11 topics the OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living conditions and quality of life.&lt;br&gt;
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The Social Expenditure data were first provided by the UK Data Service in March 2004. The UK Data Service web site includes further information on its &lt;i&gt;OECD Social and Welfare Statistics&lt;/i&gt; holdings, including a &lt;a href="http://ukdataservice.ac.uk//use-data/guides/dataset/social-welfare.aspx" title="OECD Social and Welfare Statistics dataset user guide"&gt;dataset user guide&lt;/a&gt; and details of &lt;a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5257/oecd/sed/2009" title="OECD Social and Welfare Statistics latest database updates"&gt;latest database updates&lt;a/&gt;.&lt;br&gt;
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&lt;b&gt;Citation:&lt;/b&gt; The bibliographic citation for the database is: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (&lt;i&gt;{YYYY}&lt;/i&gt;): Social and Welfare Statistics (&lt;i&gt;{Ed. Data download: YYYY-MM}&lt;/i&gt;). UK Data Service. DOI: &lt;i&gt;{edition specific doi - e.g. &lt;a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5257/oecd/sed/2009"&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.5257/oecd/sed/2009&lt;/a&gt;}&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;br&gt;
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&lt;b&gt;Alternative DOIs:&lt;/b&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/data/oecd-science-technology-and-r-d-statistics_strd-data-en" title="10.1787/socx-data-en"&gt;10.1787/socwel-data-en&lt;/a&gt; (to access via OECD.Stat subscription).&lt;br&gt;
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