while all public social expenditures serve a redistributive role to some extent only a minority part of total social spending is in fact devoted to cash benefits with a direct impact on the incomes of the nonelderly annex table al shows that over time almost all countries devoted declining shares of total spending to cash benefits that mostly benefit children and workingage individuals on average the share of these nonelderly benefits declined from percent in to percent in without counting early retirement benefits the decline is somewhat smaller but still substantial when they are included despite growing overall public social expenditure this drop is sufficiently large to translate into a significant reduction of nonelderly benefit expenditure relative to gdp on average from to percent across countries upper panel of figure between the mid s and the mid s however sizable reductions were only observed in a few countries belgium france ireland netherlands while the majority of countries recorded increases