Do Social Rights Affect Social Outcomes?
Aoife Hegarty, Lise Reuss Muff, Kristoffer Agner Gredsted, and Rasmus Rødby Kristiansen provided excellent research assistance. We are grateful for comments from Niclas Berggren, Anna Brüderle, Martin Gassebner, Jerg Gutman, Pierre‐Guillaume Méon, Martin Paldam, Josh Tucker, and Anna Welander; participants of the 2013 Public Choice Meetings (New Orleans), the 2013 Beyond Basic Questions workshop (Luzern), and the 2013 ISNIE conference (Florence); seminar participants at the University of Navarra; and three anonymous referees at this journal. Bjørnskov gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation.
Abstract
While the United Nations and NGOs are pushing for global judicialization of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCRs), little is known of their consequences. We provide evidence of the effects of introducing three types of ESCRs into the constitution: the rights to education, health, and social security. Employing a large panel covering annual data from 160 countries in the period 1960–2010, we find no robust evidence of positive effects of ESCRs. We do, however, document adverse medium‐term effects on education, inflation, and civil rights.
