Nearly everyone knows about the Social Security Administration in America, the federal agency that provides retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits to millions of Americans every year, but most people are unaware there is an international Social Security agency.
The International Social Security Association, founded in 1927, is a group of Social Security administrations and agencies made-up of 160 countries in an effort to provide benefits to workers who face sickness, disability or work-related injuries. Recently the ISSA released information on what percentage of a nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is spent on incapacity benefits as of 2013. The GDP is the total dollar value of all goods and serviced produced, typically GDP is used to correlate with the size of a country’s economy.
The public spending study listed a total of 34 countries and the United States ranked 28th of these countries in the amount is spends on Social Security benefits. According to the ISSA, the United States spent less than 1.5 percent of its GDP on Social Security benefits. The only countries spending less of their GDP on incapacity benefits include Turkey, Korea, Chile, Canada and Japan.
The country that spends the most of its GDP on incapacity benefits is Denmark, which spends more than 4.5 percent. Sweden, Finland and Norway all spend more than double of its GDP on incapacity benefits compared to the United States. Some other notable countries that outspent the United States include Slovenia, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Latvia. To take a closer look at how much each of the 34 countries spent click here.
This is another indication that the idea that the United States provides too much government assistance to its residents and it is getting out of control is completely false.
